Nightlife of the Gods

by G.Dunbar

Salvation a la mode. Lies, love, blood, mud, and mutants...2nd book in a series

4. Default Chapter Title

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He thought she was a man at first. The shadow rising up from the wall to greet him was his height and size. The communicator pinned to her breast caught what little light the night afforded telling him the figure was in uniform, Federation, in turn Commander Dax, and so it was the hair that had deceived him. Clipped back in its bouffant braid, its fullness indiscernible from a hat in the dark, he would have realized it was her immediately. The head was flat though. The hair unstrapped and loose. She looked younger, different, or perhaps simply less austere. Her smile was the same. Placid, welcoming.

So was his the same with a note of shrewdness in his tone. "You belittle his influence, if not him."

"Do I?" her smile and pleasantry remained.

"Or perhaps I do," Anar entertained, inviting her to walk with him, or stand, whichever she chose. She chose to walk. They did for a few steps. "Initially possibly. Something to do with the darting eyes and nervous hands -- that, and he isn't a strong man," he stopped, the shrewdness heightened and dry. She continued waiting pleasantly. "What I forgot was arrogance requires confidence, not necessarily strength. Slow to react, I'll never turn my back on him again. His fist as easily could have been a steel pipe. Were one available, I'm not sure it wouldn't have been."

Dax didn't even have to think about that. "Actually," she said, "Julian would much prefer simply to inform Kira of the altercation, leaving you to explain the reasons why."

He understood the connotation. From attempted bribery, to disparaging remarks concerning the Trill and the Human, to Kira and Dukat, chances were Nerys would be extremely upset and not with Bashir. "Now, why didn't I think of that?" he agreed. "Underestimating his deviousness as well. Your Doctor Bashir is an interesting study, Commander, I may be forced to admit. Misleading with those darting eyes and nervous hands. Something, I trust, of which you are already aware."

"Overconfidence?" the Trill was more interested in pursuing the subject of him.

"Or less than I would care to have," Anar acknowledged the Temple behind them, her shadowed structure dominating theirs. "It's one or the other, most would probably say. In truth, it's neither.

"As it is true," he proposed coyly, aware of the contradiction between his ancient flowing robes and the man wearing them, "despite the humbleness of my robes I would say sovereign long before I said monk, though I have never cared to be either. The naked body of a lover lies beneath these robes, not a father. I pray for ideas perhaps not direction or guidance. What do I do? Not how. The Hawk commanded an army after all, not a town of thirty-five."

She laughed an amused laugh, ignoring the unnecessary provocative reference to body, lover, sticking to the numbers. "Of which 2,000 died. How many did you say abandoned the colony? To join the Federation in the Dominion war, or continue with their own?"

"More than one," he agreed. "You also don't see my eclectic graveyard of cruisers and scout ships."

"The mines," she nodded.

"Where they were first hidden, now long dead, stripped and abandoned as the caves that house them," he accepted the logic of her presumption. "We walked, but not too far. If you could identify them I could be even more impressed."

"Romulan," she assured. "Perhaps not all of them."

"No, all would likely include Federation, Ferengi, and a lengthy list of others. Curiosity, only. Was it my use of the term scout ship? Or my proposed familiarity when I boarded the Defiant that has you wondering about Romulans?"

She shook her head. "The Klingons."

"Something would have had to inspire them this far out of bounds," he understood. "It couldn't have been the Cardassians? Anon following a familiar path?"

She continued to shake her head. "Cardassian or Jem'Hadar activity in the area would not have escaped Federation attention. You mentioned gravitic sensor nets to Benjamin. Reasonably accurate in detecting cloaked Klingon vessels, it's no secret the Federation has yet to develop a reliable technology for detecting Romulan."

"Where Klingons are always alert for Romulans," he nodded, "if they are alert for no other. Cloaking ability aside, our tachyon traces would have advised, not only inspired them, the one enemy, the true enemy, the old, was around them."

"Klingons are always alert," she said simply.

"The Federation, Cardassians and the Dominion apparently not. An interesting theory," he admitted. "One that could explain much while failing to explain how or why we came to be here to be rousted by the Klingons."

