NOTE: This story takes place shortly after “The Begotten.” Apparently this was written in August of 1997 but never posted until now.
“That item is not available at this replicator.”
“Damn,” exclaimed Kira, slamming a fist into the machine. It had been her fifth, and last, choice. Leave it to Julian to reprogram her replicator. He probably had someone lying in wait at the Replimat and Quark’s to make sure she didn’t sneak in there either. “Kira to Dax.”
“Dax here.”
“What are you doing for dinner?”
“Actually –” There was an apologetic pause. “I just ate.”
“Oh, well, do you think I could use your replicator?”
“Doesn’t yours work?” Dax asked with just a hint of laughter creeping into her voice.
“You could say that.” There was no way she could *tell* Dax exactly what was wrong.
“You could also say that Julian’s reprogrammed it.”
Kira dropped any further pretenses and went straight to begging. “Come on, Dax. It can’t be that big of a deal. It’s not like I’m planning on eating jumja sticks morning, noon, and night.”
“Sorry, Kira, but I promised Julian I’d back him on this one. Besides, your body is going to need the coaxing back from eating for two.”
“He couldn’t give me a grace period? I only gave birth two days ago!”
“Doctor knows best — but don’t tell *him* I said that. I’m sorry, Kira. You’ll have to find someone else to smuggle you food.” There was only a hint of sympathy to her friend’s voice.
“Thanks anyway, Dax.” She couldn’t exactly make her friend break a promise. *Well, she could have at least *stretched* it a little.* “I’d better start scrounging my food from the forest.”
“Good luck. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“If I survive,” Kira commented dryly.
“Well, I’ll make sure you have a nice funeral,” Dax shot back jokingly.
“You’d better!” There was a soft chuckle followed by a sigh of resignation. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Kira out.” So Dax wasn’t going to help her — which meant Julian had probably gotten to Miles, too. Worf would have most likely eaten with Jadzia — not that she would really pursue dinner with a Klingon — and the Captain was knee-deep in reports to Starfleet. There was no way in Cardassian hell that she was going to ask Quark to help her so that left — Odo.
She found herself standing in front of the doors to Odo’s quarters — rather standard quarters if she really thought about it. With a standard chime that she had already rung.
“Come in.”
As always, the first thing that caught Kira’s eye as she entered was the sculpture in the middle of the room as the bright lights made it gleam like newly fashioned presk’x metal. The subtle bronze-copper-gold hue of the structure always seemed to remind her of something, but she could never quite seem to put her finger on exactly what that was.
“Major. What can I do for you?” Odo worked to contain his irritation at being disturbed and his surprise and joy at just who it was interrupting his shifting.
“I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me.” The words tumbled awkwardly from her mouth, but it was said.
“I, ah — I don’t eat anymore, remember?” There was confusion in his voice; why, in the name of the Prophets, was she asking him to dinner?
“I know you don’t eat, Odo.” Her tone was joking, perhaps a bit too much so. He had needed to eat just a mere two days ago. Why had she accepted his transformation back to a Changeling so easily? It was as if he had never really been a humanoid in her mind to begin with — but she knew that wasn’t the truth. She had always accepted him as a Bajoran in her mind, not a Changeling. He was usually in humanoid form — to be sure, she doubted there had been many times where she had seen him as anything other than a humanoid — and he was always “wearing” his Bajoran uniform. He was Bajoran by paolift and First Minister Shakaar, Captain Sisko said that to err is human. However, at the time, I was still a Changeling. I guess that in the beginning, after I had first been judged, I thought to be human was an error, but now I realize that I had erred again.” He gave a light shrug of his shoulders. “I miss being human.”
“Hm,” Kira acknowledged, taking another bite of her dinner. She thought a moment and gave herself time to swallow the food. “The universe is full of surprises. Like that turbolift incident. What did happen there, anyhow?”
“You . . . you didn’t read the incident report?” Odo asked, got off-guard.
