Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was Dax’s third night waiting at the Mak’relle Dur and the fire-haired woman glaring at her liquor in a corner booth was the first person she’d actually wanted to talk to. 

Jadzia was like that, sometimes. She liked to be alone, and it took a lot for someone to be worth the drain of company. Jadzia Dax was a different creature with different habits, but the echoes remained. This year had been a veritable labyrinth and it was difficult to find her way out.

Still. When the woman had entered the bar, she’d moved with the sort of aggression Dax hadn’t seen in a half dozen generations. It spoke of war. Not the distant wars the Federation fought, high in the stars and far from the people they fought. This woman’s movements spoke of fighting with fists and elbows and every part of her being. Where this woman came from, it was clear that if she’d wanted something she would have had to go out and take it. Fight for it. 

Her eyes alone would have been enough to have Jadzia following her. 

Jadzia leant her hip against the side of the booth opposite from the woman, careful not to crowd her. A slick, cold glass of Andorian ale dangled from her fingertips. Violence seethed under Jadzia's skin too, leashed by long practice and a handful of hosts. “Enjoying your night?"

The woman glared at her drink — an Enolian spice wine, Jadzia could see now. “If I wanted a discussion, I would have gone to the consulate.”

Jadzia hummed in commiseration. “Politics. Never been my favourite.” Lela had liked the difference she could make, but even she hadn’t appreciated the backstabbing. “I can suggest much better places for conversation if you didn’t enjoy the consulate, though.”

The woman shifted her glare from her wine to Jadzia. It burned. “If I wanted conversation I would have said so.”

Dax gauged her reaction, the way her hand curled unconsciously around the base of her glass so Dax would have had a difficult time grabbing it. She didn’t look particularly comfortable, but Jadzia thought it was likely due to the pounding music and not her presence. “I didn’t say I was here for conversation. If you like, I can just offer company.” Her smile tilted in sideways. “And help fend off the attentions of the wait staff. They’re notorious in this part of town.”

Jadzia was still holding her drink at her side, the condensation on the glass dampening her shirt so it plastered against her skin. She hadn’t settled herself at the table, as much as she was drawn to the other woman. She had too many lives experience to invite herself into someone else’s space like that when she didn’t know a thing about them. “And I’m Jadzia, by the way.”

That sparked interest. The woman gestured to the booth seat across from her. “Kira,” she said. “Congratulations on leaving Starfleet.”

Jadzia cocked an eyebrow and Kira blushed slightly, the anger from earlier mingling with embarrassment. There were slight striations in her blush of anger, near-invisible slashes. Likely it was her species’ form of scar tissue. Dax smoothed a thumb over the side of her hand, remembering the pale burn mark splashed against Torias’s dark skin. “I see I’ve made it into the news again,” she said dryly. “I’d say I was the worst scandal since Burnham but we both know there have been worse in between that Starfleet has covered up." 

Kira scowled, a slash of darkness amongst neon lights.  

“Bajoran, right?” Jadzia took another sip of her ale, her throat going numb. Most alcohols seemed to warm the drinker, but this one froze them. It was a new experience. After all, wasn’t that what she was for? “What brings you out here?”

Kira looked Jadzia in the eyes, her gaze cold and clear and burning. “The Federation’s truth or mine?”

Dax already knew the Federation truth. Bajor had scraped an admission by the skin of its teeth, the Provisional government just official enough to sign off on the papers. Some of the population, scarred from the Occupation, weren't happy with exchanging one overseer for another. If Jadzia had been Bajoran, she didn’t think she would have believed the Federation’s benevolence either.

“Yours,” Jadzia told her, and sprawled back against the booth. It stuck in odd places, liquors from a thousand different planets never quite cleaned off it. Music whispered under her skin, bass twined in her hair, Joran a constant presence. He would have seen Kira as a target — someone to bend and break and shatter. Jadzia would have been intimidated. Dax didn’t know what she thought, yet. What she felt was raw fascination, like being confronted with a trimodal algorithm. 

But then again, equations had nothing on people. 

Kira swirled her wine, not a drop spilled. Jadzia watched how careful she was at being careless and thought about famines and the taste of earth on her tongue while her stomach screamed with hunger. “The provisional government made it clear that while the actions of any past rebel groups were appreciated, we were unnecessary with Bajor's Federation membership and access to Starfleet resources.” 

“Truths,” Dax said plainly, “are never that pretty.”

“'This sweet green land',” Kira quoted, bitter, “burned down and left peace in its ashes. Peace didn’t want the warriors who refused to stop fighting."

With that, Kira tipped back the rest of her wine. Jadzia offered her drink, still more than half full, and Kira accepted a few fingers worth in her cup. Jadzia clinked the glasses together, grinning one of Curzon’s derisive smiles. “To the Federation.”

“To my Bajor,” Kira declared, and downed the Andorian ale without so much as a wince. Dax laughed, raucous, and ordered them another round. 

Jadzia half expected to see Kira around her apartment the next morning. She felt empty, a hole in her or Dax or somewhere deeper, when she saw that Kira had left. Not that she expected to find Kira in her bed, but she’d expected that a conversation that lasted into the little hours of the morning would have… 

It was fine. Better that she hadn’t stayed. Better that Jadzia hadn’t spilled all her secrets to the first off-worlder who seemed to understand her. Better that she was alone. 

Dax thought about making herself eggs for breakfast, but ended up staring at the replicator in confused silence. A hundred years flickered behind her eyes. Eggs. She knew something about eggs. Something she was forgetting. Maybe they weren’t a breakfast food? Things always changed in the strangest ways. 

“Scrambled,” Neema said from behind her. She sounded about as exhausted as if she hadn’t slept at all, though Dax knew she had. She’d checked in on Neema before she’d passed out herself. “Mom. Seriously. You don’t need to bake me sticky buns for breakfast or anything. I like my eggs scrambled.”

Jadzia turned to smile at her daughter. She was almost used to being able to smile at Neema without having her own face match Neema’s wrinkles. “Sorry.”

Neema shuffled past Dax and prodded the replicator into spitting out a raktijino. 

“Neema Cyl,“ Jadzia started. She could feel her hands against her hips, even though she hadn’t intended to settle them there. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

Neema waved her off. It was much too familiar for this tiny little rented room. It felt like it belonged among worn yellow curtains and the painted edges of a sink. “I’m a hundred and twenty, not twelve.” Neema made direct eye contact as she downed a good half of the cup in one sip. “So. Eggs?”

Dax made them scrambled eggs.  

With their plates scraped clean, Neema watched her. Dax could feel her gaze the same way she’d always known what her children were up to. She hadn’t felt it during Curzon’s eighty two years or Jadzia’s four but it felt familiar. Comforting. The opposite of a stomach full of Andorian ale, the opposite of freezing and heavy. Even Neema’s accusing stare could be relaxing in the right context. “You stayed out late last night.”

Jadzia looked away. Neema’s expression was far too knowing. Cyl was younger than Dax but between Neema and Cyl they were doing their best to catch up. Certainly her daughter had put together effective disapproving looks far faster than Dax had. “Nobody saw me who didn’t need to see me.”

“Mmm.” Neema peeled a blackened scrap of egg off the corner of the still-steaming pan. She ate it like it was a delicacy. “So who was it that you talked to?”

Dax knew exactly who had taught Neema to be mysteriously irritating, and she had only herself to blame. “A Bajoran ex-militia member.” 

Neema frowned. She looked enough like her father that Dax’s breath caught. “I thought they were all on their planet cleaning up after the Occupation.”

“The Federation has relief efforts handled.” Jadzia didn’t even try to sound convinced. She wasn’t. The Federation didn’t see homes like the Trill did. They weren’t sacred. They weren’t important. A threshold was nothing more than a line on a doorstep made for stepping over. “Apparently, the Federation didn’t approve of a military organization, even one that was formed in response to a past and current threat.” 

Neema returned her attention to prising the leftovers out of their breakfast pan. “Ah.”

Jadzia glared at her plate. She could see Kira like she was still here. The intensely physical way she existed, even when she was sitting. The razor edge to even her smiles. “She disagreed with the provisional government in that regard.”

Another moment, another egg scrap materialized. “I see.” 

