Ch 1. Return of the King
For the fourth time this week, Colonel Kira Nerys was called upon to handle a disturbance on the promenade. She rolled her eyes as she vacated her desk, brushing the baseball atop it but managing not to push it off. Frustrated fingertips knocked on her combadge as she went, paging the chief of security and demanding he meet her at the scene. Then she terminated the line; she was not in a good mood.
She hoped it wasn't Morn again. Kira could be very understanding when she needed to be, and she knew it was a rough week for him, but he had already caused commotion twice. Her patience for the Lurian had just about run dry. Morn direly needed to pull himself together; while Kira had tried before, perhaps she would again recommend he visit Ezri for counseling.
Much to her surprise (and joy), however, Morn was nowhere to be found on the promenade. Instead, the Colonel discovered a crowd of people with a clear opening at the center, where, after she pushed her way through, she met with an entirely new phenomenon: some sort of sparkling gas. Yet it did not follow regular scientific laws about gases as it occupied only a set space before her. It was not entirely cloudlike, but something about its appearance planted the comparison in her mind. Even more confusing, it made noise, a low, garbled noise that sounded vaguely humanoid. And it felt familiar.
Summoning all of her willpower, Kira managed to break her focus from the gas enough to address the Starfleet security officer nearest her. "You. Go round up some science officers." The officer obliged, hurrying off, but before he was even completely out of sight, the gas changed dramatically.
With a shock wave that ripped through the chest of every surrounding individual, the gas effectively exploded, a flash of blinding light robbing aesthetics from the experience. When the light faded, in its wake stood a man with strong posture, demanding eyes, and a rich voice. "Hello, Colonel."
The Bajoran majority of the crowd fell instantly to their knees; in fact, Kira was the only Bajoran who remained standing. "Sisko," she whispered to herself, stunned into quiet contemplation. She cleared her throat to regain her full voice, though she still stumbled over herself verbally. "Benjamin. Emissary. Captain. It's been… Ah, welcome back, Sir."
"Thank you, Nerys," he grinned, stepping forward and placing a friendly hand on her shoulder. "And thanks for keeping this place running. It's nice to see it in one piece. Now, don't you have some kind of office we can go to?" Kira mirrored his smile and navigated through the crowd. At first she led, but somewhere along the way, beneath the occasional hushed gasp from a passerby, Sisko took the lead, but she hardly cared. He was a man she could follow anywhere.
The doors parted, and they stepped inside what once was Sisko's office. "Hey!" he exclaimed merrily, picking the baseball off of the desk. He looked at Kira with the joy of a child before tossing the ball into the air and catching it.
Nerys sat on the edge of the desk. "So, gonna kick me out of the office again, Sisko?" she asked cheekily. She remembered her first impression of the man before her, the anger and resentment for all things Starfleet that somehow over time warped into a commission. She was outraged then to forfeit the office, but this time around, it had never really felt right to call hers.
"I don't really expect Starfleet to offer me my position back," he commented casually. As if stricken by a great realization, he swiped the ball furiously out of its most recent ascent and turned his full focus to the Colonel. "How long have I been gone?" Sisko asked gravely.
Kira too adopted the new, more serious tone, her smile fading. "Two years," she answered honestly, reaching out to catch his arm, a silent vote of support when he clearly needed it, his head beginning to hang. "They're still here," she added quickly. Sisko looked to her with cautious optimism, begging for confirmation. "Your family. They're still on the station."
His eyes grew wide, and beneath them spread an equal smile. Nerys's nod urged him to go find them, but as he rushed to the door, they parted to bid entrance, not exit, as Ezri Dax trailed in, her gaze attached to the pad in her hands. "Hey, Nerys, I-" The blur above the pad of someone nearly colliding with her redirected her focus, and when she saw who it was in front of her, the pad slipped through her fingers, clattering to the ground. "Benjamin!" Her tiny arms looped around him with surprising intensity.
When she released him from the embrace, she did not free him entirely, maintaining a rather forceful grip on both of his arms. "It's so good to see you!" she exclaimed, launching into an eager babble. "It's been so long, and so much has happened while you were away! I-"
Sisko shook off her hands and mirrored the action, gripping her shoulders delicately. "It's good to see you too, Old Man," he said with soft urgency, "but right now, I need to go find Jake and Kasidy."