“No,” Kira admitted a bit ashamedly. “I was, ah, a little preoccupied at the time, and I never got around to it.” She gathered the last of her food on her fork and tried to gulp it down.
“Well, you see, I, ah, I didn’t check the security codes and, ah –”
“You what?” Kira forced out, grabbing for her glass of water to wash down the food that persisted in her throat. What was he saying? This was Odo standing before her, wasn’t it?
“I was preoccupied and . . .” Odo fumbled as his eyes fought for something to concentrate on.
“About –” At first relief washed over Odo as Kira halted her question, but then he realized why as her sonorous voice was replaced by a gagging, a choking sound. He was by her side in a mere instant, supporting her as she stood trying to relieve the blockage to her airway. Instinct took over as the mandatory first aid course surfaced from deep in his memory.
Hugging her to him tightly, Odo applied the required thrusts to her abdomen, the pressure that would pop the offending nuisance from the top of her airway. It took a few tries as he held back, erring on the side of caution, not wanting to hurt her. Finally, a properly disgusting lump of food found itself back on the plate it had initially resided.
Kira slumped against Odo, taking in deep breaths to regain the oxygen she had been refused. She went to rest her hands on his and felt them morph back to that form under her touch. A shiver ran through her as the shift left a tingle on her monoform skin. As if the slight trembling had been an awakening call, Odo immediately pulled his arms back to his side.
“I think — I think that may have been a little premature,” Kira mumbled off as her step faltered and she fell . . . right back into Odo’s arms as he swiftly moved to catch the fainting form. He picked her up as easily as one would pick up a porcelain doll and carried her to bed.
She awoke almost immediately upon being placed on the suddenly too firm surface. “You know, Julian’s going to have your head for this.”
“Me? You’re the one who insisted on going against his orders,” Odo reprimanded lightly.
“Yes, but you’re the one who gave me access to an unrestricted replicator.” Kira tried unsuccessfully to suppress a small stuttering cough. “I suppose I deserve what I get.”
Odo crossed his arms, amused, as he sat on the side of the bed. A silence settled in the room as the two just looked at each other. It was Odo who broke the quiet.
“Well, I suppose I should be catching up on some reports I have due to Starfleet,” he said, rising.
“No, Odo, wait,” Kira said, grabbing his wrist. “Stay.”
“Why?”
Kira looked around her, hoping to find a reason. “Well, for one thing,” she started, a small chuckle escaping her lips, “these are *your* quarters.” Odo seemed to accept that fact so she continued. “And second, I miss you; I miss my friend. We haven’t had any time to talk the past few weeks.”
“Well, we were both a bit busy.”
“So, we should catch up,” Kira said, propping herself up into a sitting position and crossing her legs up underneath her. Odo found himself reluctantly sitting back down on the bed, the bed he had slept in only a few nights before. “And we can start where we left off a few minutes ago with the turbolift.”
“Or not,” Odo stated flatly. Kira searched his eyes for something, but she only met resistance.
“All right, we can talk about something else. You can start, wherever you want.”
“What would you like to know?” he asked defensively.
“Tell me — tell me about *your* baby.”
There was dead silence for a moment as Odo fought to brush off the cloak of grief. Indeed, that would be something he would have no problems talking about, and soon he was retelling his experiences, bringing Kira into them with such vibrancy that they almost became memories for her as well.
Kira found herself actively a part of the story, asking questions now and then, mostly for clarification.
“Why a sphere?”
“Because it rolls with any situation. A useful skill if you plan on surviving in this galaxy for any amount of time.”
“Then how come it didn’t work in the turbolift?”
Odo’s internal alarm kicked in — a second too late. “I was too preoccupied with jealousy . . .” His words faded off as the sentence he had been about to finish blazed clearly in his mind.
“Of whom?” Kira asked intently.
“It’s, ah, it’s not important.”
“Odo, it was important enough to not make you check security codes. Who?”
“Shakaar,” he said, spitting the name out as he rose brusquely to his feet.