"The Federation-Dominion war," she reminded. "Bajor's no resistance agreement with the Dominion. You were rousted by the Jem'Hadar initially. Scattering the surviving 3,000 of your troops across the sector where you had suspected a Dominion-Cardassian encampment. One you came here to investigate, attack, quite possibly successfully destroyed, or I don't think you would have stood down. Three thousand survivors aren't five, but they're enough. You rendezvoused in the asteroid belt, not fled there, to regroup and go home. The Klingons were coincidental. Gowron's Intelligence probably also having heard of the Dominion-Cardassian camp on the Bajoran border, arriving just after you. Tachyon traces confirmed Romulan activity, regardless of any other. The Romulan Star Empire also signed a no resistance agreement with the Dominion."

"Either that," his head tipped, "or the camp was Klingon. The attacking force Jem'Hadar who arrived before me to ultimately engage my squadrons as well. The Klingons regrouping, infused by reinforcements too late to protect their base, but never too late to fight."

She looked at him; he smiled. "Continue."

"Anon commanded a single transport," she said. "A risk and position mandated by his rank and battle experience. The Cardassians waiting until the end of the war to send him into an area where they knew Klingon squadrons continued to patrol."

"Either that," he said, "or Anon was lost, off course. Or he was en route to establish Cardassian control over a former Klingon base poised on their border. As I said, an interesting theory, both of ours. You or I either right. You or I wrong. Does it really matter? Cardassians, Klingons, Jem'Hadar. Twenty thousand beings died out here eighteen months ago. Five thousand, three, ten Bajorans. Dissention in our ranks as we lingered to collect and count our numbers leaving how many to survive the first Klingon attack. How many to fight and abandon their own, how many to die, there still remains only thirty-five."

Of an army. Dax suspected 5,000 was probably close to the actual number. She gazed back at the Temple. "No, it doesn't matter," she said.

"Not even Romulans. But then it's also no secret Maquis membership, support, or supporters, could be found to be as eclectic as our crafts -- whatever we could beg, borrow or steal."

She laughed her amused laugh again for the Terran idiom. "By general rule perhaps. Why do I think when it came to membership your outfit was strictly Bajoran regardless of whose cruisers you appropriated?"

"Probably something to do with the name Shakaar. A grass root operant whether I care to admit to it or not; I care not."

Whereas likening himself to a former Maquis General he didn't mind. Dax nodded, convinced the root of Julian's annoyance could be found in the word Maquis, aggravated by a personality clash. Probably also much of Kira's. Definitely Benjamin's. "Or something to do with you," she said. "Janice Lange and the Dukats unique in many ways."

He laughed. "Or not is probably what confuses you more. For the man gives every indication of being an isolationist. Taken to a personal extreme, I acknowledge I am. Little to do with race, mine or any other. My world? I know less of my world than you probably do. Leaving at fifteen and returning eighteen short months ago. Anon's, on the other hand? Gowron's? The Federation? You can't fight an enemy you don't understand. I was only in the process of learning the Dominion and their weapon Jem'Hadar. Their battle formula surprisingly simplistic. Dukat's reasoning strikingly clear to me. Sheer numbers. Driven as the ruthless Romulan. Suicidal as the savage Klingon."

"And yet we won," she smiled.

He looked at her. Such foolishness misplaced on her. She was voicing UFP propaganda rather than her own belief. She sighed eventually under the interest in his eyes. "Rendezvoused at our own outposts, at least, to collect and count our numbers. Be wary of dissention in united ranks. Be advised."

"I didn't say that," he replied.

No, she did. Not quite sure why only that it made sense. On political as well as personal levels. She smiled again, pleasant and calm. "Julian is my mate. Ziyal an innocent for whom Kira felt compassion. Similar to Julian and Nadya. Similar to you and Janice Lange. Similar to you and Anon and Pfrann Dukat. All else is irrelevant."

"Thank you," he said, "though I still see a difference."

"So does Benjamin," she assured, "when he looks at you and Anon Dukat."

"Benjamin?" he said as if there were some other commander or some other station other than Deep Space Nine she may be talking about.

"Captain Sisko," she clarified.

He nodded. "No doubt waiting to hear just what you have managed to find out about Anon Dukat and his adopted band of Maquis refugees. With risk of heightening your suspicions the mines and souls buried within them are best left alone and forgotten."

"Or at least interested in Lange's botanical compound," she agreed. "I have an idea he'll also be open to Julian's desire to transport Nadya with her mother and brother to the station for her necessary therapies. The issue of legitimacy is really Kira's decision to recommend or refute, though I'm sure Benjamin will have questions of all of us, and again, I wouldn't be surprised by his answer."

