---
Disclaimer: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and all related
characters owned by Paramount Studios. No copyright infringement intended.
Note: Nostalgia made me.
---
The end of it isn't at all like I expect.
It's quiet, you see. After so many years in an engine room, so many months on
the front lines of a war we never actually won, so much time missed, I've come
to think the finale would be more. A boom, maybe, on a
universal scale. Some blood. A
big darkness.
It just isn't. The only real warning comes through my private terminal, a terse
missive from Deep Space Nine. Keiko is gone, taken on her last expedition to
Bajor. It isn't another man or woman, or anything like that, or especially a
sickness. It was the Borg, and Julian can't deny that it's bad. He's gone and
used an experimental inoculation on himself while dictating the transmission,
hoping to hold out a few days, a few hours more...to help ease the way for the
children, you understand. I don't think he's afraid,
though anger is there.
He just wants me to find Dax before they do. By the time I get the message I
figure him already well gone.
Ezri and he live in a quaint old brownstone in a quaint old section of San
Francisco by then, when they both manage to be on
Earth. Dax has been talking about closing up shop and transferring back for
weeks, ever since it became obvious that the little rip in Starfleet's control
over the machine men is becoming a gaping wound. Oh, she wants to be with
Julian, but part of it is the odd little idea all those aliens get that by
staying clear of Earth they'll avoid every coming plague, or such. For a
creature that might as well be a thousand years old and wears Commander's pips,
Julian's second Trill can be downright naive. In the end, Earth is always the
last fort.
I don't know how she knows so soon, but Ezri is sitting straight up in bed when
I jimmy the security system and step in. Her hair is dark and hangs over her
neck by then, and those spots look ready to pop off her skin, which is about fifteen shades more white than I've ever seen any
skin before.
"Come here." The Trill whispers, her eyes wide and fixed on a spot
over my shoulder, hands holding the silk looking sheets up properly. Awkward, I
move on over, shuffling by the bedside. "No, come here." She insists,
grabbing my hands and pulling me down, sheets falling as I sprawl, amazed.
Before I can protest pale, cold fingers tangle in my right hand and lead it to
her stomach, where a bump moves steadily. "Dax?"
I question in embarrassment, trying to figure out a way to disentangle.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Miles." Traces of Jadzia flicker through
in her amused tones as her eyes close and head angles ever so slightly towards
the small window and the slight sunlight. "Julian and Kira used to do this
when she was carrying Kirayoshi, you know. She said she got cold. I think they
just wanted to be close to a part of you."
"That's not true." I deny uncomfortably, but knowing enough to know
she'll see through the denial.
"It won't be very long." Julian's wife prophesizes matter of factly
splayed out on crimson sheets with my hand on her nude belly and three o clock
shadows on the ceiling. "But it will be a while. They'll go for the Gamma
Quadrant first, and the Beta. Maybe even backtrack to the Delta. The Borg know Earth. They'll need for it to be the last stand before
they can actually dare take it for good. We have a good fleet, but still not
well enough. Starfleet will use the big guns first. The Titan, the Enterprise.
Worf will be there first. He'll go gloriously…" She rants on, a steady
stream of tactics intermingled with personal regrets, nine centuries of regrets
filtering through one terrified young vessel empty with death and full of life.
"We're not going to die." I protest, pushing up and standing.
"We've survived too much to do that now. Get dressed, Commander. We should
get to Command. We'll have a battle plan ready, you'll see, and I'll be dancing
little Julian on my knee in a few months time."
"It was to be a girl, Miles." Dax lets me pull her up and wrap a robe
around her, but the blue eyes remain locked elsewhere, jaw stubbornly set.
"And we were going to name her Jade. Mila Jade. We talked about it all
last week. You were going to help her learn about the Alamo
and Keiko would teach her about nature. Jake was going to teach her to write
and about Ben, and Kira was going to…"
"This isn't like you."
"They aren't suffering at all. It isn't bad, sharing your mind, not after
you…you make peace with all the little lives you've lived and deaths you've
died. It can be beautiful. We were planning on taking her to the pools on Trill
in a few years; just get her used to the idea. It isn't very likely a child
with human blood could ever host, of course, but it's a part of Dax we'd like
to share."
"Julian would like that." I agree gently.
"Julian really hated the Trill." She says briefly, coldly. "We
made him feel inferior. He needed a human to share his conversations and his
games, for even with genetics Julian felt like a very dull boy most of the
time. He could be a very sullen man. The spots were the only thing he loved.
They were the only part of a Trill never changing on him."
"That's not true." Insult mingles with argument. "Julian and I
never talked about much of importance; we little not engineered humans were too
stupid for him. And beside all that, you and Jadzia have different spots.
You're not making any sense, Ezri."
"None if it matters." Shivering violently, she flops back on the bed,
looking the wan and scared kid that first came aboard DS9 all over again. Her
arms beckon, jaw shaking as she lies back and pulls at me again. "Please, Miles. I'm cold…"
"I know." I say gently and remove my shirt and shoes, forgetting
about Keiko and spooning in crimson silk to place my hands over hers over Mila
Jade's and be close to a part of Julian.
In the end she sobs on my shoulder and I half dream of Worf delivering the baby
and nanites spreading forth over the Earth from Ezri's womb and then I wake up,
promising to find a phaser and get to her before they do, and we lie cold and
as far away from Julian as paradise itself.
And it's quiet. Just quiet.
---