Merry Christmas. I hope you're having a great day and you're enjoying the celebrations. As for me, I've been busy uploading stories and one-shots as Christmas presents for all.
I don't own Star Trek in any incarnation, but I hope you enjoy this story idea I've had for a while.
Please leave feedback.
Out of their Hands.
Ezri Dax had no idea what to think while she constantly tried to focus her mind through the thoughts of the slug in her abdomen.
On the one hand, she had been overwhelmed by Garak and his nasty remarks, only to receive the same treatment from Benjamin Sisko, a dear friend of her prior two hosts, which was the last thing she'd needed. She was still trying to deal with the overwhelming desires from the symbiont inside of her, and while the books lent to her by the Symbiosis Commission were some help, she still needed some time to sort through everything.
While she was pleased Garak was okay now after suffering from acute claustrophobia attacks out of guilt for cracking Cardassian encryptions which would lead to yet more deaths among his people, so it was no wonder her earlier diagnosis about his problem was wrong.
Ezri was still hurt with the painful trick Benjamin had played on her, and it took her a great deal of mental effort to remind herself she was not his friend, Dax was. It upset her, but it was true.
While she was glad Sisko had not passed on the resignation she had given to him earlier, she was upset he had manipulated the situation to make her go back to Garak and try again, though it had worked.
But before Ezri or Sisko could say anything else the chirped. "Ops to Sisko."
"Sisko here," Ben asked, his eyes crinkled as he wondered what the interruption was about.
"We have a message from Admiral Nechayev. It concerns Ensign Dax."
Sisko looked at Ezri, wondering what Nechayev would want with her. In the end, he shrugged his shoulders and stroked his goatee. "Patch it through here," he ordered while signalling for Ezri to come closer while he activated his desk monitor to receive the message. Instantly the screen changed, showing the pale, icy face of Admiral Nechayev.
Ezri frowned as she wondered what this was about and why Nechayav wanted to speak about her. She had never met her, and so she only knew the admiral by reputation only, where some people back at the Academy had never really had much good to say about her considering many believed she was responsible for the whole mess which caused the rise of the now-extinct Maquis.
Personally Ezri had never really formed much of an impression of the woman, and to be honest she didn't want to do so. Politics was not really something that interested her that much, but she was nonetheless curious about why the admiral wished to speak to Ben about her.
"Admiral," Sisko greeted the icy woman gazing at him from his monitor. "What can I do for you?"
Ezri wasn't surprised to hear the neutral tone in Siskos' voice. Very few officers in Starfleet, particularly captains, liked Nechayev. She wasn't a really popular admiral who treated everyone around her as simpletons. Ezri herself had once overheard her former captain complain about her once for being heavy-handed and being too forceful when the situation called for more delicate measures.
"We have received a message from the Trill Symbiosis Commission," Nechayev said in her usual brisk manner, the "they" obviously referring to Starfleet Command, meaning nothing Benjamin could say would make any difference here. "They wish for Ensign Dax to be reassigned."
Benjamins' eyes flickered over to Ezri, and he was only just able to mask his surprise. He didn't want Nechayev to see the Trill ensign and give her and him an ear full. "May I ask why?" he asked instead.
Nechayevs' expression didn't change. "No, you cannot," she replied, not saying that she didn't have a clue herself but it was too obvious for everybody present. It was also obvious she didn't care about the reason.
Sisko mentally sighed, wishing he had the rank that would finally put this woman into her place, though he did ask himself if it would have made any difference. He didn't really have anything to do with Nechayev, but when he did he came away from each encounter feeling smaller than he actually was. But in this case, he was frustrated because he was close to giving Ezri a chance to stay here on DS9, and allowing her to get to grips with handling being a host. Now it looked as though Nechayev was being used as a mouthpiece for the Symbiosis Commission, and they wanted Ezri away from the station for reasons Ben just could not work out at this stage.
"Just make sure the ensign is transferred to a different starship this time tomorrow, Captain," the admiral went on, believing her orders had been understood the moment she'd made it clear she wasn't going to tell him what was going on. "Starfleet out."
