Nothing

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine.

Chapter One: The Founding of Gaia

"Let's see what we can salvage." Never one to spend time mulling over what he couldn't fix, Benjamin Sisko quickly put his crew to work.

The situation was grim. Not only had they crashed on an abandoned planet, but they'd been thrown back in time. The wormhole that had led them to this section of the galaxy wouldn't be discovered for almost two hundred years.

"We've got a replicator," Jadzia Dax announced as she and Worf hauled said object out of the wreckage. "It appears to be in working order."

"This generator will need a few minor adjustments." Miles O'Brien put another piece of equipment next to the replicator. "But I can get it working. There isn't much else, though. Most of our large equipment is damaged beyond repair."

"Get on that generator, Chief."

"Aye, sir."

"I've got Odo, he's fine." Kira Nerys clambered out through a hatch, carefully carrying a stasis unit. "Julian's still in what's left of sickbay trying to figure out what else he can save. Captain, I recommend we disassemble the Defiant. It won't do us any good as it is but we might be able to use the parts for something."

"Agreed, Major. Dax! You and Kira get a crew together and start taking her apart."

"We're on it."

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"All right, tell me. What's going on?" Now that she'd cornered Julian Bashir, Kira had no intention of letting him continue acting so secretively.

"What are you talking about, Major?"

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. And since when have you gone back to calling me Major?"

"Kira." Julian took a deep breath; he couldn't keep the truth from her any longer. "You need a complete neural pathway induction. I can't do one here, I couldn't even do one if the Defiant's sickbay was operational. There's nothing I can do - you're going to die." His statement came out in a strangled whisper. "I'm so sorry."

"How long?" Kira finally managed to gasp out.

Julian's eyes were filled with tears. "Two, maybe three weeks." On impulse, he stepped up to her and hugged her. "I wish I could do something, anything."

"I know." Despite her best efforts, a tear slipped from Kira's eye.

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"All right, so if we put this over there, then we put the other one over here..."

Kira drew in a deep breath and tried to focus on what Jadzia was saying. She'd started feeling achy and tired a few days earlier, and it had only gotten harder to concentrate from there. But she'd never been the type to complain.

"Okay, Kira, can you get the - Kira!" Jadzia watched in alarm as her friend folded silently to the ground. "Julian! Julian!"

"What happened?" The doctor was on the scene immediately. "Was she injured in any way?"

"I don't think so. She just collapsed."

"That's what I thought." Julian pressed a hypospray to her neck. A moment later, she blinked and then opened her eyes.

"What happened?"

"You fainted."

"No kidding." Kira sat up and became so dizzy she almost collapsed again.

"Whoa, take it easy." Julian placed a steadying hand on her shoulder.

"Kira? Julian?" Jadzia knelt down by her friend. "What exactly is going on here?"

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Hearing that she was dying had been hard. Telling Jadzia, Miles, and Worf had been harder still. But none of those compared to telling the Captain. She didn't think she ever remembered seeing him cry before.

"There's nothing we can do?"

She shook her head soberly. "No."

An uncomfortable silence fell.

"I don't know what to say," Benjamin said finally.

"I know. Neither do I."

"I suppose I can start by saying it's been an honor to serve with you."

"The honor was mine, Captain."

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"Are you all right?" Julian had seen Kira fall trying to get off the bed.

"Yes. No. I don't know. I could at least stand up yesterday."

"Let me help you." Julian eased her back onto the bed and pulled out his tricorder. His face fell when he saw the scans.

"What is it?"

Julian tried and failed to speak several times before he finally got the words out. "It won't be long now. I'll get the others."

The four members of the senior staff who had been working immediately abandoned their projects and sprinted over. Jadzia reached her friend a few steps ahead of the others, kneeling down next to the bed. Kira grabbed her hand in a painfully tight grip, and it was then that the Trill realized just how scared she really was.

"I'm right here," Jadzia whispered, slipping an arm under Kira's shoulders. "Hold on as tight as you want.

Kira locked eyes with Worf and smiled weakly. He smiled back. No words were necessary. Her eyes met Miles' next, then Benjamin's and Julian's.

"Goodbye," she whispered almost inaudibly. "And say goodbye to Odo."

She let out a breath, and did not draw another. Her eyes became suddenly lifeless and the hand holding Jadzia's went slack.

Worf threw back his head and howled, letting the spirits of the dead know that the spirit of a warrior was on its way to join them. Jadzia slipped her shaking hand out of Kira's now limp one and closed her friend's eyes before pulling Kira's body close and burying her face in the woman's red hair. Julian was sobbing, and silent tears streamed down Benjamin's face. Miles just stared in numb shock.

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"It was my fault."

It had been two days since Kira's death, and it was only now that Worf had managed to coax out of Jadzia what it was that was bothering her.

"If I hadn't wanted so badly to examine the planet, if I had realized the barrier was unstable, if I had sent a probe through it first, we'd be back on the station instead of stranded here two hundred years in the past. Kira could've gotten the treatment she needed, except she wouldn't have needed it."

"You cannot blame yourself. It was the captain who said we could cross the barrier. Do you blame him?"

"Of course not!"

"You are grieving. And because you are grieving, you are blaming yourself."

"Oh, Worf -" With a choked sob, she leaned into him. He gently raised his arms and held her.

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"Jadzia, I really recommend you take it easy. It's only a few weeks at most. The community can function without you for an extra few weeks."

Julian's admonition was the first thing Odo heard when he was finally able to take his familiar human shape. The doctor was standing with his back to the shapeshifter, but Jadzia saw him out of the corner of her eye and turned to him.

"Julian, look!"

The doctor turned and grinned broadly. "Good to see you on your feet, Constable."

"How long has it been?"

"About four years." Jadzia stepped out from behind Julian and Odo noticed her swollen abdomen.

"You're expecting?"

"I'm due in about three weeks." She smiled, laying a hand on her stomach. "I hope for Worf's sake it's sooner rather than later. He's going crazy."

"Worf is the father?"

"Yep. We were the first colonists to get married."

"The first?"

"Oh, there's a lot of people married now. Julian got married just a couple weeks ago. Even Benjamin finally got remarried. We're still working on Miles."

"And Kira?" Odo had never considered marriage before, but if she were single, and they were stuck here for the foreseeable future...

Jadzia and Julian's faces fell. "Odo..." Jadzia began.

"What is it?" Something was horribly wrong. He could tell.

She stepped up to him and gently took his hand between hers. "Odo, Kira died four years ago, just a few weeks after the crash."

Odo felt his entire world come crashing down around him. He was dimly aware of the floor beneath his knees, of Julian and Jadzia's arms around him. He was shaking, and if he had been a solid, he would have been crying.

Why had he never told her? He'd had so many chances, and now he'd never get another one. She was dead, gone, he'd never see her again.

He had once told her - or, more specifically, told another shapeshifter he thought was her - that he had once heard the word "nothing" every time someone said his name, but that after he had met her, he had ceased to think of himself as nothing.

At that moment, he felt like nothing again.

Please Review.

I've revised this story and split it into two chapters. The second chapter should be up in the next day or two.

Please note, to use a common phrase: I'm a writer, not a doctor. I have no idea what neural tissue degradation would actually do to a person; I made up Kira's symptoms. Don't flame me if it's medically inaccurate.

And lines like "we put this over there, then we put the other one over here" are in this story because I don't speak technobabble and I didn't want to try, so I tried to avoid technical terms whenever possible.