He ignored her, intentionally. "Anon's transport really isn't very far, if you care to confirm the crash site."

"Walking distance?" she frowned, trying to imagine Dukat and his Cardassians agreeable to walking farther than the next dinner table.

"No," he said. "Simple obedience to the rules once informed. The rule of no transport within a ten-mile radius of the town applies to all. As it applies to the grotto."

"Limiting the risk of furthering contamination to the mummy or her original environment," she said. "Lange's request isn't unreasonable under the circumstances."

"Dissention," he assured. "Honoring Janice's concerns for contamination and how she knows far better than I about such things, I know our power sources while sophisticated rather than primitive, are limited. The mummy is tangible. A reason to walk."

"Now, why didn't I think of that?" she smiled.

"I don't know," he said.

She nodded. "Admiring Benjamin, I have never envied him his position, or the duty of crew management that accompanies it. It's not easy."

"Anything else?" he wondered.

Perhaps just one thing. She turned on her heel to depart with her smile and a wink of her eye. "Julian's right. You should be glad the punch came from him."

He as well, Commander. He didn't trouble himself with calling after her whether or not it would have troubled her to hear. "One of mine rather than Anon's. Or for that matter, one of your mate's, the Klingon. Dukat, should we ever meet, is solely mine." He swore that oath by the Prophets, hearing the child Ziyal sigh beside him.

"You're such a stubborn man, Shakaar Adon, the elder. Preferring lies when you know the truth. Kira can't just be my friend? Must she be my mother?"

"She can be either or," he swore again. "The disgust you sense in me is for your father. Your brothers and my relationship is one of trust and truth, would you require something other between you and I?"

"Tact, maybe?" Ziyal bit her leathery lip as he walked away. "You're so like him in your own way when you care to be. I'm not sure if that's good or bad."

"Risky!" Q ventured with an illuminating smile and the lyrical prose of her Prophets to further entice her into seeing things his way. The illustrious gaudiness of his flowing red robes and high-topped crown were, as always, strictly for show. "The fate of the galaxy relies on His Pustule Dukat's union with his eternal mate, who shall remain nameless, if you prefer, and the birth of their eldest son."

Ziyal laughed. "Kira. Yes, of course, I know it's Kira. You know I know it's Kira. I've always known it's Kira -- "

"It doesn't take a quantum physicist to figure it out," Q's hand gently clapped over her mouth.

"Nor an advanced lifeform," Ziyal assured.

"True," Q concurred. "And figure it out, those who aren't us will, each in their own time. The Bajoran Anar as well. You're right not to answer his demands. Seeing what your Prophets see, hearing what they say, instead of deciding for himself how best the chosen serve. Wrong in his presumption Major Kira is his mate rather than your father's, he is right in his notice of a strong woman. A brave woman. A woman capable of silencing Dukat's mouth and occupying his hands. Succeeding where so many others have failed, all while keeping him deliciously entertained."

"My father truly loves Nerys," Ziyal believed. "He always has."

"If you say so," Q patted her. "Not knowing the man personally I'll have to take your word. Dare I suggest though how it also doesn't take an advanced lifeform to figure out what happens if she pledges her love to Shakaar Adon, the elder, the younger, or somewhere in between, rather than to Dukat? Hm? No, of course, it doesn't. The Bajoran is distracting her attention if he isn't managing to do too much of anything else. Not! I repeat, not a good idea. Physically, to the discriminating eye, he's far more appealing. Morally, he's far less a degenerate. Spiritually?"

"Spiritually?" Ziyal's face contorted.

"You're right," Q nodded, "we are talking about Dukat. If it wasn't for Major Kira's enduring passion for loving a good challenge if she loves nothing, or no one, I really don't think your father would stand too much of a chance IF he stands one at all; which is doubtful, highly doubtful. So let's not give either of them a reason to continue to hate each other when what they need to do is acknowledge their love, difficult as that might be, understandably so. The time for you to act is now. Major Kira needs Dukat to live, not just love. Love, she can get anywhere. So, what do you say?" he dangled another of those luscious Kaferian apples for her to contemplate and enjoy. "The quicker he's out of jail. The quicker he's returned to his rightful position as Chief Military Advisor -- "

"Maybe," Ziyal took the tasty fruit, not doubting his majesty, wisdom, or intentions, simply knowing her father very, very well. "Actually it could just be what my father needs. He takes Nerys far too much for granted, he always has, I've tried to tell him this."