“The Federation doesn’t have a good reputation with a good level of interference with important local customs, as I’m sure you’re aware. We’ve gotten away with almost no supervision but Bajor doesn’t look as shiny so they’re getting slightly different treatment.”

“Huh.”

“It’s not benevolence when people don’t have a choice. It was this or risk not getting sufficient aid because of the Prime Directive’s archaic stance on interference.” Dax dropped her fork onto her plate so she didn’t try to stab the table with it. "Kira was in one of the most important resistance cells for driving out the Cardassians in her home province. She should be a hero. And she’s here? The Federation planet with the worst reputation?” 

“Worst?” 

“You know as well as me what they’re saying about us.” Jadzia straightened on her stool, trying not to curl around Dax. “Especially me. And Odan.” 

“I see.”

Jadzia opened her mouth, but then she caught sight of a glimmer of amusement in Neema’s eyes. Her teeth clacked audibly when she snapped her mouth shut. “You’re trying to get me talking, aren’t you?”

Neema sipped her raktijino with the placid demeanour of a mreker that had recently dug a yard into a warren of holes. “Was I?”

“Cyl, you treacherous beast,” Jadzia told her. Cyl cocked her head, innocent. Tobin laughed, quietly, and Dax thought of Deilas Cyl. He’d been excellent at getting people talking too. “All I’m saying is that Bajor and Trill have a few of the same problems.”

“Fascinating.”

“Cyl, I swear to Dax you’re going to be the death of me.” Jadzia swatted Neema with a dishcloth, gentle as she could, and gathered the dishes. “I’m ancient. I’m very mature.” 

Neema grinned at her, as shit-eating as she ever got. “Oh?”

Jadzia groaned as loudly as she could, and she might have said more but something started ringing. It took until the third chime for her to realize that it was her doorbell. Dax was so used to the standard Starfleet alert that the civilian ones didn’t register anymore. Still holding the plates and a dishtowel, she half-jogged to the door and managed to open it.  

It was Jorts. And he didn’t look happy. 

“I think it’s about time we got some things sorted,” he said. “The game is about to begin." 

Jadzia let him in. 

“Someone isn’t playing fair.”

It still hurt. When Timor had said that, Jadzia had thought it was her. The host. She had failed her most basic task. She couldn’t keep Dax safe. After everything she’d done, it wasn’t enough. 

Jadzia wasn’t used to seeing Dax, and that hadn’t helped. Seeing that glimpse of herself throughout the scanner test made her feel dizzy. At the time, it hadn’t even felt like her. 

The memories… oh she was used to the memories. They were the tapestry against which she lived her life. Emony’s way of scanning the room for solidity of structure and handholds. Lela’s slow, watching blink that made people feel safe. And Audrid-

She missed Vod. Not the same way she missed Khan, the other symbiont she’d loved. Khan was still out there, somewhere. Vod was gone. 

In some ways, that made it easier. She wasn’t forbidden from his memory the same way she was forbidden from Neema’s. He was gone. There was no risk of reassociation, no matter how badly she ached for it. 

But more than anything, Dax missed Jayvin. Not just Vod and their way of bumping up against ideas that they never quite grasped until someone else completed the link. She missed Jayvin, his sideways smile and the way he had cradled their children. Losing a host didn’t mean losing everything, but it meant losing more than she could bear. 

Jadzia had nearly lost herself. She’d only been Dax for five years. That was a blink. Barely even half a moment. But it wasn’t that. Her memories would live on, and so would Dax, but-

She had come so close. Benjamin had told her that they were preparing another host. 

Joining was losing something as much as it was gaining something. Dax would have gained a new life, and Jadzia would have lingered in collective memory, but here, this would be gone. Her long, clever fingers. The exact pattern of her spots. The way she couldn’t help but grin and the way that smile felt against her teeth. 

Jadzia was Jadzia. She was Dax, but she was more than that. 

She leaned forward on the biobed, pressing her palms against her eyes. Maybe it would make more sense in the darkness. Half the Trill population could be joined. She had nearly died. Dax had nearly lost out on two full lives — Joran’s, and the rest of hers. 

Jadzia wanted a raktijino. She could about boil it down to that. 

Walking was easy, even though it felt like it shouldn’t have been. Dax was just the littlest bit out of sync with Jadzia, but Julian had assured her that any effects would be gone by tomorrow. She trusted him. He was too anxious about double checking his Trill biology for her to think any different. She’d have to spend some time calming him down once they were back on the Defiant. Once it was up and working again, anyway. O’Brien hadn’t been specific, besides all the swearing, but something had been misaligned in the plasma injectors and it had already delayed their transport off the planet by a full day. 

A day was far more time than she was interested in spending on Trill. If they had been skiing, maybe she would have felt differently but no, she was still technically under observation at the Commission. If the order to rest had come from anyone but Benjamin, she would have ignored it. After yesterday, the Commission could eat her gagh.

They were the ones who weren’t playing fair. It had never been Jadzia.  

The replicator was a farther walk than Dax remembered — honestly why did they keep changing up the layout of the Commission when pretty much everyone there had been there for hundreds of years — but she finally found one in the next wing over. 

“Raktijino,” she told the replicator. “Hot. Large. No cream, but lots of sugar.”

It beeped at her, like it was thinking about how wise that would be, but eventually coughed up the goods in a shower of golden rays. Jadzia saluted it, and closed her eyes as she drank. 

That was exactly what she needed. Something nice and calm and-

“Hey,” some shouted from over Jadzia’s shoulder. “Fuck you guys! I am not going-“

Dax was moving before she had registered it, half her raktijino spilling down the front of her gown. Running was easier than walking, or so it seemed until she rounded the corner and careened into a wall.  

Neema Cyl, older than any joined Trill Jadzia had ever seen, was struggling against two figures in Symbiosis Commission guards. It was sickeningly familiar, now that she had Joran woven back into Dax’s memories. 

Cyl saw her before the guards did. Her eyes widened, the same clear grey as Audrid’s had been. “Mom?”

Well. That answered Jadzia’s question about if Cyl had kept up with Dax’s hosts. Dax hadn’t had the heart to look up Cyl. She never had the heart to look up her children when she knew they were nearing the end of their lifespans. If she didn’t know, they weren’t really gone. 

But Neema wasn’t gone. She was here. Now.  

Unlike everything else that had been happening to her in the past twenty four hours, Dax knew exactly what to do in this situation.  

Her mug of raktijino, tragically still half-full, hit the first guard in the head. He stumbled, utterly baffled, and let go of Cyl’s arm. That was opportunity enough for Neema to deliver a sequence of punches and kicks that left Jadzia shocked. She didn’t know that people could still move that fast when they were that old. 

That was odd. Had she ever been that old?

Then Neema was bolting, grabbing Dax's hand on the way by. Jadzia followed. 

A maze of hallways later, they ended up in an empty office. Neema collapsed onto the desktop, sending a stack of PADDs clattering to the floor. She looked utterly out of breath, and Dax didn’t feel much better. It wasn’t the running. It was her.  

“Neema,” Dax said, wondering. Before she could think better of it, her hands were on Cyl’s shoulders, smoothing out the snarled muscles just like she’d done when Neema was tiny and still fighting Rugalan fever. “Dearest.”

Neema leant into her touch. Somewhere inside Dax’s chest, maybe inside Dax itself, a knot loosened. “Dax. I’m glad its you.” 

Jadzia stole a glance at the door. It was closed, but that didn’t mean anything. In this area of the Commission, there weren’t locks on the office doors. On one hand, it meant the search wasn’t likely to start here because it was a terrible place to hide. On the other hand, if the guards wanted to open that door, there was nothing that was going to stop them.  

She didn’t like feeling trapped. She especially didn’t like feeling trapped here. Joran writhed in her, ready to tear, shred, maul.

Jadzia leant in, putting the door out of her mind, and rested her chin on top of Neema’s head. Her daughter was frail underneath her, but Dax could feel the tension taught under her skin. “Baby,” she said, quiet, “what’s going on?”

Neema half-laughed, her breath warm against Jadzia’s chest. “Isn’t that something you should have asked before you threw your coffee at that guard and ran off with me? I thought you were into long term contingencies."

