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2024-11-25
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Spark To Embers

Summary:

I haven't told this to anyone, Doctor Bashir had started; the look in his eyes dire and fire-bright. An informed choice must be made, should Bareil’s body fail.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:




I haven't told this to anyone , Doctor Bashir had started; the look in his eyes dire and fire-bright. An informed choice must be made, should Bareil’s body fail. 

I haven't told this to anyone, but no one has ever needed to know as much as you, Vedek . And so Bashir had given Bareil his name, his first name, a dead child's name. It might mean a number of things in his language.

“Would I still be able to remember my faith?”

“I do not know.”

“The Prophets, my people, my -” Nerys, smiling, robe slipping down her shoulder, her hard-won laughter better than drink and rest to him. Again, lower, aching: “My people.”

The Doctor’s eyes flickered downwards for an instant, neither an accord nor a denial. “I do not know. We cannot know. I am - very sorry it has come to this, Vedek.”

Bareil found it difficult to look at him, now. Decency demanded he look away, though he knew it was not the Human way, and Bashir was not one of his faithful.

Still: he had told him a terrible truth, to ease a terrible choice. This was to be the first time anyone gave Bareil the gift of their grief, to be stared and well-kept and prayed over. Bareil's gratitude swelled against the faltering of his lungs, cleared his head with a rush of wind as sweet as the Lonar Province mountain-breeze. 

A gift, though Bashir might not intend it like that. This last service Bareil had a means to give, which came to him as a warning. Bareil took it as a warning, if only because Bashir so fiercely believed it to be: if you replace the parts to maintain a shell of the sum, the thing that remains is not alive. Not real, in any sense of the world.

“Doctor, I am of no use if I cannot serve my people. I know you understand. Major Kira always said you were very-”

“Foolish? Callow - self-centered, terribly conceited?

“Young. But a good Doctor, and a deeply compassionate man. If a little unaware of his affect.”

Bashir let out a mirthless sound. “Believe me, I am always aware. I cannot be otherwise - I was made so. As intricate and regulated as a machine.”

“I wish I could tell you I was all that. That I was a fool of the first order, an idealist, a kind medical practitioner. But I cannot know. I can't even quite tell if I'm lying, masking myself as myself, to go unnoticed and - unfeared. I am in too deep, Vedek. There is no way to know.”

“And if I do decide to have both halves of my brain fully replaced, to go with the lungs, the kidneys, the heart?” 

“Your memory centers could be transferred, the synaptic patterns repeated as well as we could. I can make no guarantees. None.”

“I would look like myself, talk like myself. But would I be myself? I can feel the difference now. Half of me is gone already. You can ask,” he added, because Bashir looked thirsty to know.

“Gone how, exactly? If you could quantify it.” 

“Distant. Time slips away from me, I think. And I am lacking in sentiment.” Sentiment had long been Bajor’s strength, its resistant heart. 

Distant, he had told Nerys, and felt her grasp on him tighten as if it were a hand he had held years ago. More a memory of a touch than the touch itself; more a memory of himself than his own mind - quick and slow, hesitant, forceful. A riverbed in drought, remembering the shape of the current, empty of life. 

Distant, a glass in between and many years too: his mother cursing the sterile soil, his sisters looking back as the soldiers took them away, dying in the cot by the spluttering oven. 

Antos, nearly a man, working in the monastery’s garden, cursing the soil, cursing the Prophets. That was the year before they were moved to Reliketh, the refugee camp with its noises, its business, its absence of birds and green growing smells.

Small fists, gritty with dirt, striking some kind Vedek’s chest, fighting consolation to fight grief. Prayer had not come easily to him, it had only ever been a punishment for his misbehavior, then a choice. The only choice.

He stretched out his hand, now. Grasped Bashir’s arm, a grounding touch, to test the reality of it. Bones, muscle, the same false wool Nerys donned day after day. Heartening, nonetheless, how the Doctor bent to him, let himself be a grounding thing.

“How do you do it?”

“My case is not equivalent, by far. Enough of a comparison that it was my only point of reference, and one I felt you ought to know about. But my alterations involved natural cerebral tissue. And I was much younger.” 

“A child,” Berail said. Not a question. Intuition, not so much the wisdom of the Prophets; this situation was so wholly touched by the Prophets his every sense was dome in their likenesses, their will guided his thinking. His own, and not.

As all things were, for those who devoted themselves to faithful service. 

More certain of that, now. That Bashir spoke as he did, was as he was: a guide. Made in perfect measure to this task, and as much a heart turned to service as his, an understanding many could pretend at, and not grasp. 

“The child is dead.” 

 “I do not know if there is a correct courtesy, what the human kindness is.”

Bashir's was all sharp movement, so tight a flinch Barel’s own bones ached with the tension of it. “There is none, for people like myself.” 

“Then I am sorry for your grief, and that as well,” Bareil said. Paltry speech. “If I may say it”

Bashir’s mouth twitched. His throat moved, soundless. He doesn’t know when to stop talking, was what Nerys had actually said. It’s maddening, it really is. 