"Damn!" Q stamped his foot in frustration, a risky action unto itself as the child walked away. But the planet survived without so much as a shudder. The sleeping residents slept on, all but the Human called Bashir long since awake to find himself alone in his Cardassian bedroll rather than in the company of Commander Dax.

"Jadzia?" Bashir sat up in the silent darkness with a shake of his groggy head. Groping for his tricorder he found his watch. It was still several hours until daylight.

"Yes, all right," he continued to sit there impatiently for a few minutes before he pulled on his watch and got up to pull on his clothes. Hers were gone. Boots, field jacket, everything, including his tricorder. Either in anticipation of looking for something, or with the idea of hindering him in looking for her should he waken.

"Location of Commander Dax," he activated his com badge as he stepped into the corridor.

"Short range scans for your sector are denied in accordance with the Prime Directive," the shuttle's computer reminded. "Direct communication among the assigned landing party is allowed."

"Overrule," Bashir instructed with annoyance. "Medical emergency. The woman could be in danger. I'd rather not alert them, if you don't mind."

"Please state the nature of the medical emergency for the ship's log."

"Never mind," Bashir came to his senses, annoyance increasing as he boldly checked the assortment of rooms in the main entrance hall of the Town Center, looking for light, listening for voices, including what could possibly be Anar's quarters. The out-of-place Klingon bat'telh suspended on the far wall told him someone lived there. It was vacant however, same as the others. Silent, dark, and cold. He was outside on the steps, glancing up and down the equally desolate street, knowing she could be anywhere, the same as he knew why. It stopped him from activating his com badge to call her directly. It kept him sitting out on the landing for forty minutes or so, about frozen by the time her footsteps turned the corner of the sloping stone banister to ascend the stairs.

Dax slowed in her brisk pace immediately when she saw him.

"No, it's all right," Bashir stood up, extending his hand in encouragement, his voice quiet and calm. "Come on."

"Julian…" she said tentatively as she took his hand.

"Cold out here." His arm slipped around her waist in agreement and they walked inside.

"Yes," she smiled. "How upset are you?"

"Extremely," he admitted. "Extremely angry, actually. Confused."

"I can explain."

"For what it's worth," he agreed, taking her by her hands again when they entered their chamber, trying to keep the anger out of his voice and the tone low. "I asked you to let me take care of it. I took care of it."

"Julian, it concerns the two of us."

"No, it doesn't!" he insisted, which was not only wrong, but absurd. She didn't

have to say it was, he already knew it was.

She didn't say it was. She just smiled softly and asked, "Why doesn't it?"

"Because I said it doesn't," he answered what shouldn't be the answer and was the answer, and it was equally absurd; his head hung.

She thought about that, tipping her head to look up under his at him. "I can't disagree?"

"Yes, you can disagree," he replied.

She thought about that while he thought about how to put into words what he was thinking; feeling, in all honesty.

"Julian…" she began to say something herself as his grip of her hands tightened and then slackened to rub her arms somewhat haphazardly.

"I am incredibly insecure around you," he explained. "Physically insecure. Not so much due to anything you say or do. It's just, having been a man in your lifetimes, all I've ever been is a man; you have to understand something of what I'm talking about. Call it a cultural difference if you truly don't, an entrenched obsession with male dominance. I can't fathom that gender issues have never been a part of Trill society. It's certainly played a rather large role in Terran. We like to say we no longer suffer from, or tolerate such nonsense, but that isn't true. Some of us still do. Some of us always will. I'm trying very hard not to. It's not your baggage it's mine. Mine to deal with, not yours. And I'm trying," he said, "I am really trying very hard to."

"You're doing wonderfully," her hand touched his cheek.

"Am I?"

"You're not afraid to talk?" she shook her head, smiling with the encouraging example.

"No, I'm not afraid to talk," he agreed. "Are you?"

"No," Dax assured.

"Good," his forehead rested against hers, his hands caressing her shoulders. "It's what a great deal of this is all about; talking."

"True," she said. "Are you still upset?"

"Yes," he said and she laughed.