Jadzia closed her eyes. Audrid had been, hadn’t she? It hadn’t always overridden Dax’s persistent drive for more, but it had been enough to give the appearance of restraint. “I’ve changed.” 

Her daughter sighed, sagging under her hands. “I know."

Jadzia pulled back, searching Neema’s face. “What’s going on, though? I still know you, and what you sound like when you’re avoiding a question.”

Neema’s mouth twisted. “Of course. Dax to the rescue.”

Dax frowned at her. She hadn’t known that this face could pull off an effective disapproving parent look, but it felt right. “Neema Cyl. I’m not in the mood for side tracks today. It’s been long even before I had to throw away that damn raktijino. What’s happening?”

Cyl’s scowl almost matched Dax’s. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but the Symbiosis Commission takes a… special interest in the older joined.” She shifted against the desk, and Dax could practically hear her joints creaking. "The health checks ramp up. All my friends have been falling off the radar in recent years. I know that we can live past a hundred and thirty if we’re determined, but all my joined friends died before getting much past a hundred.”

That was how old Curzon had been. If not for that stroke, Dax would have been able to keep that old man going for another age, it had felt like. Dax felt sick. “Shit.” 

“See, you’ve always been quick on the uptake. It’s the scientist in you.”

“Pot, kettle,” Jadzia told her. It was an automatic response more than anything. Trill. Curzon had come from mentoring another student on Trill. The Commission had demanded it. And every time Dax had come back, there had been something… off. They weren’t as friendly to Curzon as they had been when he was younger. 

QI'yaH. 

Cyl’s eyes were sad. They hadn’t always been that way, Dax knew that, but the emotion lived there now with well-worn familiarity. “Yeah.”

Dax considered cursing again, but that would be a waste of breath. “I’m guessing you’ve been spending a lot of time off-planet lately.”

A nod. 

“And that you weren’t particularly agreeable about one more checkup.”

“Got it in one.”

Jadzia’s hand went to Dax. Even though she knew the dermal regenerator restored skin to the same condition it had been before any damage, she could swear that the incision still ached. “Neema,” she said, desperate. She didn’t know what she was asking, but she wanted an answer more than she wanted air to breathe. 

When Neema Cyl, her daughter and her old friend, looked at her, Dax knew that she was being seen. It was different than how Benjamin saw her, or Julian or practically anyone else. “I say we run,” Dax’s daughter told her. “And that we don’t come back.” 

Jadzia’s hand fisted against her hospital gown, still warm and sticky from the spilled raktijino. Inside her, Dax hummed with faint electricity.

“Yeah,” Jadzia said. “I’m good with that.”

Jorts had told Jadzia to be at the Mak’relle Dur at half past midnight, but Dax wasn’t going to wait that long. The club opened at twenty-two-hundred. If Jorts had expected Dax to stay home waiting, he hadn’t learned a thing over the past centuries.

Besides, it was always a good idea to keep an eye out. A bar just on this side of seedy wasn’t exactly a place that the Symbiosis Commission kept eyes on, but who knew what they were up to these days. 

Audrid would have known. Audrid, with her high level security codes and her position at the head of the Symbiosis Commission. Had she known what they were doing to the joined? Or was the whole cloak-and-dagger adventure a more recent development? Jadzia knew that Dax’s trouble making had been behind more than one regulation at the Commission. This time, she really hoped Dax hadn’t been behind the change. Audrid had only hosted Dax for a little over thirty years, and it had been eighty seven years since she died. That was long enough for things to change in her absence. 

Or it would have been, on anywhere but Trill. 

QI'yaH.

Had Curzon known? His rejection of fifty-seven Trill initiates would certainly make more sense if he knew. Or it could have just been Curzon’s personality. He was harsher than most of the other Daxes had been, especially towards the end. Jadzia felt guilty for that, some days. It couldn’t have been pleasant for anyone around him, especially poor Ben.

But none of them were here now. Jadzia was Dax, and that meant only she mattered. What was she going to do?

Jadzia headed to the Mak’relle Dur a little over an hour after it opened. Already, it was drowning in people. It certainly wasn’t for the quality of food, but it may have been for the atmosphere. Most places that served alcohol or even synthehol these days were… stark. Clean. Pristine. It was more difficult to get smashed when everything around seemed to be judging. If Jadzia was feeling less charitable, she chalked the crowd up to the Mak’relle Dur’s reputation for attracting the joined crowd. The fascination for symbionts had never left the public, not since the very first day a host had passed on but left their memories behind. Immortality and drink together were the best and worst kind of lure.

Jadzia set herself in the same booth she always did, far enough into the corner she had a good view of the back and front doors, but close enough to the bar that she looked like a lush. The seat was tacky and the whole booth stank of badly-mixed Black Hole. It shouldn’t have made her fondly remember Deep Space Nine, but it did. It reminded her of  Quark, of his awful leering smile and terrible banter and excellent cocktails. He would never have let his bar get into this state of disrepair, not unless it was to settle a sizeable debt. Out in space, people worried enough about the cleanliness of their enclosed spaces that it was more profitable to hire people to keep the tables wiped and seats free of spilled drink.

Here and now, Jadzia did a casual sweep of the bar. Technically, without a tricorder there was no way to tell who was joined and who wasn’t. Once they symbionts were out of the communal pools in Mak’ala, any and all electrical communication was deadened by their hosts. Technically, Dax should have been no better than anyone else at telling who was joined but that didn’t matter. She still knew. It was in the body language, the eyes, the breath. Were they familiar with the environment? Did they bump into the bar, which fifty years ago had been a meter closer to the wall? When they danced, was in time to this music, or a ballad that was long-forgotten to most? 

Nobody on the dance floor, at least, seemed to be older than their age. The people here tonight were achingly young in the way they brushed up against each other, brash and wild and already forgetting the moment they were living in. The only people who weren’t were hovering near the edges of the crowd, unwilling to get in the middle of all that dancing nonsense. A few older Trill spoke quietly at the edge of the bar, some kind of student had their nose stuck into a book with admirable determination and-

Jadzia caught eyes with someone who was definitely not joined — Kira.

Before Jadzia could call to her, Kira had vanished into the crowd. She was shorter than most of the Trill around here, and the crowd swallowed her easy as a breath. That was the downside of a place like this. Easy to disappear meant everyone could take advantage of that. But fine. Kira could be like that if she wanted to.

Instead of glaring at the place where Kira had vanished, Jadzia turned in her seat to face the bar properly. In the time she had been distracted, another woman had appeared, leaning over a bowl of pretzels like they were the most fascinating thing on the planet. She was a little shorter than Trill tended to be, but her spots were close-packed enough they almost looked like a solid line down her neck. She wasn’t watching Jadzia directly, but Jadzia knew the setup of mirrors and glass in here and it only took her a second to spot the woman’s reflection. She was watching Jadzia with symbiont eyes. So, so old. Her back was straight like she’d been bound that way. Dax was young enough that none of their previous hosts had experienced that, but posture-binding had once been Trill custom.

Before Jadzia could see much more of her, someone slipped out of the crowd and blocked her line of sight. Kira stared down at Jadzia’s booth, one hand extended. The thin lines of scars on her face weren’t visible with her back to the lights, her edges limned green and blue. “Would you like to dance?”

Ordinarily, that would have been an immediate yes, but Jadzia was busy. She smiled anyway, mostly real. If it had been any other day she would have been more than delighted to take Kira up on her offer. “No. Bit busy tonight, sorry.” 

Kira didn’t move. Somewhere in Jadzia’s tired thoughts, she noticed the tension in Kira’s arm, the thick lines of muscle standing out where her sleeves lay close enough to the skin. Kira didn’t look tired. She didn’t look anything close to that. “I think you’d like to dance.”

It wasn’t a question. Kira’s words were nothing close to the way symbionts spoke, but it was the way a soldier spoke. Dax knew that far too well. The hairs rising on the back of her neck, Dax accepted Kira’s hand and let Kira haul her to her feet. “Whatever you say.”

That didn’t make Kira smile. Now that Jadzia was holding her hand, she could feel the tension, the taut muscles and stress settled all over Kira. She was an explosion, frozen in a single moment. “Come on.”