“Shakaar?” Images of her lover ran through Kira’s mind. “What in the name of the Prophets would you be jealous of Shakaar for?”
Odo kept his back to her, arms crossed once again across his chest. “He has you.” The soft response barely reached Kira’s ears.
“So do you, Odo. You’re my best friend and –”
“You’re in love with him. He *has* you.” He turned and his eyes pierced hers with the last statement.
“You’re . . . you’re . . .” Kira fumbled with the words as understanding started to dawn on her obstinate Bajoran mind. Odo merely nodded. “With me?”
“Since I first saw you in the Replimat, eating by yourself.” The words came soft and reminiscent, heavy with feeling and years of yearning.
Kira struggled to register the astonishment, and slowly the pieces started to fall into place. All those times she had confided in him about Bareil or Shakaar — he had seemed so patient, so tolerable to “solid” behavior. She looked up towards Odo as he stood peering out the portal in the outer area of the quarters.
“You were wrong about one thing, you know,” she said, emerging from the bedroom. He turned his head, and Kira found herself faced with the everyday, analytical glare he faced everyone with — well, usually everyone except her.
“And what was that?” There was a detached tone to the question.
“I’m not in love with Shakaar.” She waited for some reaction, but there was none. “I mean, I suppose I thought I was for awhile — I may have actually been in the beginning, but as the months waned by . . . I still love him, just as I love you. There’s just too much history between us.” Kira moved to the table, to clean up the remnants of her dinner. “I guess that when he indicated he was interested in more of a relationship, I –I was still grieving for Bareil, I suppose.”
“That’s what I told him,” came the flat response.
“But at the time,” Kira paused, registering his words and searching for the right ones to express her sentiment. “The memory of a dead lover can only keep you so warm at night. I needed someone to be there with me, in the dark when memories have nothing else to stop them.”
“It doesn’t seem to me like the First Minister has been on the station very much.”
“Well, he *is* First Minister, and I have no right to monopolize his time,” Kira replied wistfully as she placed her dishes in the reclamator.
“Nerys, having someone by your side while you sleep and he sleeps isn’t monopolizing anyone’s time. You deserve someone who would be jumping at a transport the first chance he could get to be by your side every moment he could.” Odo moved further away from her, as if by doing so he could take some of the feeling out of the statement.
“Everyone who gets too close ends up getting hurt or killed.” There was no emotion in the statement, just as there had been no emotion at the mass funerals during the Occupation. “Even Shakaar. Having a relationship with the Bajoran liaison officer on a Cardassian built space station hasn’t exactly been good for his image. The only things that’ve kept him afloat have been that I was a Resistance cell member and that I’m not exactly on good terms with Winn. And, of course, even then he still has enemies.” She rubbed at her temples, begging the problems to disappear.
“You’re forgetting one thing.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“I’m still here.”
“Yes, and you’ve only had your species and essential nature changed. What if you had never been changed back? What if you had *died* human?” Kira allowed a ragged sigh to escape from her lips. “It’s not worth the risk.”
Odo laughed — actually *laughed.* Not a chuckle or a muted snicker, but a genuine laugh. His eyes sparkled with irony as he discarded the broken pieces of his well-kept secret, of his hidden feelings.
“What’s so funny?” Kira asked, caught off-guard by the uncharacteristic and seemingly improper reaction to the tone of their conversation.
“Not worth the risk. You must have made one hell of a Resistance fighter.” The mirth calmed inside of him, and his tone changed to one of a caring, supportive friend — urging her to become more. “Nerys, you’ve risked your life, the lives of every member in the Shakaar Resistance, and much more, all against an interminable enemy who thought they were unstoppable. It’s –” Odo paused, as much in wonderment at exactly what he was doing as to find the right words. “Nerys, you’ve always been a strong person, and you of all people should know that it’s not a risk as long as you believe in what you’re doing.”
“You’re one to talk,” Kira spat the words out, regretting them the instant she had spoken them and, at the same time, knowing it was something he had to hear.
