Odo knew it was Mother's Day on Bajor. Every Bajoran on the station was sending messages, flowers, food, or some other token of their gratitude and love to their maternal figures. If their mothers were gone to the Celestial Temple, they gathered in the shrine on the Promenade to pray for their pagh or prepared to leave DS9 to take a shuttle down to the surface of the planet to visit their graves. Those with shore leave might be lucky enough to visit their living mothers.
Kira Nerys was one of those unfortunates that had lost her mother during the Occupation and had precious few memories of her. She was only three. At least when her father died later, again during the Occupation, she had the chance to be raised by him and loved by him. Odo had read in psychology books that the same sex parent of a child was supposedly their greatest influence on them. Kira had been robbed of that privilege. She always became tense during this time of year.
She skipped the holiday or pretended to forget the first year she was on the station, throwing herself into work and stressing herself out to the point that Bashir forced her to take some time off. That had helped to change Odo's opinion of the doctor. He was more competent and caring of his patients than he first appeared once he stopped trying too hard to make his female patients fall in love with him. It took a strong sense of will to force Kira to say or do anything even for her own benefit. She hated to feel sorry for herself. Not a single Bajoran hadn't experienced their own losses during those dark times that Cardassia ruled her planet.
In the years after, Kira merely became gloomy. This year Mother's Day also happened to fall on what would have been her mother's birthday. Odo had never been told how old Kira Meru would be now, but it was certainly one of those nice, round, significant numbers that Bajorans attached to their more momentous life stages. No doubt she was waiting her turn for a shuttle so that she could bring special flowers to the gravesite the Cardassians had been strangely kind enough to give her mother. Part of Odo longed to go with her, but he had his own miserable gloom to deal with, and he knew because of Bareil's death that Kira preferred not to share her grief.
Besides, what did Odo know of mothers? He had been bitterly disappointed to find out that Changelings had no real mothers. The entire ocean of the Great Link claimed him, but not a single individual claimed the responsibility of a parent of any kind in the humanoid sense. His existence, as he understood it, had begun curled up in the womb of a glass vial, smooth but cold and sterile. There was no semblance of life or warmth in it and yet there had been many times that he longed to be returned to it and left blissfully alone to hibernate in the cryogenic state he had been suspended in during his journey through space. That had been his wish especially during his earliest days in the lab.
The first sensation he recalled was peaceful oblivion being interrupted by a cold, metal scalpel as an unknown creature poked and prodded him in his glass womb. Then he felt alarm, terror, confusion, and a wild sense of helplessness. He didn't know how to communicate, to shift, to escape or make the violation stop. Everything the scientists did was a violation! How could they not have understood that? As a Changeling, he felt everything a hundred times more sensitively than a Bajoran and every surface of him was erogenous! Odo had no idea how to protect himself or concentrate his gelatinous matrix. They were exposing him to the indignity of foreign objects touching him without warning or consent.
Kira Nerys had nearly been a victim of sexual slavery. She had to defend herself against Cardassian and Bajoran men attempting to proposition her or violently assault her. It was practically a miracle that she had come out of the Occupation unscathed in that sense and that might have been only because she fled her camp and joined the Resistance before puberty. Odo never discussed it, not even with her, but in the lab, he had been sexually abused. The scientists didn't do it out of perversion or malice, but it had damaged him nonetheless. They had done it so often unknowingly, not even his near perfect memory could keep track. He understood Kira's hostility and mistrust of intimacy far better than she knew. He trusted it even less.
Yes, yes, yes, Dr. Pole insisted over and over that they had no idea he was a sentient, living being at the time, but Odo still found this excuse unforgiveable! That was only the first rude awakening! When the scientist was startled to see there had been some sort of reaction to what he was doing to the unknown sample in the glass vial, he stirred Odo around, making the infant Changeling nauseous. Then he tried to take samples of him, inserting an eyedropper and stealing drops of his being!
Imagine a newborn being ripped from its mother's womb and having an entire digit of a toe or finger being sliced off. That is essentially what had happened to Odo within his first few minutes of consciousness. He would have screamed in such horrible pain, but he had no voice. He had no way to show his distress other than to tremble and shirk away from the invasive tools. He had no optics that the scientist could see. He was all eyes and ears and 'gazed' up at his tormentor and decided he hated him. His intense hatred caused his state to glow violent amber.