Sisko sighed, holding back the anger he was feeling at once more being treated like a cadet even as the monitor screen broke the contact. But the screen showed Nechayev had sent an attachment with her order. It was a request that held the signatures of at least several admirals who were higher on the ladder than Bill Ross.
There was nothing he could do about this, but there was someone he could speak to in order to get answers. "What's going on?" he asked Ezri, and to Sisko's surprise, the young Trill ensign didn't look in the least bit stunned by the message they'd just received. In fact, she looked resigned.
Ezri sighed as she looked at the man who had been the friend of her previous two hosts and who she was only just starting to know personally, knowing how stunned he was by Nechayev's sudden call. "Do you remember when we first met at your fathers' restaurant on Earth and you asked me how the Symbiosis Institute had taken me having the symbiont without any proper training?" she asked, deciding that shooting questions back at Ben would help him understand what was going on.
Sisko nodded slowly. He remembered it alright. "Yes, but you said that they gave you books to read and some counselling over the transition. But what's that got to do with anything?" he asked.
Ezri sighed and looked away as she tried to think of the right way to put this into words he could understand. "They're not happy with someone who has no training taking on a symbiont, particularly one as old as the Dax symbiont," she confessed bluntly, "but because I've been joined and the symbiont is healthy after taking a turn for the worst on the Destiny, there was nothing they could do. At least that's what they've come to accept, but before that, the doctors on Trill hypothesised the symbiont had been more traumatised than it should have been following….. following Jadzia's death," she trailed off hesitantly as she spoke her predecessors' name.
Sisko looked away as the dark, terrible memory of standing near Jadzia's deathbed as Worfs' bulk was standing over her form as she died slowly, already weakened by the violent attack brought on her by Dukat's unexpected visit in the Bajoran Temple, and the loss of the Dax symbiont. At the time Ben had been more interested in Jadzia than the symbiont, but now Ben could understand for himself the whole thing must have been traumatic for the Dax symbiont.
"Go on," he whispered, trying to exorcise the memory out of his mind, though the memory of Worf howling like a wounded animal at the loss of his beloved wife still haunted him. It reminded Sisko of how he'd felt when Jennifer had died.
"The Symbiosis commission have never hidden it from me that, under different circumstances, they would have preferred it if Dax had been joined to a different Trill. Preferably one who was trained. As a result, they kept me on Trill in a hospital bed for over a month," Ezri went on, and her elfin features darkened with visible anger that hadn't died down even now.
Sisko gaped at her. "Why would they do that?" he asked, genuinely surprised by what he was hearing. "Was it because you were overwhelmed by your past hosts?"
Ezri sighed as she struggled to calm down, but the memory of being trapped on Trill still haunted her. "The doctors got the idea in their heads the symbiont would reject me," she said shortly and he realised it was a really sore subject for her, "and so for a month they waited, ready to take me off to the operating theatre in a heartbeat when the symbionts' condition happened to deteriorate. They didn't seem to care or give much thought about my welfare," she added like it was an afterthought but they both knew it wasn't. "Basically, I spent a month being overwhelmed by the past Dax hosts while the doctors monitored my condition and the health of the symbiont while they fed me nutrients to keep me going because the various tastes of the hosts made it virtually impossible for me to choose what to eat or drink."
Sisko meanwhile was having a hard time that the Trill Symbiosis Institute would be so callous especially to a girl who had taken a three-hundred-year-old symbiont into herself even when she didn't have a clue what to do next. But truthfully Sisko had already dealt with their callousness before, back when it was revealed there was, in fact, a different host between Torias and Curzon Dax.
The Trill had been prepared to take the symbiont out of Jadzia in order to protect their secret since it would have embarrassed them and their precious rules that a psychopath had been joined due to a clerical error to a symbiont.
"I can't believe they'd be that callous…," he whispered, but Ezri interrupted him instantly.
"You'd better believe it, Ben. I was already in a bad way. I was overwhelmed by the symbiont and I needed help, but while I got it all that time the institute was waiting for it to fail. It was a nightmare."
"But you're still here," Sisko said awkwardly as his mind pictured the nightmarish image of Ezri fretting in bed while she tried to control the eight personalities in the symbiont while Trill doctors hovered around her, prepared to remove Dax from her body.