“I’d ask you to buy me a drink first, but we had that the other night, didn’t we?” Jadzia kept her voice light. They were far enough away from the bar now she couldn’t see the joined Trill considering the pretzels, but Jadzia knew she was easier to pick out of a crowd than most. Kira was leading her deeper and deeper into the crowd, and if there hadn’t been so much strain visible in her, Jadzia would have thought they were heading somewhere most first dances didn’t. “I can’t say I see worrying about dancing etiquette as a huge concern of yours, though.”

Evidently satisfied with their position in the club for now, Kira stepped closer to Jadzia than the beat of the music, and Dax’s breath vanished halfway to her lungs. Even here, in the middle of a nightclub who’s main purpose was to lure people into the most intimate kind of contact, people didn’t dance like that. No matter how crowded it got. The space around a person was theirs, the same way their homes were. You just didn’t violate that.

“If you’re trying to be subtle, you’re failing,” Kira murmured in her ear. Her hands ran up Jadzia’s arms and then back down, finally settling above her elbows. Kira was moving against the music, not with it, but if Jadzia wasn’t pressed so close she wouldn’t have noticed. “I could see you on the lookout, and I wasn’t even trying to look.” 

Dax could sympathize with trying not to look. There was a lot she failed at not doing these days. Like stepping away from Kira, or even trying to put a modicum of distance between them. Music pounded in her chest louder than her racing heartbeat. “I was being perfectly subtle enough for this situation, I’ll have you know.”

“That’s what they always say,” Kira muttered, half-lost in the general din. Someone crashed into Jadzia from behind and sent her off balance, but Kira took her weight easily, not seeming to notice. “I’d say you have less than ten minutes before something happens.”

Jadzia swayed with Kira against the music. It was nice to be so close to someone, really, when she thought about it. Neema was fragile, and she never really wanted to go places. Benjamin had always been her friend to throw an arm around and go on adventures with, but it hadn’t been the same since Curzon. And it certainly hadn’t been the same since she’d left Starfleet in disgrace, still begging for the records proving Trill’s hypocrisy even as she was shown the door. It was hard to hug your best friend when you couldn’t even send him a holocomm for fear of the Trill subspace network tracing her signal.  

This was different, anyway. There was a warmth in her from Kira’s touch that wasn’t simply about the skin contact, or the body heat of the young things dancing their night away around them. “Thank you,” she said, instead of anything about the Federation or war or watching or how desperately she wanted to pull Kira even closer.  

Kira made a frustrated noise. “Don’t-” Kira broke the word off like it had personally offended her. She sounded livid that she cared at all. Jadzia’s fingers ached in Kira’s sudden iron grip. “I’m tired enough of all the disasters on my world. Get out of here and let me put one more victory against the Federation on my list.”

“Hard to get victory against yourself,” Jadzia said mildly.

Kira laughed. It might have been a snarl. “Why should I care about the rest of the Federation? If they had put it to vote, I would have voted to stay our own.”

Dax understood that. Lela had been ready to reach out for anyone waiting in the stars, but they hadn’t been kind in return. Emony, even in her pursuit of Olympic gold, had her reservations about Trill’s place in the Federation. Dax had been on Trill long before Trill had been a Federation world, and Jadzia didn’t know if they were better off this way. Trill had gained benefits, yes, but the Federation now harboured a world with enough secrets to turn a whole quadrant dark.  

Kira was staring at her, Jadzia realized. Not up at her, not really, though Jadzia towered over Kira in the slightly impractical boots she had chosen for the club. She was looking at Dax like she was seeing all of her. Kira looked like she understood Dax’s silence more than she understood her words. It prickled.  

A second later, something more danced up Dax’s spine. She was reacting before she was aware of it, shoving Kira back through the crowd, ignoring the drunken complaints around them. Kira pressed back against her, but as soon as Jadzia hissed “Phaser,” Kira gave up any pretence of blending into the crowd.

Somewhere, the phaser fired, and the crowd erupted. Dax didn’t know how she had known a moment early but it was a thousand things and none. Too many wars. Too much death. All that and a helping of paranoia but she had never been more grateful. Kira’s hand was in hers, and one of them was pulling the other along. Kira’s free hand held a Starfleet standard-issue phaser, which she shouldn’t have had access to. Jadzia wasn’t complaining. She felt naked without any weapons. Not even a lousy costume bat’leth, no knife, nothing. One unfortunate move and Dax would be back at the Commission in a jar and that would be the opposite of good.

Crammed half-under a booth, they managed to stay out of the way of the panicking crowd. Someone was yelling commands in Trill and there was too much going on in the bar for the cheap Universal Translator to handle. Jadzia relayed what she could understand to Kira.

In truth, Dax understood too much. What words she could catch were about tracking and imprisonment and the Commission. Whatever Jorts had been doing to keep their little cadre under the radar had failed tonight, and badly. Dax felt grateful beyond comprehension that Neema had stayed home in their little house and would likely sleep through the whole thing.

Someone would get out. Someone would get the news to her before the Commission could track down the other locations the joined were hiding at. Somebody would-

The shuttle.

Dax was the one person the Commission knew was dangerous. She had to get out of here. Off this planet, out of this sector of space. If they had been ready to take Cyl into custody with Benjamin’s Federation crew wandering about, they wouldn’t be gentle on their own planet.

“Any way out?” Kira jostled Jadzia’s arm again. This had to be the second time she had asked, the first buried in the screaming or in Jadzia’s tumbling thoughts. “Dax.  

“The basement, the door behind the bar.”

“That does not sound-”

“There’s a shuttle. We’ve been thinking about a mission to-”

“Any security?”

“I know there’s a life-sign scrambler somewhere-”

“Enough talking now move.”

Kira pried herself out from under the table before Jadzia could cram another word in edgewise. The crowd hadn’t calmed yet despite the Commission guard’s efforts. It was the best thing Jadzia could have hoped for. They made it over the bar without getting shot and clattered through the back room, bottles crashing to the floor behind them. The whole room smelled of alcohol and awful decisions and Jadzia felt frantic with familiarity. The sounds of fighting were loud above her, the Symbiosis Commission guards firing phasers at the crowd, the crowd expressing their displeasure at the drastic measures, and the creak of the building giving way around them as people found exits where walls had once been.

It was good luck that she had been by the right side of the bar. 

No. Not luck. Kira. Kira had been the one to move them across the dance floor with her distracting smile and her steel-cast arms. Kira had been the one carrying a phaser. Kira had been the one to get them to the exit Jadzia had pointed out — she was the one who had been prepared in the first place. Jadzia was always going to be further out from war than Kira was, no matter what Dax had to say on the matter.  

“Are you going to wait for the fire or the military to catch up, or did you want to get this ship moving?” Kira snapped, and Jadzia lurched back into motion. She grabbed all the go-bags she could remember from the shelves and tossed them through the open shuttle door. Where was the damn scrambler? If they had a chance of getting off the planet without Jadzia catapulting herself back into the waiting arms of the Symbiosis Commission or the Federation authorities, she needed to find that piece of Qu'vatlh now.  

Fire was crackling somewhere nearby, the alcohol-fuelled smoke choking the air. Kira shouted something from the shuttle, but it was starting the start-up cycle, and her words were drowned in the buzz. Jadzia yelled something like Coming and grabbed what she hoped to hell was the scrambler.

The shuttle door slammed behind her and the shuttle burst into flight. Jadzia went stumbling back into the go bags, the edges of her tools bruising her shins.

Kira didn’t bother looking back, intent on the pilot’s console. “You got it?”  

“I think so!”

“You only think so?”

“We’re in a hurry!”

To Dax’s great relief, the package she had grabbed was the personal life-sign scrambler. To less relief, it was more battered than she’d assumed. It would hold for this first burst but getting it working again after-

That was a problem for later. Jadzia was going to have a lot of problems later, but that wasn’t worth spending time on now. She knelt next to the scrambler and started connecting wires. It would need babying, that was for sure. The ship lurched again. Jadzia swore. Definitely would need babying. Without taking her hands off the technology that was about to save her life, Jadzia said in her calmest possible voice, “If you approach from a vector near the Tenaran Ice Cliffs, the planetary defence is more likely to deal with you easily, it’s a tourist heavy area.” 