That caused such a stir of excitement. His sample was studied under a microscope and fed to computers. It was handed over to teams of experts of many scientific fields. Dr. Pole was assigned to him, the closest thing that he would ever have to a father, but there was no mother. Pole was a widower and there were no female Bajoran scientists in the lab. Odo didn't see an actual female for years. Years is what it took for him to start copying Dr. Pole's form and attempt to become humanoid. It was slow and miserable work to get even there.
Dr. Pole was a bit more compassionate than he let on even to Odo. For a while, Odo hated him as much as the first scientist. He used noninvasive scans first. He tried to communicate with the alien life form in the vial. He spoke at him stupidly. Of course Odo had no idea what the babbling noises meant and had no vehicle with which to respond even if he did. Then Pole tried to use mathematics, colors, pictures, and music. Odo was intrigued by these things but couldn't respond other than to slide around the glass. The music in particular was pleasant. Odo vibrated with it at a bouncy rhythm and lulled lazily to the more soothing sounds.
After months of no satisfying results to the scientists' minds, Pole resorted again to instruments. Odo was enraged. He began to respond even less on purpose. He was placed in a vacuum chamber and a protein decompiler. Worse, Pole began to zap him with electricity!
There was an evening where the pain became too much and Odo was forced to do something. Pole had been zapping him. Every time he pushed on a button at a terminal, the voltage increased. Odo had finally had enough. He didn't even know what he was doing, he was just so angry and afraid and desperate. He created a tendril and slapped Pole's gloved hand as he reached for the terminal.
Oddly enough, this was a huge breakthrough for them. Pohl realized Odo could potentially shape shift into something resembling an animal or humanoid. He saw that Odo was intelligent and reactive. Before, he had his doubts. He began to show Odo picture books, holograms, and other visual aids. He dumped Odo out of his 'mother's womb' and onto a table. Odo spread himself out on the table and caused the scientist to reel. Odo began to expand and contract himself and he became more excited!
Honestly, Odo was a little excited as well. He began to make other shapes, curious as to his own potential. He began to realize his power of shape shifting ability. Pole placed a beaker on the table and Odo successfully copied it. Pole put a globe on the table and Odo copied that too, though a round object like that was more difficult than a flat surface he had merely traced. It took many tries until he got it right. Pole tried other objects, countless shapes, sizes, and textures. Odo was beginning to enjoy this!
The next day, Pole placed two different buttons and dumped Odo back onto the table. One was an indicator for 'yes' and another for 'no'. It took a while, but Odo was always a fast learner and adaptive. He had to be! He was tired of getting zapped and stuck with needles and metal. Odo began to slap the appropriate button with a tendril now that he knew he could do it.
Now that Odo was able to sort of communicate that much, their progress became much faster. He began to point with his tendril. He pointed to his vial. He wanted to be back in his home. But Pole refused it. He wanted things from Odo. But what? He didn't understand Bajoran fully yet, and the scientist kept slipping into it as a form of communication instead of using the visuals Odo could relate to. But Pole demanded he keep attempting it and was recording everything because Odo refused to do anything around witnesses.
He grew tired of the games and exhausted. He was only a baby. Couldn't they see that? He wanted his mother. He pointed at the glass container again. He had been out of it for a long time now. He wanted to regenerate. It had been nearly sixteen continuous hours, his cycle demanding rest. Usually Dr. Pole became tired or bored long before he did. Still he was denied. He began to throw a terrible tantrum.
Odo let his pent up violence and hatred explode. He filled the entire room with his form. Dr. Pole had to flee the room or be engulfed. Odo waved many tendrils through the air. He made inhuman and indescribable sounds. He didn't stop until Pole put up an electric barrier for his own safety and began to shock him until Odo could barely take it.
"What do you want?" Dr. Pole shouted.
Odo weakly pointed a tendril to his mother.
Slowly, too slowly for Odo's liking, the scientist understood. He scooped the shrunken, wounded, gelatinous being back into the vial and Odo nestled contentedly in the familiar surroundings to regenerate. Dr. Pole kept the barrier ready for more outbursts, but Odo realized he was overpowered after that stunt.
