Much Work to Do
By
AnimeFan101
Disclaimer: Don't own Deep Space 9, never shall. Just another fan occasionally bit by the fic bug.
Author's note: was watching episodes "The Reckoning" and "Rapture" when I remembered that Sisko was supposed to have much work ahead of him (so to speak) once he was in the wormhole with the Prophets. Then the muse jumped out and hit me over the head with this. Enjoy!
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It was strange, this new perspective of his, Sisko realized as he vanished from Cassidy's dream-vision. The way space and time and several more dimensions he'd never known of before all interacted into what was a corporeal, temporally fixed existence, well. It was no wonder the Prophets had such a hard time interacting with humans.
The difficulty of communicating when one side was unable to even being to conceive of over ninety percent of the conversation was immense. It made him wonder how it had ever been managed at all.
But it was time to get to work. And one of his new fellows was attempting to direct his attention somewhere. Sisko followed along, and suddenly, he was standing beside himself, so short a time in the past at the dance. His earlier self stumbled. From where he now stood, Sisko could see that it was the proximity of himself to the earlier version that had induced the physical problem.
And it was his own recollection of what was to come that suddenly drove the still-physical Sisko out the door to make for the Fire Caves and the confrontation with the Pah-wraiths and Dukat.
Seeing how the knowledge of what had been drove what would be, Sisko took a moment to swear.
Then, like smelling the color red or tasting Tuesday, he was under the ancient ruins at B'hala, watching his own finger slowly crawl toward the stone with the greeting for the Emissary.
His younger self fell immediately into the vision, and Sisko, rather bemusedly, found himself approaching the conversation four times over – once as each of the three "Prophets" that had spoken with him and once as the poor limited human trying to understand.
From his greater understanding, he was able to better understand what was actually happening.
He, Benjamin Sisko, part corporeal entity, part non-corporeal entity, had been guiding himself through his entire life. Popping in and out at the odd moment to ensure the proper path was followed, which itself was only a tiny part of a far greater existence, yet, and yet . . .
Sometimes the shadow moves as that which casts it, and sometimes it is that which casts it that moves as the shadow directs.
Effortlessly, Sisko hovered over the carver of the inscription, and directed the hands to form the words: "Welcome, Emissary."
Nodding to another instance of his existence hovering in the burning corridor of his Prophet vision from entering the wormhole the "first" time, he guided the one that would infuse his physical mother to the proper time to do so.
Truly, he did have much to do, and his own knowledge of the "when" of each critical juncture was required to properly direct the Emissary.
It didn't mean he couldn't have a little fun though, and as he drifted to whisper to himself of locusts, he touched the Grand Nagus and reversed the old Ferengi's acquisitive streak.
End
Author's Post Note: written in . . . ten minutes. Let me know what worked, and more importantly, what didn't. Thanks!