Kira was less calm. Given she was the one flying away from a burning building, that seemed fair. “How am I supposed to know where your Prophet’s damned tourist spots are?”

Jadzia connected the last wire, realized she’d have to have to hold it in place manually, and got halfway through swearing before she realized Kira had asked a question. “It’s in the navcom-”

“I know.” The be quiet was loud.

Jadzia settled back against the side of the shuttle, the scrambler humming against her side. It was warm in the way tame mreker would be, a little ball of energy curled against her. It sparked against her fingers as she held the parts in place, but not much. She’d had worse. They both had. Illegal technology and illegal beings understood each other well.

Maybe that was why Kira was flying well. Jadzia watched her fly the stolen shuttle like she’d done so a thousand times before and wondered, not for the first time, why Kira was so far from her home.

“Kira Nerys to Trill Atmosphere Guard,” Kira said into the comms. She sounded remarkably calm for the fact one of her hands was still resting on her phaser like she’d be able to defend herself with it all the way across the vacuum of space. “This is the…” She cast a look at Jadzia, who motioned to where the name of the ship had been stencilled, badly, onto the controls, “…Manev’s Quest, calling in for permission to exit atmo.”

The line crackled in dead space for a moment until the guard on the other end remembered they had a job. “Reason for departure?”

Kira laughed. It was humourless. “It’s time for me to move on. Figured I’d check out Risa next. That’s the vacation planet this side of the quadrant, right?”

“Right you are. Glad you stopped by our little planet first.” The guard on the other side of the end chuckled at some personal joke. “Funny old ship you got there, eh? I ain’t seen one of those Horizon class ships since that race on Caldik a half dozen years ago." 

Jadzia watched as Kira relinquished her grip on her phaser, finger by finger. It looked painful. “Someone didn’t want to bother storing it and I wanted off planet, you understand how the things go.” 

Another half-laugh sputtered through the Manev’s speakers. “Ah, yeah. How’s it handle then?”

Kira let her hand fall into her lap. She still wasn’t smiling, though her voice did its best to be convincing. “Easy enough.”

The guard on the other end of the connection hummed to himself, sounding half-asleep now. “Well, have a good trip then! If you see Arandis, tell her I said-” 

Kira clicked off the system before he could ramble on any further, which was a relief. It was never a good idea to listen to what people wanted to say about Risa. Half the time, it was boring, and the other half it involved too much detail for even Dax to bear. After all the time Curzon had spent there, she didn’t much feel like going back anytime soon. Well. Unless she had someone to go with.

“Race?” Kira asked finally. She looked more exhausted than the conversation had warranted, slumped back in the cradle of the chair and more than dwarfed by the headrest. “What kind of ship is this?” 

They still weren’t far enough from Trill that Jadzia felt comfortable leaving the life sign scrambler to its own devices, but they were past the real danger. Each inch of relaxation left her feeling more and more exhausted, like her body had run a marathon without her noticing. “Horizon class ships are an old Trill specialty. We used to use them for long-haul scout missions, but once the Federation gave us more maps than we knew what to do with, we decided racing them was a better idea.” She patted the bulkhead of the ship beside her. “This old girl will take us where we need to go and she won’t complain much about it.” 

“Well, that’ll be a nice change,” Kira grumbled. She keyed the autopilot for Risa and they were off, the shuddering of atmosphere travel falling away for the steadiness of space.

A few hours into space, and Jadzia had finally sorted all of the supplies into their new homes. Jadzia had hoped the ship would be in better repair, but it didn’t matter in the long run. She would be able to fix the life sign scrambler long before they’d hit Bajoran space. Getting the replicator hooked into the power systems only took a few more minutes. Jadzia knew she was forgetting something in this whole disaster, but at least they’d physically make it to Bajor. Mentally… well, that was a whole other can of worms. 

Kira sighed at the console, her head drooping almost to rest on her clasped hands. “Is the autopilot on this thing any good, or are we going to have to switch off?”

Jadzia swirled the dregs of her raktijino in her mug. She was sprawled out in the back next to the technology that had now fallen apart without her touch, leaving the whole cockpit between herself and Kira. Her skin still buzzed with the lingering closeness of the dance. “Autopilot will be enough. Once we’re out of sensor range it’ll be a straight shot to Bajor, and there isn’t much tragic in between.” 

Kira’s head jerked up. “Bajor?”

Jadzia only blinked at her. She was too tired to have this conversation. She was too tired to be this close to someone staring at her like that. “Yes? I have… business on Deep Space Nine. An old friend of mine-” 

Kira looked cornered. If they hadn’t been in space, Jadzia would have bet she’d have ben storming out the nearest exit in a way that definitely wouldn’t have resembled fleeing. “You didn’t say we’d be going to Bajor.”

“Didn’t have much of a chance, did I?” Dax frowned at Kira over the top of her raktijino. The dregs weren’t sweet. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to go back.”

“I told you.” Kira slammed her mug down, dangerously close to the edge of the console. Her hands were trembling ever so slightly. “The provisional government doesn’t appreciate having me around. The Resistance caused a lot of damage back when Bajor was occupied. They’re half afraid we’ll turn around and do the same to them.”

“Would you?” 

Kira scoffed. “Of course not. It’s our Bajor, not mine. I don’t agree with their policies but-” Kira ducked her head again. Had she been human, it would have looked like prayer. Here, it looked like rage. “The Resistance was my family and here we are again apart. Prophets let us learn our lesson before the third time.” Kira’s breath shuddered. She waited a long moment, glaring at her hands until they stoped shaking. “With the Federation coming in, they didn’t want a militia. And they didn’t want terrorists in their pristine little guard force. The new Kai has the ear of the First Minister and- why am I telling you this?”

“Who else are you going to tell?” Jadzia gestured around the ship, empty but for the two of them. Neema’s absence ached. “And it doesn’t sound like you talked to anyone before you left Bajor. Bottling things up never turns out well.” She glanced down, like she could see the outline of Dax through the curve of her belly. “I would know. I nearly died a few months back because my home planet didn’t think I deserved to know my own past.” 

Kira raised her head. She was still watching Jadzia with the same look she had given her back in the Mak’relle Dur, like she was seeing Dax and Jadzia and all the things that came along with that combination. Kira fumbled for her mug of raktijino and raised it to toast Jadzia across the suddenly hollow space between them. “To the Federation.”

Jadzia lifted her empty mug in reply. “To your Bajor.”

Kira didn’t roll her eyes, but it was close. She leaned back into the cradle of the pilot’s chair. With her drink in her hand and her cheeks flushed, they could have been back in the Mak’relle Dur all over again, but for the stars streaking by behind her. The rage was shrinking away from her. “Speaking of. How are we going to get here in this?” Kira nodded to the console in front of her. “I haven’t seen a ship this small with deep space capacity before.”

Jadzia shrugged. “It was a scout ship and then a racer. Robust warp engines, conn connections in the sleeping quarters, all that.” Dax grinned the wide, carefree Tobin smile she still missed. “Back in the days when we still did our own engineering, this was the best of it.”

Kira’s hands were steady against the controls now. “Our ships sailed on starlight, back when we had our own ships.” 

Dax remembered Benjamin saying something of that. He’d said it entirely differently — with a glow of yearning and discovery. Kira said it like it hurt all the way down. Jadzia set her raktijino mug in the replicator and watched it dissolve into gold. “That sounds lovely.”

“Doesn’t it,” Kira told the stars. “Doesn’t it just.”

Jadzia collected the empty raktijino mug from Kira, careful not to brush fingers. “Are you going to head in soon then? I figure we may as well keep the usual 26-hour schedule so we won’t be space-lagged when we hit Deep Space Nine.” 

Kira’s nose wrinkled at the reminder of Bajor. “Right.” She heaved herself to her feet with all the grace of a newborn mreker. “Lead the way, then. A soft bed does sound appealing.”

It took until Jadzia opened the door to the sleeping quarters for her to remember what she’d forgotten. Until she opened the door to the one, single, sleeping quarter. A Horizon-class ship typically only had a single pilot. Tobin had never wanted one of these ships for that reason — leaving Nilani behind for more than a day had always been out of the question.