"Only just." The relief in Ezri's voice was sharp, and for the first time Sisko realised how much being joined had affected Ezri. It had completely shaken her to the core while it had almost put her life in jeopardy. "I just wish some of their other reasons were not quite so….political," she added, wishing she had a better word to describe it.
Sisko frowned. "What do you mean?" he asked in genuine confusion.
She shook her head. "Do you remember when that Trill arrived on the station during that plasma storm with those two Klingon mercenaries?" she asked.
"You mean Verad? The one who tried to steal the symbiont off of Jadzia?"
Ezri nodded while the memories passed on from Jadzia's perspective of the experience made her grimace, but she managed to reinforce her control just in time. "Well, Verad is one of a large majority of people on Trill who wish to be joined but have been rejected. Could you imagine how they'd feel if they discovered, after all of the time they'd spent working hard, going through difficult training, only to be rejected, to discovering that a symbiont as old as Dax had been allowed to be given to a girl who not only didn't go through the same training they did but genuinely didn't want to be joined in the first place?"
Sisko closed his eyes and tried to picture it, but truthfully he knew so little about Trill society beyond their rules and about the reassociation taboo, so he couldn't work out what Ezri's joining could do.
Fortunately, Ezri filled in the picture for him before he could say anything and it made him realise there was a lot more here than he'd expected. "The Institute as a whole decided to say the symbiont has been given to me, but beyond that, they're not saying anything much," she said quietly though the sharp edge to her voice lingered, "they're basically keeping it quiet I never wanted to be joined."
"So they're once more covering up the truth," Sisko stated, remembering how the revelation of Joran's existence had taken him and the others by surprise.
Ezri sent him a sharp look, clearly guessing where his mind had gone, "Yes. From a certain point of view they're doing their best to protect the symbionts, but from another, it looks like they're covering their backs. When Joran was discovered to be…dangerous," her voice trailed off while she tried to think of a way to describe her former host in a more polite way but not doing a good job of it, "they had to bury the truth so then other dangerous Trills wouldn't be able to do the same thing and endanger the lives of symbionts. In fact, many of them built their careers on the incident. When Verad tried to steal Dax, it happened again. Several Trill in the commission had to clean up the mess, but you know while it mitigates the problem slightly, it's not going to go away.
"There will always be Trill who want to be joined more than anything, and some of them will actually go as far as to kidnap and surgically remove the symbiont without caring about murdering the former host. The Symbiosis Commission was terrified that would happen, and so they've buried the full event and made it clear to Starfleet it isn't allowed to even speak about it," Ezri said.
Sisko blew out a breath slowly as he tried to imagine how much time and energy had gone into hiding the truth like that. Finally, in the end, he had something else to ask. "But why are they determined to move you?" he asked.
"I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum of Trill like Joran and Verad. I never wanted to be joined. I wanted to have a life where I could be proud of myself, not have to work hard to get a one in a hundred chance of being joined," Ezri said, "when I was growing up it was a conscious choice because I felt I could make a contribution to society on my own, but when it was obvious to the Institute I was healthy despite the chaos I was going through with having eight different lifetimes worth of personalities making it hard for me to think straight, they made it clear that while they were not happy about the circumstances, they had the means of easing the transition. This isn't the first time a Trill who wasn't trained has been joined, so they have the literature. But they also made it clear to me they would keep an eye on me, and if they felt I wasn't doing well then they would speak to Starfleet about my assignment."
Sisko was speechless. He didn't know whether to be angry on Ezri's behalf or furious the Trill Symbiosis Commission had decided to go over his head when he would have had the means at his disposal to make thing okay for Ezri. Speak to Starfleet about her assignment? Who did they think they were?
"They did tell me there was a chance I couldn't be here," Ezri said, "but they said they would honour my decision to stay here."
"Looks like they've changed their minds. But why didn't you tell me about this?"
"It never really came up. Besides, I wanted to try to get on with my life, and not worry about a shadow like that over myself," Ezri replied.
What do you think? It occurred to me that the Trill Symbiosis Institute would keep an eye on Ezri after all the trouble Jadzia went through with Joran, only in Ezri's case it was more severe.