~3165—787 years later~
"Another time, perhaps."
Odo sluggishly rose from the gelatinous ocean and stepped up onto the island. He drew himself back up into Solid form. It had been some time since he'd last taken his humanoid shape, and he took a moment to assimilate his senses again and to get used to the feel of having a Solid body. He'd gotten better at shape shifting, though, and the cursory check of his features was unnecessary. This shape came naturally.
Why did Sisko's words insist on repeating over and over in his mind, as if on an endless loop? Why couldn't he get that experience out of his head? He'd tried to convince himself that it didn't matter, that he'd dreamed the whole thing. Or maybe he was losing his mind. Whatever had happened, it wasn't as if Sisko was trying to communicate with him. The captain was long dead. He'd been trapped in the wormhole when it was destroyed. But no matter what Odo told himself, it was as if the captain's words had a mind of their own. As if they were alive, whispering to him, demanding that he take Solid form and listen to them. Demanding that he give his old commanding officer a chance to speak to him again.
Odo folded his arms and cast his gaze about the landscape that was as familiar as his own shape, searching for any sign that Sisko might intend to whisk him away again. He scanned the distance for as far as he could see and saw nothing but the gentle, endless undulation of his people. Nothing. With a sigh, he dropped his arms to his sides and looked about the island. Nothing there, either. What did he expect to see, anyway? It wasn't as if the long-dead captain could show up in a runabout.
He tried to shake off the feeling, but still it nagged at him. Odo had always been fond of mysteries, and this was quite a mystery indeed. He wasn't even sure what to call his experience with Sisko. A dream? A hallucination? He hadn't thought himself capable of sleeping, let alone dreaming. And that hadn't felt like a dream. But then, who was to say that his dreams as a Changeling would be the same as when he was a Solid?
A hallucination was the more probable answer. Perhaps every Changeling lost sanity after spending as much time as he had in the Link; that could certainly explain their reluctance to embrace the change he suggested. Or perhaps, it was an effect unique to him, after all the time he'd spent away from the Link before he'd returned to his people.
Either way, what he'd experienced had disturbed him. Especially dreaming up Sisko. He shouldn't have let his mind wander back to the captain. It was useless to dwell on the past. It was useless to lose himself in the mire of self-deprecation, as was his habit. He sat himself on a rock and folded his hands before him, elbows on his knees, trying to school his mind into tranquility. If he entered the Link now, he'd only feel that dreaded sense of being thrown out of control as his people dissected his newest emotions.
Although he was sure it had been years for the Solids, he hadn't been with his people for very long when he had discovered their intention to exterminate the wormhole aliens. They'd tailored a weapon that would kill them and had made sure it would leave the wormhole itself stable. The Link had told him that the weapon had been ready for years, even before the war, but Sisko had gotten in the way. They had planned to unleash it now that the war was over and Sisko himself was conveniently inside the wormhole. In their thinking, it would kill two birds with one stone. Odo had known he couldn't allow that to happen. He'd returned to his people in the first place to prevent genocide. He wasn't about to let another one be committed. And so he had set off to the wormhole to warn the aliens.
Once Odo had arrived in the wormhole, he'd found himself at a frustrating loss for words. How did one address the gods he'd scorned for all of his humanoid existence? How did a nonbeliever even begin to explain why he cared about a god's safety? He doubted these so-called Prophets knew anything about love or duty. How could they? They had no timeline, no linear life, no need to make friends and form emotional attachments.
He hadn't been surprised when the wormhole aliens had rebuffed him as a corporeal life form. He'd heard that they had reacted to Sisko in the same way the first time. Desperation had driven him into a panic. He'd pleaded with them, yelled at their complacency, demanded that they respond in some promising way. But his efforts had been to no avail. They had sent him reeling through space, back to his ship, where Weyoun had greeted him with a sorrowful expression and had asked him if he wished to return to his homeworld.
Odo had declined. He'd watched through a Jem'Hadar viewscreen headset as the wormhole had collapsed inward and then had exploded into a brilliant supernova of light.
Sisko was trapped. Bajor's gods were destroyed. The Celestial Temple had winked out like a dead star. Odo had failed in his duty. He wanted nothing more than to return to the depths of the Link, to shut out the light, to cave in on himself until he couldn't feel anymore. For all of his life, he had been the skeptic, the doubter, the one who scowled and harrumphed at the Bajoran faith, the one who had never believed the Prophets had any right to interfere with corporeal existence. Yet they had been everything to the woman he loved. Her faith had defined her, and she had defined him. He'd had one chance to save Nerys's gods, one time when his actions mattered more than any other, and he had failed. He had let the Prophets die.
And for this, there could be no redemption.
Only Weyoun had understood the enormity of what had happened. He'd remembered his past clones' lives and knew Odo as no other Vorta did. For once, the annoying diplomat had kept silent, respectful of his god's grief.