Kira brushed past Jadzia and into the bedroom, stripping off her jacket as she did.  In a matter of moments she’d curled herself into the bed, her face to the wall and back to Jadzia.

It took a moment of staring dumbly, her side burning from the contact, before Kira sighed and addressed the wall: “What are you waiting for?” 

“Sorry?”

Kira rolled over. Her hair was mussed already by the pillow, half-stuck to her forehead and the rest sticking upright. Jadzia wanted to curl around her and never leave. Jadzia wanted to run before Kira realized that. Kira didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t run quite as warm as you, so I’d appreciate the company.”

Jadzia tried to say something about cultural differences, but her tongue had somehow glued itself to her teeth. She wished it was as easy for her as it seemed to be for Kira. It had been, for a while, back on the station. But that was trust more than it was anything else. It was easy to drape herself over Benjamin or to laugh herself into breathless hugs over poor Julian when he was turned down by another of his conquests. After months on Trill and with the fear for Dax and Cyl and Neema still humming under her skin, touch and space and everything seemed like a foreign thing. It was like Lela in her early days, facing down aliens with the rest of the Council ready to eat her alive if she misstepped.

Dax had forgotten how different Trill was. It wasn’t always a bad thing, and it was Jadzia’s home — their home — in more ways than one, but she was different when she was steeped in her home planet. And she was cold. Kira had invited the touch. It was alright to want things when you were wanted back, no matter what Lela whispered about impropriety and Tobin muttered in his anxious fits. At least for a little while. 

“Of course,” Jadzia told her.

This time, Kira’s touch didn’t burn. Swaddled in the covers, it just felt like touch. Gentle pressure, slight warmth, the ever-present shifting with slow breaths. It felt like the kind of home Jadzia wanted, not the kind she had become used to in the past few months. 

Dax closed her eyes.

Neema was still grumbling about being at the bar even as she clutched a mug of something that definitely didn’t just contain raktijino. She didn’t like being out of their home, where Jadzia had rigged up enough shields and sensor scramblers that the house barely even physically existed. The tension seeping from her was enough to set the whole room on edge. On the other end of the room, Jorts was pacing without meaning to, ducking back and forth between the employee breakroom and the main bar like he’d find something different if he just moved between the spaces enough times. 

Almost all of the joined Trill Jadzia knew were here. The only one missing that she knew lived in the area was Kahn, and it would have been to much to expect the latest host to be anywhere near Dax. Still, it wasn’t a lot of them. It was just her, Jorts, Neema, and Delara Rue.

Jadzia didn’t know Jorts’ hosts name. She had never asked. Asking would have meant asking how he had come to become Jorts, and if Jadzia didn’t know, she couldn’t give him up. Though the Commission grudgingly accepted Jorts’ existence through some combination of unspoken threats and lost records, one misstep and Trill would have one less symbiont.

Anything to protect the symbionts as a race. Even if that meant protecting them from one of their own who was just a little too radical.

Jorts finally settled at the bar, waving off Delara’s offered bottle. “It’s that simple then? Your friend would have kept all the records?”

Jadzia was half-offended on Benjamin’s behalf. Though she doubted he would go after the entire Trill government structure himself, especially in his position on Deep Space and as the Emissary of Bajor, he wouldn’t destroy the information. He still thought there was hope for Dax, Jadzia was sure. Hope for her to come back: if not to Trill and the Federation, back to him, and Deep Space Nine, and home. 

Dax cleared her throat. She still hadn’t touched the drink Rue had laid in front of her when she came in. “The records will be there.”

Delara Rue poured Neema another drink. Neema accepted it without comment. They were both staring at Dax. Jadzia pretended she didn’t notice. The words poured out of her the way they always did around her kind, leaping to be explained and understood. “Curzon told him before symbionts were officially revealed to the Federation, and he never spoke a word of it to anyone else.” Which said more about Curzon than it did about Benjamin, honestly, but Dax still respected the efforts Benjamin had gone to to keep Curzon’s secret. It couldn’t have been easy, not with Jennifer always so wrapped up in him. “And he knows Dax. Really knows us. He knows I’ll be going back for the information.”

Neema snorted. For once, she wasn’t staring at Dax, trying to pry the story out of her. Jadzia felt hollow without the pressing warmth of Cyl’s interest. “Of course he kept that information, Dax. He’s Starfleet. He thinks he knows best.”

“I’m Starfleet,” Jadzia snapped. She shoved her stool back from the bar with a wrenching screech. “What are you saying about me?”

“That you like structure too much?” Neema waved a hand at her, dismissive, and all the more hurtful for it. “That for all your rebellion you’re just looking to make a new status quo?”

“You think I’m not in this for the right- I snatched you from the jaws of the Commission myself! You wanted to be left there if I-”

Rue leant towards Jadzia across the top of the half-bar, her hand extended as though she could hold Dax back. “Whoa, whoa. I think that’s enough. We have things we need to discuss.” She laid her hand flat against the top of the bar, scowled at Cyl and Dax in turn. “You can always try and beat each other up in the alley after. I hear it’s a popular activity in these parts.”

Neema just waved her hand again. Joran wanted to throttle her. Jadzia wanted to break down in tears. Dax seethed but sat, stiffly, the feet of the stool clacking loudly on the floor. “Fine.” 

Jorts coughed, indelicately. “Well. If the information is on Deep Space Nine-” 

“-it is.”

“-then the plans should be on track.” He inclined his head towards the door behind the bar. Behind, Jadzia knew, was a break room full of the bar’s stock of backup alcohol and stairs to a basement full of dust and nonsense. “We’ve managed to find a little something that should help you on your journey.” At Rue’s glare, he corrected, “Our journey.” 

Jadzia managed to forget that Neema was there, mostly, as they discussed how best to outfit the Horizon-class ship that Jorts had managed to get his hands on. It was easy to wrap herself up in the jargon and the banter and figuring out how to make the best of this awful situation. It wasn’t until they were bundling up to head back to their respective homes that Dax remembered that Cyl lived with her.

Jadzia waited at the door to the Mak’relle Dur and pretended not to look like she was patronizing Neema by doing so. Jorts yelled the details of their next meeting at them from somewhere in the guts of the bar, which Jadzia cheerfully ignored. She’d be back when she wanted and Jorts should know that already.

A few steps outside the door, Neema stopped again to fuss about non-existent grime on her clothes. Dax stopped, but didn’t turn to face Neema. She wasn’t sure she wanted to right now.

“Dax.” Cyl’s voice was soft. A moment and no response, and she called again, something close to desperate. “Dax.”

Jadzia closed her eyes. Breathed in. Breathed out. She met Neema’s eyes as she turned, and was surprised to see them brimming with tears. Every part of her that had been a parent tore her chest open right there on the corner of the street. “Dearest,” Dax said hopelessly. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re not my mom, not really,” Neema told her. She fumbled for Jadzia’s hands, and Jadzia let her. Her own eyes were starting to burn with the start of tears. Neema was trembling now, just enough to notice. “But I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped like that.”

“Is it too cliche to say that you had a point?” Jadzia stared at their clasped hands. She looked, really looked. Neema’s hands were old in hers, fragile. The joints were formed differently, and Jadzia pushed the ghostly image of Audrid’s hands with those same wide palms and square fingers. “I… I just want to be able to live. To know that we have a purpose as a whole, you know?”

“To feel safe,” Neema finished.

Jadzia shook her head. “To feel sheltered. By someone. By a lot of people. To know that someone would.”

Neema squeezed Jadzia’s hands tight before letting go. She looked steadier now with the words out. “I know,” she said. “It’s all been a little too recent for me to feel like that’s possible.” 

Jadzia wanted to argue. About her, about Rue and Jorts and the whole rest of the underground community that had provided parts and labour and love for keeping Neema safe. It wasn’t just for Cyl — it was for Neema too. For her firecracker wit and her scientific studies and the way she was looking just past Dax’s shoulder instead of at her because this was so hard to say.

“I’m not your mother,” Dax agreed, finally. She stepped aside to let Neema walk closer to the streetlights, Jadzia between the dark street and her. “But I care. I swear I won’t let things happen to you if I can help it. And that’s not- I’d give more, if I had it.”