Pole separated him from his mother. As Odo's abilities grew, he became larger. He was 'growing up' in a sense. The glass became too small for him to comfortably fit himself inside. He had not yet mastered size. Odo flashed all sorts of colors and reeled in a new beaker, slapping his tendrils all around, much bigger than the vial, experiencing something akin to loss for an inanimate object. Dr. Pole gave him a warning zap and he forced himself to calm.
He would leave the beaker and enter a tank next full of 'toys' for him to shift into and disguise himself as, like a chameleon hiding in a zoo display. He began to shift into more complicated things for longer periods.
Another breakthrough was made when Odo wished to mock the scientist calling himself Odo's 'father'. He was beginning to understand the Bajoran language even if he couldn't speak it back. He tried to form a face, and because no other face was as familiar, it resembled something of Dr. Pole's. The scientist froze up and his mouth gaped open. Odo hadn't expected that sort of reaction, but he was glad he did it. Pole began to treat him with far more reverence and respect and it encouraged Odo all the more to copy and become humanoid.
Odo would never get the form entirely correct, but he gradually succeeded in becoming more and more humanoid. Once he could form lips and vocal cords, he could speak fluently, shocking the scientists even more. All it took was a few minutes of adjusting to fleshiness and the weird sounds of a human voice, and Odo was talking as though he had known how all along. Perhaps he should have held off a little longer on communicating that way. He could also walk, jog, run, jump, and throw kicks and punches. He had absorbed all the information needed long ago. He had simply needed the fleshy vehicle to put it all into practice.
The first thing Odo said was, "I want the pieces of me you took ages ago back. I can reabsorb them into my matrix. Also, I want my mother, the vial I was originally in. I simply want it nearby."
Finally, Odo was allowed to see his first woman. Now that no one could deny that Odo was a sentient alien person and not merely a thing, an expert on alien introductions was brought in. She requested to be alone with only Dr. Pole nearby to assist if needed. She was an ambassador more than a scientist, and this is what made a world of difference.
Odo didn't know what made Dr. Pole so reluctant to expose him to a real female before. Perhaps he was worried Odo would instantaneously undergo puberty, reveal he was male, and grab the helpless woman and attempt to mate with her like some wild and confused animal? The thought made him chuckle now, but Odo was quite clueless how to react at first.
Changelings had no gender. Odo was not a freak. He chose a male-like form simply because it was familiar and by the time he attempted to shift to a female form, it felt alien. Dr. Pole had labeled him as 'other' when asked about his sex. He had no genitalia. That was not an organ he would even attempt to make until many years later and he thought even less of the act of reproduction. He had to admit that the presence of this Bajoran woman was entirely new and interesting.
Odo gazed at the woman, not sure what she was at first glance. She was a mature woman with graying hair. It was as short as a man's, so he didn't think too much of it. As his formed blue eyes went down, he started to notice the difference of her anatomy. She was smaller-boned than the scientists he knew with wider hips for birthing and soft mounds on her chest that were primarily for nursing infants. He couldn't smell it, but he could see and sense perfume wafting from the hollow between her collarbones and wrists and arms where she had applied it and spread it over her skin which seemed slightly smoother and softer than a man's. Her features were more delicate, her voice was softer and airier.
He found the differences he began to notice pleasant enough. Her face was plain compared to some other Bajoran females, but she was not disfigured or flawed in any significant way that he knew of. He was not attracted to her in a physical sense, or more plainly, a sexual sense. She was alluring in other ways. She seemed calmer somehow than even Dr. Pole. She did not seem the least bit threatening. She was warm and friendly. She smiled at him and asked his name.
"I have no name," Odo responded.
"What would you like to be called? My name is Cadi."
He was confused. None of the scientists spoke to him this way. They asked questions, so many annoying questions, but her questions were personal not analytic or scientific. Dr. Pole seemed just as confused as he was. Odo could see his disapproval behind the observation window.
"My designation is Odo'ital."
"That is a Cardassian phrase meaning 'unknown sample'. That is not a proper name for a person. Do you know what species you are?"
"No. I thought that is what your scientists are desperately trying to classify."
"How old are you?"
"I've been in the lab for three years."
"So you are more like a child than I realized!"
"A child?" Odo scowled.
If that's what she wanted him to be, why not? He shrank his size to child-size rather than a full grown man. The woman gasped at the display and then her expression softened even more. Dr. Pole seemed stunned too. No one had seen him do such a thing before and it caused an emotional response even in his own matrix. He was, in a sense, a child after all. No one had treated him as such and he had never taken a child form.