Ezri smiled and nodded. As he released her, however, she held up a firm index finger. "But," she qualified, "We're catching up later. At Quark's? I'm sure Julian will be thrilled to know you're back."
"Of course," Benjamin replied before rushing off. He selected what at least once were their quarters as his first destination, weaving through the labyrinth of living quarter hallways as habitually as if not a single day had passed. Deep Space Nine was, as always, a place that he belonged, every panel an old friend.
When he reached the most familiar door, he entered the access code he recalled, but the unsettling beep that resulted indicated an updated code was required. Given that he had no such code, Sisko opted for the next best thing: being let in. "Jake! Kasidy!" he shouted, fists pounding on the door. "Kasidy, open up!"
After a few minutes of pummeling, the door shot open, and he saw her. "Kasidy," he breathed. He could see his name on her mouth, but before she could articulate it, he leaned down to her, smothering her voice with an overdue kiss. It took only a moment for her to kiss back, but her body felt stiff in his arms, tense in a way he had only known her to be when she was upset. He let go of her, and without warning, Kasidy slapped him.
"If you think you can go play God for two years and then come traipsing back like nothing's changed," she accosted him, "you have another thing coming! Do you know what you missed? Do you know what I've been through?" Her arms folded defensively across her chest, but when Benjamin reacted in only a series of blinks, she groaned and pulled him inside by the collar. "I'm only letting you in because I don't think it'd go over well if people saw me screaming at the Emissary in a hallway," she added as justification both for him and for herself.
"I don't understand," Sisko marvelled, glancing around. The living room, at least, was still the same as before. "Where's Jake? And the bab-"
"Don't you act like now you're invested!" Kasidy fumed, fire burning in her eyes. "You weren't concerned about the baby when you left us!"
He reeled back as if physically attacked. "Oh, Kasidy," he began, his voice low; a large but gentle hand reached to stroke her face but instead was slapped down. "I love you and our baby more than I can even begin to tell you, but I had to go be with the Prophets. I can't explain that. But I told you I would be back, and here I am." In his eyes was a separate flame, one that begged to return to its contemporary, to be together again, to burn twice as bright.
Kasidy turned away. "While you were inexplicably required to spend time with those wormhole aliens," she said coldly, "life went on here. We had to make it work without you. A lot changed, Ben." Behind her, he spiraled down with every word. When she paused, he took a step nearer to her, but her peripheral detected his motion, and she whispered, "I want you to go, Ben."
In an instant, he froze. Sheer panic and complete sorrow washed over him. "You… you do?" He had never expected this; Sisko had imagined something more along the lines of an impassioned embrace, a stream of sweet nothings tucked between stories about the first time their child stood up without assistance or said a word or bopped Jake in the nose. Anything. Anything but this.
"Yes." Her voice was strong despite the sense that she could soon be in tears. He melted down to meet the couch as his muscles followed the lead of his collapsing life. "No, don't sit down!" he glanced up to see Kasidy had spun around and now glared down at him. "I said go!"
What could he do? Benjamin gathered himself up and slogged toward the door. He paused there, looking back to confirm this was truly what she wanted; when her only reaction was to turn away from him, he knew it was true. Beneath the automated door's hum of movement as it closed behind him, he heard her explode into sobs, The worst of it was that not only could he not dry them: he had wrought them.
Two thoughts crossed his mind. The first was that he should punch something, a wall maybe, but he managed to dismiss the idea by reminding himself that someone would have to fix the damage. The second thought was that he should head down to Quark's. This one, he accepted.
When he arrived at the bar, he found it amazingly… empty. While he had no idea what day or time it was-early Tuesday evening, not a popular time for drinking-it seemed strange that there was virtually no one. A couple Dabo girls stood around their tables, flashing alluring smiles that faded into shocked o-shapes when their made-up eyes landed on him. He ignored them, seating himself at the bar, nodding to the only other patron. "Hello, Morn."
Before the Lurian could reply, a little man with big ears behind the bar called over his shoulder, "What can I get yo-" As he turned around, his words stopped instantly. "Sisko?!"
"Nice to see you too, Quark," Sisko chuckled. He watched the Ferengi's initial surprise transform to sincere happiness to see him, and, thinking back only to the event with Kasidy, thought bitterly of how nice it was for someone to be happy to see him too.