Neema laughed. One of them grabbed the others hand, and they swung it between them as they started their way home.

Jadzia drifted in and out of sleep often that night. It was easy to tell dreaming from waking these days, in a way it hadn’t been when she was a child and plagued by night terrors. Part of every initiate’s training was honing their perceptions of their selves, their senses, the parts that were them, no matter what time of day or night it happened to be.

Waking up was always comforting, now. She woke three times during the night, each for only a few minutes. The first time, Kira was gone. A faint light shone through the rippled, damaged edge of the cabin door. She was in the hall, then. Probably getting a midnight snack or just having a walk. Nights were hard, no matter how much you had studied, and Dax got the feeling Kira hadn’t had much chance to study.

The second time she awoke, Kira was there. One hand was half-folded next to her cheek, and she had well and truly burrowed into the pillow and blankets. She lost the thread of her existence for a half-second, Torias and Audrid and all the others reaching for their love’s sweat-curled hair in the quiet hours of the night.

Jadzia remembered herself. But she let herself lay there, awake, for a moment more before sleeping. 

It was quiet. She had missed that. 

The third time Jadzia woke up, Kira was gone again. This time, the door had been left open. Dax could hear the replicator whirring, hear the navigation system puttering and beeping away as it kept them on track.

Something about being aboard a spacecraft lulled Dax to sleep like nothing else. Which was her excuse for not understanding the last night until she was sat up and running hands through the knots in her hair. QI'yaH. Again. She was doing this again.

No matter how much the late nights whispered to her, Kira wasn’t hers to have or to want.

A loud clunk, and Kira poked her head into the bunk area. Kira was smiling sheepishly, her hair still stuck to her forehead in places with the sweat of a sleepless night. She was beautiful. “I’ve got raktijino for you. Probably.” The replicator made some rude noises behind her, and Kira’s smile tipped sideways. Somehow, it was now even happier. “Maybe not. But maybe if you come out and wake up, you can have some later?”

And. Well. What was Jadzia supposed to say to that?

“Could you come look at this?”

Jadzia wanted to groan. She restrained herself. She was at such a delicate stage of repairs on the life sign scrambler and they needed it, they really did. “Yes?”

“Come look,” Kira said again. She was intent on the co-pilot panel, peering at the display with a single-minded intensity. “Dax. Please.”

“Well, if you’re saying please,” Jadzia said, wishing she was kidding, and clambered to her feet. She pretended she couldn’t hear the scrambler making unhappy, abandoned noises behind her. “What seems to be the- oh.”

Kira had leant back, and Jadzia could see it now. Colour, pure and undiluted, sprawled across the console. Her hands were moving before she could think of it, and the nebula sprang up on on the viewscreen. Jadzia was running a thousand calculations — had the nebula been charted yet, what class was it, would it impede their progress, were there habitable systems in it-

“Oh,” Kira repeated, breathless. Jadzia turned her head, meaning to joke about how Kira’s jaw had dropped but then she couldn’t bring herself to poke fun. Kira was staring at the explosion of ionized gases like it held all the joys she’d ever wanted out of life.

Jadzia just sat back on her heels, crouched at the console next to Kira, her work forgotten. “Beautiful,” she said, reverent, and maybe if she had been looking at Kira and not the nebula, well. There wasn’t anybody around to notice.

After the third irritated sigh, Jadzia spun in the chair so she could kick Kira’s leg. “Nerys,” she said, because Kira had told her to quite intensely, “if you hate it that much, stop reading it.”

Kira made an incomprehensible accusatory gesture. “I’ll stop if you stop swearing at your book for being period-inaccurate.”

“I can’t help it! I was there!”

Kira just glared.

There was a moment of silence.

“You know,” Jadzia said.

It turned out that historical Bajoran literature was a lot easier to enjoy than Trill. Jadzia would have to send the author a thank you note over subspace as soon as they were out of this mess.

“You don’t have to,” Jadzia said again. Just to be safe.

Kira yanked at her hair a little harder than was warranted. “Not one more word, Dax.” Kira’s fingers gentled, combing wispy strands away from Jadzia’s face. “I haven’t had the chance to practice my skills since-” 

She lapsed into silence. Though Dax couldn’t see what she was doing, Kira’s fingers were nimble and quick and clearly talented. Dax knew a thousand ways to fill in the end of that sentence, and likely none of them were as awful as the truth. “Well, my hair is a whole new alien creature,” Jadzia said cheerfully. “Nothing else compares.”

Kira hummed dubiously, and there was another sharp tug.

“So, you know how to get these out, right?”

“Well." 

“Kira Nerys.”

A few days out, Dax got a message through to Ben. Some of the older Cardassian systems in the station that O’Brien had given up on uninstalling still worked for carrying simple messages. Now that she was no longer on Trill, she didn’t have to worry about the Commission tracing her signal, which meant Benjamin could be made aware they were on the way.

Well. That Dax was coming. She figured Kira could be a fun surprise.

It was the other message that she hadn’t managed to send, which was slowly eating away at her sanity. If she had been able to pick one message to send, she would have wanted to talk to Neema, not Benjamin. There would have been no way for Cyl to reply, not out here, not with them half on the run from the Federation… But Dax was still Neema Cyl’s mother, whether she liked it or not. If anyone was going to send Neema fussy messages about her safety, it was going to be Jadzia.

If only they’d had longer to prepare. Kira throwing them through the back door and into the ship had been a stroke of luck for getting them out of the place alive and with Dax still in Jadzia but Neema needed the safety far more than Jadzia did. She should have been on this ship, tucked away safe with someone who knew how to protect her. 

“Jadzia?” 

She ignored Kira. One more try. If she could just get the damn relays to connect to-

“Honestly.” 

Kira spun Jadzia’s chair out of the way before throwing herself down in the co-pilot’s seat she’d abandoned only a half hour before. It was late, even for space, though the stars twinkling outside hadn’t taken notice. “You’re trying to send a message to Neema.” A tap, and the console lit up a few menus that Jadzia was now excruciatingly familiar with. “Let me do it.” 

“But-”

Kira didn’t even bother turning to roll her eyes at Dax. “Which of us has more experience with this, again?” She sighed. “Sit back. It’ll take a while but I’ll get a message through.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Yeah. And she’s fine, Dax. You told me that yourself.”

“But-”

“Sit back. Relax. Watch the stars.” This time, Kira turned enough to slide Jadzia a knowing look. “You love them, don't you?” 

Jadzia loved a lot of things, but she didn’t say that. She just looked away before Kira could read anything in her expression.

A day later, when she felt far enough removed from the panic, she wandered back to the cockpit. Kira had taken up a near-permanent spot in the co-pilot’s chair when she wasn’t sleeping, even though the autopilot was more than handling their trip. Jadzia could sympathize with that edge of anxiety — if she couldn’t see things were working, she sometimes doubted they would.

Dax perched on the edge of the console. “How did you know how to do that?”

Kira didn’t look at her. “Sometimes you needed to get messages off-planet. Suppliers, sympathizers, that sort of thing. I think Lupaza was the one who got it right.”

The way Kira said got it right, Jadzia knew there were a lot of people who had gotten it wrong. Dax always tried to remember that progress always came with death, and certainly Torias helped them remember but… Kira had seen that. Up close and personal, not far away in time and memory.

Then Dax looked again. Something wasn’t right. Kira was sitting like she was expecting the shuttle to explode around them, like she knew the worst was coming and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Jadzia slid from the console into the pilot’s chair, not wanting to loom. “Are you alright?”

“How dare they!” Kira burst out. For the first time, Jadzia saw that her hands were fisted, her knuckles white and bloodless. The console blinked the Federation synopsis of the new Bajoran Provisional Government. “I didn’t fight for them.”

Jadzia’s heart sank. “Kira-”

Kira shook her off. “I wanted this all to stop. For Bajor to go back to who we were before. Do you even know our reputation before this Prophet’s damned occupation? We were peacemakers. We were artists.” She sketched a broad curve in the air, creating something only she could see. “I was out there, stopping the Cardassians from tearing our planet apart any more than they already had. And they do this? We handed ourselves over to the next confederacy that looks our way?” Kira’s hand slammed down on the console. It shook hard enough that the text jittered under her touch. “I want to go home, Dax. I want to have one. I want to have a home for once in my miserable life.