Odo had briefly considered embarking on the seventy-year journey to the Alpha Quadrant. The Dominion's technology was superior, but it wasn't fast enough to shorten that journey by much. But he couldn't imagine what he could possibly do when he returned. The Prophets were gone. How could he bear to face Nerys, after he'd failed her so miserably? And what use would he be to the Federation or to Bajor? After Section 31's disease, he'd lost what little faith he'd had in the people he had once sworn to protect. He could just see himself ending up adrift, reluctant to return home because seventy years separated him from the one place where he still belonged.
Heavy-hearted, he had ordered a course for home. Weyoun, like any good Vorta, had complied without question. Odo had spent the trip in the Founders' quarters in his humanoid form, gazing unseeing at the wall across from him, much too tense even to be comfortable in his natural state.
Now, Odo closed his eyes and let his head fall forward. That had been years ago. He'd lost count of them all, but it must have been hundreds. Solids didn't live that long. He'd lost any chance of seeing Nerys again. At least he'd made her promise never to come looking for him; he didn't have to worry that she'd gotten trapped in the Gamma Quadrant, too. She had most likely lived out her life in Bajoran space, in command of Deep Space Nine, knowing she'd never see him again, but safe in the assurance that her world was alive and well. He only regretted that he hadn't tried to return to her, not in all the years that she could have been alive. Perhaps then, she wouldn't have lost everything; he could have given her something back.
But he hadn't.
Odo glanced around himself. He still saw no sign of the captain. Satisfied that he was as calm as he could make himself, he slipped back into the Great Link.
Over the next span of time—how long, he couldn't be sure—he spent increasingly frequent intervals on land, waiting for whatever he expected would come. It began to gnaw at his patience, and even the Link couldn't chase away his bothersome memories of his experience with Sisko. He found himself pacing the rust-red soil, throwing desperate looks toward the flame-colored sky. He was just spreading his arms into wings to pace in the freedom of the atmosphere when he was suddenly whisked from that red-orange land and found himself back among the rolling hills of his dream. He spun about, searching—no, demanding—answers. On top of the sound of pelting rain, thunder boomed in the clouds overhead. As before, there was not a raindrop to be seen.
"Captain!" he called. Perhaps Sisko was angry with him for getting him trapped in the wormhole, and was somehow punishing him now. But how? The wormhole was gone…
Again, movement caught his eye. A girl—the same girl as in his last vision—was crashing through the brush, making a beeline for him. Rain poured above her, but now Odo noticed with a flash of alarm that lightning was striking around her on all sides. She leapt forward and dove for him, calling his name desperately, just as a jagged bolt struck inches from her nose. She cried out, stumbling back. Her mouth formed his name again, but her voice was lost in the rain and thunder. Odo dashed forward. He grabbed her and threw her to the ground, remembering from some long-ago reading that lighting tended to strike whatever stood the tallest. She thrashed, surprisingly capable with her single arm, and struggled once again to her feet, staggering away from him. Odo reached out without thinking and grabbed the first thing his hand reached—which happened to be hers—and pulled her back down, sheltering her body with his own just as another bolt struck the ground where she had just been standing.
They huddled that way, him crouched in the grass over her trembling body, until Odo noticed a new presence. How he noticed, he had no idea—there was no shadow—but Odo sensed the figure nonetheless. He looked up, and there, standing free of the girl's spotlight of rain and lightning, was Captain Sisko.
"Captain!" he growled. "Are you responsible for this?"
"Not for her clouded path, no. But for her continued struggle? It's possible."
Odo ducked as another bolt struck near the girl. He raised his head once again to the captain. "I hope you realize what's happening!"
Sisko sighed. "Let's talk inside, shall we?"
The lightning ceased. Odo glowered up at the captain as he carefully helped the girl to her feet. Odo unconsciously took the girl's right hand in his own. Her fingers closed around his and he once again felt the gap where her ring finger was missing. He paid it no mind; he was well used to oddity.
Sisko led them inside the hut where Odo had found him in his first dream. Immediately, the girl's spotlight of rain began pouring in at her sideways, and Sisko shut the door behind them with a weary sigh. He turned to Odo, who held the sopping wet girl gently by the shoulders.
"Well?" Odo demanded. "I'm waiting!"
Sisko sighed. "Take a seat, Constable."
"I'd rather stand."
Sisko sat in one of the straw chairs. "That girl is not real, Constable."
"She's real to me." His words reminded him of the time he'd spoken of Taya, a mere hologram. There was a fine line between "real" and "imaginary," and until Odo had more evidence, he accepted nothing Sisko said as fact.
"I realize that." Sisko looked up at him apologetically. "And it's completely expected. She's a manifestation of reality, a reality I've been trying to make you aware of for years."