Bareil had spoken many times in confidence with survivors of skirmishes and raids and banal, horrible violences. What words did you give to the one sibling whose sweats grew cold and then grew to nothing? All comfort was a comfort to someone who outlived themselves, but not often quite so definitely. 

 The shadows and deepening lines on his face were not unbeautiful, though it was difficult to Bareil to imagine them deliberate. Two faceless parents, deciding on a series of simulations. This, yes, my son will frown so at this age, and smile like this, laugh

They must have loved him. He had seen so many deeds done in love, during the Occupation. Bareil's own parents had gone to great lengths, so he might live; at least for a time. Great lengths. Before he chose to devote himself to the Prophets, and endanger all his family – 

This that had been done to him had been done in the Federation, for the pleasure of Federation principles and preferences, on whom Bajor depended still. Faith assured even to the last, Bareil could lie back wry and satisfied; he had done as he ought.

Peace, yes, they needed peace with Cardassia, a chance to stand on their own, with an Emissary for the transition and men like Bashir to stand as witness.

“If you were not yourself already, of course, it would be different,” Bashir was saying, words pressing against the silence. Bareil had lost time, lost the will to hold onto it. “Mechanical lifeforms are as capable of sentience as anyone else, if so programmed - there's a Lieutenant in Starfleet's flagship who is a wonder, and very much his own, and a fascinating fellow besides. I do not mean to say you would be a Borg, either, the technology is quite different. 

“Only that I would not be myself. As good as dead, no spirit, all the pagh gone out of the flesh. Believe me, the notion disgusts me also.” 

Bashir’s hand clenched, as if he wished to keep them folded his palms together, the way he did when giving dire diagnoses. Sisko did it too; so did Guls, Legates, Vedeks, the Kai.

Even poor farmers did it, when they wanted to lie about how much they might or might not owe in taxed goods. Who taught them, who taught the gestures of power and fear? Bareil’s body could not remember them now, even if he had the strength for it.  

As a child Bareil has hidden mischief behind his back. Mud cakes, stolen rations, pebbles to throw at soldiers on the other side of the fence. Flowers stolen from a doctor's office, to bring back to his family. A phaser, once. The Prophets had brought the camp's cantankerous old Vedek to rap his knuckles and twist his ear and smuggle it away, before anyone could catch a glimpse, could execute the Bareils's stupid little boy.

Immediacy had become memory, memory became nothing. His ear did not know to ache with old reprimands. His body hummed and worked with a sound nearly beyond hearing. Likely Bashir could hear it. 

“Vedek Bareil-”

“Doctor, please. You have made new half my body already. Call me Antos.” 

That same tilt of the head, conceding, half-smiling. And still he leaned closer, flickering fire in his eyes: oh, little wonder Kai Winn could not stand him, no wonder Bareil’s death had fled from him a little. 

“It must be very tiring, living as you do,” Bareil noted quietly. 

Bashir made a disdainful noise. He was not to be distracted, and plainly uneasy with the kindness. “It's only patterns. Finding them, repeating them. And deciding on what to strive towards, in terms of actions. I am certain you could do it. And you would live. Your body would continue to exist, even if you decided to go into stasis."

"If I did not chose to go into stasis?"

"I would help you, it you wished it.” 

“But you do not wish it. You do not think it a wise choice, or right.” 

Fiercely, Bashir told him, “What I think is of no consideration, for as long as we can make it meaningless. You are awake and aware now. You have a choice that can be only yours.”

Bareil's throat ached, tight and tender. Fear no longer had a taste, but he had been afraid for so much of his life that it made no difference. “I can ask for my doctor’s counsel, surely.”

“You have the right not to give them this. Already you have given so much - so much. Give yourself this dignity. Do not let her turn your muscles and your mouth into an instrument of politics!”

“Men like us do not choose for ourselves.” 

Flickering fire, fingers in his, a living hand in his living hand. Soon Bashir would go, and time would contract like a tide until Kai Winn returned with her last questions; and after that there would be nothing else. Whatever he chose, there would be nothing else.

Bareil had very much hoped to be a father, one day. What a foolish thing to think, now, when his very skull whirred, his skin strained against itself; but it was true.

“This time, you do have a choice. You must, Bareil. Antos.” A hand over his own, a tightening grasp. “You would do them a disservice, in allowing it. They do not deserve to have to suffer your sacrifice. And I will think rather less of your Prophets, if they intend to put you through it.”

Bareil laughed. For the last time, perhaps. The Prophets, he hoped, laughed with him. 

“For what it is worth, Doctor,” Antos Bareil said. “You seem very real to me.” 

Bashir blinked. Surprise, and that was good too. Bareil's mouth, drying and purpling with the weakness of his lungs, wanted to move with a smile. He felt the instinct, the impression of humor carved into his character; the execution simply did not happen. 

Bareil made his decision, then, while he could. That was in the morning; in the evening peace was signed, Bajor was promised peace. 

 

Notes:

I did not think my first published DS9 fic would be Bareil PoV, but 'Life Support' was an amazing episode. Comments, feedback and kudos are always welcome!