Chapter 1: Watching the World
Jake and Nog
Set between "The Siege of AR-558" and "It's Only a Paper Moon"
Jake walked, as he often did these days, past the spot. The spot where he had sat for six years with his best friend, watching the promenade. The spot where he couldn't sit now, because Nog was away getting a new leg at some distant hospital.
He should be having it done here, Jake bought bitterly, and not for the first time.
He knows people here, he knows Dr. Bashir. I know I'd trust him with my leg, not someone I don't even know!
At least then Nog wouldn't be alone.
Jake continued walking through the station, stopping when he reached the upper pylons. It was there where he pulled out a PADD, and started writing.
He wrote for Nog. He wrote of better times, before the Dominion. He wrote of teaching Nog to read in the Cargo Bay, of convincing Nog to give up his money to buy a baseball card as a gift for Captain Sisko, of walking Nog to the airlock before he left for Starfleet Academy, of all the hours watching the world from a perch on the promenade that meant nothing to anyone else. He wrote, he remembered, and he cried.
Far away in that distant hospital, a young Ferengi listened to the voice of Vic Fontaine, trying his best not to think of anything. But occasionally an errant thought, an unbidden memory, would surface in his mind.
He thought of a friend, somewhere safe on a space station. And for that moment where he was lost in memory, all the pain and fear faded away.
Because he knew that he would be back, watching the world with Jake, very soon.
And as he listened, he remembered.
And he cried.