Quark leaned against the bar."This place hasn't been the same without you, Captain," he stated, his casual and playful tone a clear facade to hide actual sentiment. "Ever since you and that annoying Changeling what's-his-face left, I've had a lot more successful business endeavours. And without that Klingon brute, I've enjoyed a lot more peace of mind."
The Captain raised an eyebrow. "You and I both know you couldn't forget the Constable if you tried," he smirked. Quark offered no visible reaction beyond a shrug, but Sisko knew what was beneath: he missed Odo's meddling.
"So when did you get back? And also how? I'm pretty foggy on your whole demi-god status," the bar mogul inquired, followed by the eruption of a sudden addition. "Oh, and have you seen Nerys yet? I'm sure she'd be-"
"Nerys?" Benjamin interrupted. He hadn't meant to vocalize the curiosity, but since he had, there was no choice but to roll with it. "Since when are you on a first-name basis with the Colonel?"
"I told you this place hasn't been the same, didn't I?" Quark returned calmly. He briefly turned away to grab a rag to dry off a clean glass, spinning the cloth against the cool insides as if to add to his casualness. "Things have changed. She tells me things."
Sisko blinked, completely flabberghasted by the very thought of Kira confiding in someone like Quark. So he extended the only articulate inquiry he could manage. "Why?"
Quark straightened his back and cast his gaze elsewhere. Sisko followed the line of sight and noticed in the Ferengi's vision a couple out on the promenade. A short-haired woman tugged the hand of a tan-skinned man, directing him toward the bar. "Misery loves company." The grave nature with which the statement was delivered made Sisko quickly snap his head back around to face Quark, but he had already moved down the bar, from which he exited to the back room of the establishment.
"Benjamin!" In an instant, Ezri Dax was once again beside him, with Julian Bashir trailing behind with a crooked little smirk. She seated herself on the stool between Morn and Sisko, but then glanced at the former with a nervous smile. "Uh, Morn? Would you mind giving us a little privacy? Thanks."
Once the Lurian had vacated his stool, Julian claimed it. "Wow, it really is you, isn't it, Captain?" he marvelled. "I almost didn't believe Ezri when she told me." All-in-all, the doctor looked exactly as he had two years ago; his slowly receding hair had ceased its trek back when the stress of the Dominion war had lifted, gaining ground neither forward or backward from there. The only difference was the twinkle in his eye that Sisko hadn't seen in almost a decade; Julian had come back to life.
"When I said we'd catch up at Quark's, I didn't think you'd be here this soon," Ezri said with both excitement and concern. "Did you find Kasidy and Jake?"
"You know, Old Man, I'd rather not talk about it right now." The tone and words themselves were polite, but the underlying message was clear: don't ask. Ezri raised an eyebrow briefly, then glanced at Julian, who had no solution to offer. To lighten the mood, Sisko added, "What have you two been up to for the last two years?"
"Oh, well…" Ezri began to babble, but Benjamin stared beyond her, beyond Julian as well, out the window and onto the promenade. He could see a boy, or rather a man, he used to know and desperately wished to meet again, a man named Jake Sisko. And on that man's shoulder sat a little girl who looked to be not yet two, with a bright smile that made her look just like her mother.
He tried to brush it all off, to refocus on what his thrice-over friend was saying. He tuned back in around, "..oh, and best of all, Julian and I are getting married!" She thrust her left hand forward at the conclusion of the sentence, rendering Sisko inches away from a diamond ring so huge that it reflected light from multiple directions.
"Garak helped me pick it out," Bashir added sheepishly. "He tells me that tailoring and jewelry-designing are not completely separate concepts. Something or another about an eye for beauty."
"We're so glad you made it back when you did, Benjamin," Ezri continued, placing her hands on top of his. "You see, before we get married, I want to be certain that I really know myself. All of myself." She paused, seemingly, for the first time that Sisko knew her, unsure how to speak. "Do you remember Jadzia's Zhian'tara?" she asked timidly.
For a moment, Sisko replayed the memories, the feeling of hosting the psychotic murderer Dax that the planet Trill preferred to pretend had never gotten to be a host. "You want me to host Joran again for you." He had meant it as a question, although it intoned like a statement.
"Well, yes, but that isn't the reason I waited for you," Ezri confessed. She squeezed his hand as reassurance to both of them, and she felt Julian lay a hand on her shoulder. "I thought you might want... to talk to Jadzia."