The broken shield was hastily reconstructed, plastered together by fear of the truth, the truth he had known for such a long time. “I think, Major, that since you have finished your dinner and have no further use for myself or my replicator, it would be time for you to leave.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I leave and you’re left to contemplating another situation. That’s not how it’s going to happen this time. *This* time there will be no escape for you. It’s time to stop analyzing and make a stand, that is, if there is something you’re willing to fight for.” Kira perched herself on the window sill, assuming a defensive
posture that mimicked his own. She could play this game, too. He had to realize that he wasn’t really in love with her, he had simply convinced himself he was. It was easy when you got lonely, she had even speculated a few times about . . . but she knew it wasn’t real, so why bother?
“I don’t fight.”
“That’s right: you don’t fight. You don’t up for anything past what you can shirk off to that Bajoran uniform you wear. You don’t argue for anything, just a few well-analyzed pre-formed suggestions now and then. You didn’t fight Dr. Mora when he came to assist you, despite your being dead-fast against it. You don’t care about anything.” The cold, dispassionate voice that echoed in the otherwise silent room surprised even Kira.
“I care about you.”
“Then why didn’t you do something about it?! Why did you sit around all those years and do nothing?!” Kira shouted at him. *Why did you leave me alone?!* her mind shouted, but her lips would not voice that question.
“Because! — because I knew you would never feel the same about me.” The reply was forceful, passionate and the brunt of what world of truth he had been living in.
“How could you know unless you asked?” Kira asked a bit wearily, rubbing at her temples. She hadn’t come here to argue; it was all Julian’s fault.
“I didn’t realize how I felt about you until you told me you were in love with Bareil. Then, you were grieving for Bareil, and then Shakaar came into the picture. Besides, no one could ever love me — not even my own kind.” The grief on his face was apparent as he sat down at the computer console.
“Odo, I’ve spent half my life grieving for friends and lovers; trust me, it is not how I wanted to spend the rest of it,” she said leaning back against the window itself. “But, I also didn’t come here to argue, so,” Kira stated, pushing herself up from the window sill, “thank you for dinner and for saving my life — again — however, I think it’s time for me to go.” She nodded politely and headed for the door.
A million thoughts ran through Odo’s mind. Everything she had said had been true, of course. How he waited, complacently, all those years, waiting for just the right opportunity, which had never come. Dreading the rejection, dreading losing her . . .
*You’re losing her right now. Things will be different now. You’ve lost.*
And Odo realized that it was true, he had lost — everything, and he nothing else to lose.
“Nerys, wait.”
Kira broke her militant stride and neatly turned on one heel. “Why?” She was exhausted and just plain tired of playing games.
“Because losing you is not a risk I’m willing to lose,” Odo said solemnly, closing the distance between them. “And no matter what my analytical mind tells me, my heart tells me that losing you would be worse than anything else that could ever happen to me.”
“What about me and Shakaar?” Kira asked passively.
“You aren’t in love with him,” Odo contended.
“But we *are* in a relationship together.”
“True.” Odo paused in reflection for a moment and barely caught the sad, pitying smile on Kira’s face.
*Nice try, Odo. Nice try.* And as she opened her mouth to say ‘good night’ she found a pair of very insistent lips on hers. Kira felt the world of comments stirring inside her go numb as she began to respond to the comfort, the friendship, the companionship, the passion between them.
“I’m not easily fooled, Major,” Odo growled softly.
“And, um,” Kira started, slowing a lump of anticipation, “what about Shakaar?”
“Shakaar — he doesn’t seem to be around to protest, now does he,” Odo half-asked, comically looking around the room.
“No,” she answered, a frown crossing her lips, “he usually isn’t.”
“Nerys, I promise that I’ll always be here for you — or wherever you go.” The earnestness in his voice and the solemnity that shone from his crystal blue eyes spoke volumes.
“I think, Constable,” Kira began, clasping her hands together behind his neck, “that, for now, here will do nicely.”
{-|-}*