“I took up that phaser when I was thirteen because I thought it would be different. The more I learn about the Federation… Dax, your planet is part of the Federation. Have they helped? Have they helped you at all?”

“They’re about to,” Jadzia pointed out. 

Kira ignored that too. Her chest was heaving now, her breaths rasping out like they were all but shredded. “I hate them. I hate this. I worked and I fought and I killed and now? And now?”

“Home never was what I thought it was.” It almost hurt more to say it quietly than it would have been to yell it. Dax wanted it to be that easy. Jadzia wanted to go back to playing in the garden with her sister Ziranne, when this was all simple and made sense. “But you fight for what you have. Nerys, would you have stopped fighting if you knew this is what you would end up with?”

“No!” Kira snapped back immediately. Her hand went to her cheek, feeling the heat and slight scar striation, like she was surprised by her own vehement response. “No,” she said again, more quietly. “The Occupation. It was-”

Jadzia tugged Kira’s hand from her cheek, gently, and folded it in hers. She didn’t have any words that would make it better. Dax didn’t even have any words that would make the whole thing close to understandable. Sometimes, you just felt so empty inside it felt like that black hole could swallow your whole planet and you right along with it. And there were things to help but-

Sometimes, you just had to wait. Wait, until you realized that it couldn’t swallow you up. Because then, you knew that you were still there. And that nothing would ever be enough to eat you up. 

“I wish Audrid had changed things,” Dax told her. “She was head of the Commission for so long. I keep thinking, what did she know? How could she have not known? But I don’t know, and I’m Dax now. So either they did something awful, beyond even Joran, to hide those memories from me or…” she trailed off.

Jadzia didn’t agree with Audrid most of the times. She knew why and how she’d made the choices she had, but looking back Jadzia sometimes felt like she wanted to rip time apart just to take Dax’s past words and actions back. But she knew those words and actions and mistakes and choices. There was nothing in there about the kind of horrifying ending that Neema had faced. Nothing at all.

“What’s done is done,” Dax said finally. Kira’s fingers tightened on hers, and it was the relief she hadn’t known she’d needed. Kira’s pulse was slowing under her fingers. “We can’t change it. We have to think about now. And I know that’s really something of me to say as we head in this ancient old thing for records to reveal an old crime but-”

Kira didn’t laugh with her. “Let it eat, do not let it devour,” she said. Her voice was clear and steady now. “I heard that a lot when I was younger. About anger and… other things. You have to deal with the hands the Prophets deal you, and it’s worth knowing that it isn’t a good one, but if you spend all of your time in pieces about it you will never get anything done.” She let go of Jadzia’s hand, but only so she could place hands on Jadzia’s thighs and lean in, practically nose to nose. “Grief hurts. I know. Use it. Tear them apart. You deserve everything you’ve ever been promised.”

“So do you.”

“I-” Kira let out her breath, tucking in her chin. The shorts ends of her hair tickled against Jadzia’s lips. “I know. I know.”

Before she could stop herself, Jadzia pressed a kiss to the top of Kira’s head, soft enough that she wouldn’t be able to feel it. “I’ll try. If you will?”

Kira shuddered with her sigh. “Beast” she muttered. “Foul creature.” And then they were laughing.

It felt good. 

Kira felt good, giggling under her hands, wrapped up in Dax and not minding at all that Jadzia’s sensibilities insisted they were far, far too close.

Jadzia was ready to jump out the airlock by the time the Bajoran perimeter guard came within hailing range. It was an older model, and both their impulse drive and subspace transceivers left something to be desired. All in all, it was like the situation had created itself to be as nerve-racking for Jadzia as possible.

But Dax had faced worse. At least, that’s what she was trying to remind herself. If Neema could see her now, she’d be laughing her head off at the great Dax, taken down by the potential of a short social interaction. 

Kira was still fussing around in the back, babying the life sign scrambler and trying to look like she didn’t care she was less than a light year from her old home. She flipped a blanket over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow at Dax. “Not as fun as it looks, having to talk to someone you don’t know from a culture you know nothing about.”

“Hey, you aren’t being shocked by the system so I think you have it objectively better than I did-”

“Make sure to tell them-”

“Yes, I heard you the first five times you drilled me. You’re sure they haven’t started sharing databases with the Federation yet? Because if my warrant is in there, I’m blaming you for getting us arrested.”

The pile of blankets in the back laughed. “I thought you heard me the first five times?”

Jadzia had to bite her lip to stop the smile. “Nerys.”

The pile twitched. It couldn’t grin, but it was trying to. “Dax.”

“I assure you, Jadzia is the anxious one.”

“Jadzia.”

“Alright, alright.” Jadzia keyed in the hailing frequency for the approaching Bajoran security vessel. “Hi!” she said brightly. “This is Jadzia Dax, Federation citizen, heading for some leave on Deep Space Nine.”

The first thing that came through the speakers was staticky laughter, and then, “That old wreck?”

Jadzia wanted to protest it, but that would have been lying. She grinned at the Bajoran guard whose image was slowly waving into sight on the screen. “Quark owes me some latinum.”

A snort, and the guard shook her head, her earring swinging. “Well, I’ve heard that before.”

“I’d bet.” Jadzia traced the ship’s name across the dashboard, almost smiling. Almost there. They were almost there. “Anything else I have to declare or should I be good?” 

The woman pulled a face. “No, that’s about it. Mostly we’re here to make sure the relief shipments make it through and to keep the Provisional Government appraised of any threats.” She sighed. “Once the Federation gets their act together, I’ll be able to spend time better places than a tin can in space.”

“A little late for me,” Jadzia told her, and popped off a quick salute. The guard rolled her eyes before cutting the connection.

Kira surfaced from a pile of blankets and various nonsense in the back, an old replicated mug clattering to the floor. “Federation,” she said, and it sounded like a curse. 

“Federation,” Jadzia agreed.

“Is that all?”

It felt like being home again, being on this station. Dax could almost feel Benjamin’s influence, the firm order of the place. The well-maintained tools tucked into the side panel spoke of O’Brien, the empty shells of cargo containers of Quark’s shoddy businesses. The station hummed a welcome underneath Jadzia’s feet.

She hoped Kira could feel something of that too. So she grinned at Kira, still elbow-deep in the console. “Yeah. No use having systems you can’t- oh, ow,” she whacked an offending chip of plasteel back into its housing, “access from other places. Especially when you’re mandated by code to have two sets of backups and the Cardassians never really planned in the space for that.”

Kira didn’t look impressed at the concept of a double set of back up systems, but she wouldn’t. She hadn’t been much impressed by the security of the place, either. They had been cleared for a landing in a pylon on the outer ring without much fuss. “Not much space for safety on the Bajoran levels, no.”

“Well, we all knew that.” Something clunked, and Jadzia finally withdrew her arm. It seemed so small in her hand. One chip. One backup storage. One tiny string of binary code that translated meant something like the collapse of her home planet. If people knew- 

When people knew who the Symbiosis Commission really was, what it really did, there would be change. Dax couldn’t be afraid now. It was time for the future, not the past. Joran was long gone. Neema wasn’t. And Jadzia was here, more immediate than she’d felt in years.

Before she could think it through too much, Jadzia was leaning into Kira. “May I-” she said.

Kira kissed her first. Just enough that Jadzia knew before she broke away, gasping. Their heads tipped together, Jadzia winding her hands in Kira’s fire-red hair as she’d wanted to ever since it had caught her eyes from across the Mak’relle Dur. Then Kira’s lips were hard on hers again, rough and wanting. Kira pulled her closer and closer, hands wrapped tight on Jadzia’s arms, burning all the air out of her lungs. Jadzia clung to her. She didn’t ever want to let go. 

“Ready?” Kira whispered on her lips. Jadzia laughed, helpless. “Oh, you-” Kira kissed her again, sweet and possessive and sharp. Their hands tangled. “Come on. There’s more waiting on my Bajor.”

“Onward,” Jadzia said, breathless, and let Kira race them back to their ship with their future in her hands.