"How many has it been now?" Odo asked.
"Nearly eight hundred," Sisko said. "Odo, please take a seat. This may take a while to explain."
As Odo settled cautiously into a chair, the girl's hand once again slipped into his. He realized that if Sisko was here, speaking to him, then maybe the Prophets weren't dead after all. Maybe the wormhole still existed in some remote corner of subspace. Maybe he still had a chance.
"We're in the wormhole, aren't we?" he asked.
"In a sense." Sisko nodded. "And we were the last time I saw you, but you looked so shocked to see me that I thought it wise to let you digest what you had seen."
"You're obviously trying to give me an important message," Odo said. "What I don't understand is, why me? If you're so keen on telling me something, then why didn't you…" He struggled for an appropriate word. "…contact me earlier?"
"I know that time flies in the Great Link," Sisko said. "I wasn't sure how long to wait, in order to give you time."
"Well, you've given me time," Odo said. "And you've driven me half mad with it. But why me, Captain? What makes me so special?"
"Well, you're the only one alive, of course," Sisko said.
Odo tilted his head, uncomprehending. "The only one alive?"
"Of my senior staff," Sisko said. "Dr. Bashir…Chief O'Brien…Mr. Worf…they're all long gone now."
"What about Kira?" Odo asked.
Sisko swallowed. "I wondered if you'd ask about her."
"I'm asking," Odo said.
Sisko hesitated. "Let's come back to her later."
Alright, Odo thought, we'll play it your way. "You haven't mentioned Dax," he said.
"Dax is still around," Sisko said. "She's a man now. His name is Miro. He's quite the intrepid explorer, actually." He grinned. "I think you'll like him."
"Then why contact me, when you could contact Dax?"
"For a number of reasons," Sisko said. "But what I need to tell you begins on Bajor, and unfortunately, this Dax wants nothing to do with Bajor."
Odo frowned. "I have no intention of returning to Bajor, Captain."
"Why not?"
"Well, for one thing, it's a seventy-year journey from my home," Odo said. "Besides, why would I return? It's not as if Nerys is still alive."
"No," Sisko said, "but her descendant is."
"Her descendant?" Odo asked. He looked over at the girl at his side, wondering.
Sisko read his look and nodded, smiling broadly.
Odo frowned slightly, feeling a mix of happiness for Nerys and regret that he had missed his chance to be with her. He had always hoped she would move on, but he couldn't deny the trace of jealousy that also rose within him. "I didn't know Nerys married."
"She did, to a rather handsome Bajoran man." Sisko's smile disappeared. "But I'm afraid he caught Nerys too late to reverse the damage."
"Damage?" Odo leaned forward in his chair. "What do you mean, damage?"
"Her Prophets are gone with the Celestial Temple, Odo. What did you expect would happen to her?"
Odo looked down. "I suppose I…held the hope that…her strength would carry her through hard times."
"What she needed was you, Constable."
"Well, I'm sorry I didn't have the advantage of foresight."
"Odo, this is a problem you'll have to solve without my help. But there's something I need you to know, before I return you to your world."
"Then out with it," Odo said. "I'm losing patience with this prophetic nonsense."
"You are not really in the Celestial Temple," Sisko said. "I am, but you are still on your homeworld. I've managed to reach you in a vision." He held up a hand to forestall Odo's protest. "I don't expect you to believe this, Constable. But I need you to listen to me."
He waited, and Odo gave him a reluctant nod.
"The world I'm showing you is Bajor, Odo. A very torn Bajor. The actions of one Kira Nerys have diverted it from that which the Prophets laid out, and each of her descendants have led it further into chaos. It is a war-torn world, except it isn't at war." Sisko paused. "And it's not just Bajor. The Federation is at war against the Klingons now. And the Cardassians seem to have found something new with which to occupy themselves—they're pirates, raiders, terrorists. I'm sure you can appreciate the irony."
"And what do you expect me to do about it?" Odo snapped.
"You'll find that out in time," Sisko said.
"If all you say is true," Odo said, "and this girl really is on Bajor, and suffering, then time is too long a wait, especially where I come from."
"Then you'll consider my request," Sisko said. "And you'll return to Bajor, if you so decide." He spread his hands so as to appear nonthreatening. "I can't reach you when you mingle in the Link, Constable. And yet I've been able to reach you twice now. I'm sure you'll find a way to get yourself back home."
"According to you, I am still home."
"You know what I mean." Sisko favored him with a rather serious smile. "Well, I think that'll be all for now."
Suddenly, the hut wavered before him. Odo's breath caught in alarm. No, not yet! He couldn't leave—the girl was still in danger! He reached out for her, but she had disappeared from his sight, his surroundings replaced by bleak, red dust and cold, gelid waters before he could shout her name.
Only then, standing alone on his homeworld, did he remember that he didn't even know what it was.