The woman did something extraordinary then. She removed the glove from one of her hands and reached out slowly so that he could back away from her or stop her if he wanted to. He stared and Dr. Pole tapped on the observation window in protest. No one had ever touched Odo with their bare skin before. He had been touched with damn near everything else. Before Dr. Pole could stop it, Odo stepped forward and made real contact with another being for the first time.
Her touch was warm and soft. Every part of him felt it and something melted inside him. He let out a shaky breath and leaned into her touch and closed his eyes. Something greater than relief flooded through him. He began to shake and lost his shape entirely. He was still too young and inexperienced to handle the overwhelming emotions and sensations. He felt pure maternal love in that moment he had never known. This woman was Bajoran. He was a Changeling. She was not his mother. That glass vial was his mother. But suddenly he ached with something he had never ached for.
Dr. Pole raged at the woman for the breach in protocol. She had risked herself to a host of unknown diseases or pathogens and possibly exposed the Changeling. Odo was surprised at his fierce protectiveness. He could only bubble and quiver in a puddle on the floor though. His form was tingling. He wanted more contact. He wanted more touching.
"How can you keep that poor boy locked up in Institute like this?" she shouted back. "The first of his kind we have encountered and who knows if there are even more of him? You keep him in isolation! You keep him classified and secret! He's a child! Did you see that?"
"He's a shifter! For all we know, he's an old man! He showed you what you wanted to see! He could still be dangerous! We don't know! There is so much we don't know! You can't just touch an alien like that! What were you expecting?"
Dr. Pole scooped Odo into a beaker. He reached out a tendril to the woman. It was the best he could conjure. He didn't want her to leave. A word kept flashing through his matrix. Mother.
"We'll see what the Cardassians have to say about this!" the woman snapped.
"I don't want the Cardassians to seize him and weaponize him! Please!" Dr. Pole begged. "Everything I do is in his best interest. You have to believe me. Both of you!"
The woman breached protocol again and grasped Odo's tendril as though it was a baby's hand, "Alright. Clearly this is a precious creature that needs protection. He needs more than that, though, doctor!"
"Stop touching him!"
Odo flashed color. He wrapped his tendril so tightly around the woman that she yelped in pain. Dr. Pole zapped him and he almost raged, but he thought better of it. He had already unintentionally harmed the woman.
Dr. Pole carried him away and scanned him for signs of injury or illness. Eventually, Odo took his usual humanoid shape and began rocking himself.
"I am physically fine!" he insisted. "But I want a mother."
"You want what? Your old vial again?"
"No! I want a mother! You said your people have mothers and fathers. You call yourself my father sometimes. But where is my mother?"
Dr. Pole sighed, "I didn't expect this from your first encounter with a woman."
"What did you expect?" Odo snarled.
"Not an emotional response."
Odo snorted with derision and continued to rock himself. Dr. Pole looked at him with concern.
"Are you crying?"
"I can't! I told you that!"
"Try!"
"I have! Why can't you accept my limitations, doctor?"
"If I accepted your limitations, you would still be in that glass vial forever in cryo-stasis."
"There are some things that will always be impossible for me! Like having a mother apparently!"
Dr. Pole hesitated, and then sat down beside Odo. He still wore his gloves, but he rose up his hands.
"Do you mind if I put my hand on your shoulder, son?" he asked tenderly.
Odo was taken aback. He waited so long to respond that Dr. Pole was about to climb to his feet. Then Odo made a confirmation noise. Dr. Pole placed a hand on him. It felt good, but it wasn't quite the same as the woman's touch. It was certainly better than nothing.
"Stop rocking yourself. I will rock you."
"I will have to make myself child-size for you to do that."
"Then do it, if you like."
Odo took the form of a child and let the scientist rock him. It was their first moment actually resembling a father and son moment, but Odo would never forget the special maternal feeling. He never forgot that a mother was willing to breach protocols at the first sign of a child in need. It was instinct for women even across species. Yes, he understood why Bajorans treasured mothers so much.
At least Kira Nerys had a mother that gave birth to her and loved her. She may not remember her, but she existed. Odo was a drop from an ocean coldly launched into space with a mission no one bothered to tell him about. His mother had been a glass vial, but he wanted so much more.