"Would it help if I told you all I did was tell him how I agreed with you?"

"How does that help?"

"Well, I don't know," she considered how it might. "Unity, perhaps? Regardless of what he thinks he said, the way he said it, what he meant, I know exactly what he meant and said and how and he knows I know…which, yes," she snuggled closer to him, "perhaps I should tell you, even though I think you know as well. Maquis. Maquis talking to the Federation. He lets it get in the way. Not you, he does. Either intentionally or out of habit. And you just didn't stand for it."

"No, of course I didn't stand for it," Bashir said. "Doesn't negate what the man was saying, however, regardless of how or why. Particularly the nonsense about Kira. The man could be dangerous. He is dangerous if he truly believes half of what he was asking; mentally unbalanced."

"Or a man," Dax nodded.

"What?"

"A man," she laughed, giggled really. He wasn't quite sure if he'd ever heard her giggle before or not. "Even when presented with the reality that there's no difference between Kira and Ziyal and he and Janice Lange or Anon and Pfrann Dukat there is, of course, still a difference."

"Oh, I see," Bashir understood what she was saying now. "Something along my classic line 'because I said so'."

"That, and she's a woman," Dax nodded. "Partisan, courtesan, victim, one or the other is not only mandatory, it's guaranteed."

"Mentally unbalanced," Bashir assured, "as I said. The more I think about it actually, I truly do think we should tell Kira; forewarn her."

"She's fine."

"We don't know that."

"She's fine," Dax promised.

Bashir huffed. "Why? Because she's 'a woman'? Taking my theory a bit far, aren't you?"

"Because she's Kira," Dax smiled with a light kiss of his lips. "I believe you mean confession. Still angry?"

"Theory. And, of course, I'm still angry. The male ego is fragile, Terran male, anyway. Certainly nothing to just run over. Run back and forth, smashing and trampling it even if all you're out there doing is saying things like my Julian can beat your Julian."

"Liar," she laughed.

"No, I'm not lying," he said. "Certainly not about who your Julian can and cannot hope to teach a lesson. I should be glad the punch didn't come from Anon; I'm damn glad."

"Anon?"

"On behalf of Janice," he kissed her. "And my own rather rude and obvious interest in seduction, never mind the Chief."

She stared at him. "What?" he laughed.

"You conveniently left that part out."

"Of course I left it out; why?" he taunted. "Mad?"

"Devious," she nodded. "You're devious. He said you were devious, and you know what? You're devious," she assured.

"That's not all I am," his mouth connected with hers, hard, too hard. Their teeth hit, he felt his lip split, tasting the blood. The two of them momentarily froze, like they were suspended in stasis. Bashir horrified and trying not to look it. Terrified he had stirred the primitive beast lying dormant inside of her. Uncertain what she was going to do as she stared at his mouth, her fingers touching the tip of her tongue. He held his breath as she smiled, pulling her shirtsleeve down over the heel of her hand to wipe his mouth clean in the same way she had wiped the cream from his cheek.

"Definitely sanitary," Bashir relaxed into a grin.

"Hm," she kissed him. "I like your touch."

"Well, surely I like yours," he assured, punctuating his answer with a boisterous snort that even to him sounded remarkably like a grunting pig.

"No," she laughed. "I meant…I like your touch," her hands slid down his arms holding her to entwine her fingers with his. "Don't change it," she shook her head. "Don't."

"I also think," Dax said later when they were just lying there, "Anar has serious concerns, reasonable from his perspective, in just what incorporating the Federation into their lives is going to mean. Where is it going to lead? I think he's relying very heavily on Kira's opinions, comments, or just simple dialogue. Because she's Bajoran, yes. But also because of who she is. Bajoran liaison to the Federation. A lengthy and close association with Shakaar. I wouldn't go as far as saying he's confusing that with a personal interest," she said. "Kira certainly is an attractive woman, intelligent. Strong-minded, and strong-willed. You don't have to be around her for very long to realize she's also quite confident in herself and with who she is."

"Yes, all right," Bashir agreed, "I understand all of that. Simply not what it has to do with you and I."

"Looking for flaws, perhaps?" she guessed. "Not necessarily salacious information. Chinks in the Federation armor? Something to hold up when confronted, if confronted; 'you aren't any better than I or mine, and here I have the proof'?' As far as Dukat…" Dax was thinking seriously about that.

"Blind hatred, perhaps? Transferring his own concerns over how someone might view his relationship with Dukat's sons? Looking to prove Kira as innocent as himself, possibly? Not guilty? We do look upon him as having to be guilty of something. Again that infamous 'it simply has to be'."

"How mortal you make him sound."

Dax smiled. "He is mortal. Possibly a rude awakening."

"Which, speaking of," Bashir yawned in exhaustion. His eyes closing with a smile, his arm draped across her waist, his head nestled comfortably against her chest.

"I like Anar, actually," Dax acknowledged thoughtfully as she absently stroked his hair. "He's a very smart, very capable man." She wondered if she was going to be able to effectively convey that to Benjamin without sounding like she was trying to sell the man, or trying too hard to be liberal.

"I like Elise," she said. "She's also quite capable and intelligent. Sian?" Sian was very quiet, clearly preferring to stay behind the scenes where his father claimed to be most comfortable.

"And then there's Nadya," she had to laugh with a smile for Julian asleep. The energetic, precocious little girl, adorable in her odd way was close to stealing her heart. Much in the same way she had stolen Lange's and was stealing Julian's in spite of himself.

She went back to thinking about Benjamin and her report that was apt to sound more like a chatty letter with its opinions and observations rather than its objective facts, which were scattered, limited. The world was there. They were there. It was cold, dark, muddy, and awful. The time of year with its overcast gray skies magnifying the wretched conditions. The pungent smell of death lingering in the soggy air. An odd thought came to her. One of a group of hopeless people who were not without hope, their leader incorporating an insight with his abilities and intelligence. She felt herself drifting off to sleep and a strange dream. An image fixed in her mind of Ziyal watching her quietly from a doorway, mud on her boots. The mud and the boots were Julian's. It was morning.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Are you sure that doesn't hurt?" Nadya questioned Sian lying quietly on Janice's examining table allowing Bashir to do his work.

"No, of course it doesn't hurt, child," he reassured her.

"Different hands," Anar explained Nadya's interest to Kira.

"Yes," she just said.

"Trained hands," Bashir muttered to Dax as he verified the results of the modified marrow extract.

"What percentage of compatibility were you able to achieve?" she smiled back.

"Ninety-six percent," he agreed. "Not going to get much better than that."

"You're good," she patted his shoulder.

That explained his audience with their microscopic inspection.

"Emotional support," Dax nodded.

"Expected, understood, simply not en masse."

"Well…" Dax wouldn't exactly say Anar, Elise and Sian constituted en masse, especially when Sian's presence was required as well as Nadya's. Kira was simply there she supposed because Kira really didn't have anywhere else to be. "Just pretend you're demonstrating for a group of medical students," was her suggestion.

"I am," Bashir clipped the vial into place in the hypospray, removed his surgical mask and turned around to Nadya with a smile. "Ready?"

"Ready," she hopped up on the examining table with permission for her father to stay seated while she lay down. "There's plenty of room."

"So there is," Bashir agreed, wondering as he checked her arm versus her neck for the administration site, "Did you eat?"

"I'll swallow," she reminded.

"Yes. You mentioned something about that last night. Only a question. It doesn't matter."

"I can feel it," she assured.

"The hypospray?"

"The fluid. It's cold. Until it reaches the muscle. That's why Janice uses my leg. It's slower."

"Yes," Bashir said. "Rather the same as the sensation you're describing is quite common. Having to do with while the application is intravenous, it's still relatively superficial initially. It doesn't hurt, but, yes, your sensory functions are quite alert at that early level, causing you to feel the flow -- though, I suspect only momentarily. As I suspect the reason why you swallow. It can be startling, in turn causing some minor nausea. Am I right?"

"Maybe," she said.

Bashir laughed. "Nevertheless, I think we'll use your arm, if that's all right. It's a little faster in reaching your lungs, from

there those two livers of yours."

"Only one's working right," she informed him.

"True. Something else that can possibly be remedied. Not today. But, yes, something perhaps for you to think about…all right to begin?" he turned over her arm, the hypospray poised.

"Go ahead," she closed her eyes with a sigh. "But if I don't like it this way next time we're going to use my leg."

"Actually, you stand a very good chance we won't have to do this again. We'll know that within a couple of days," Bashir straightened up with a smile as she flinched under the feeling of coolness traveling up her arm, quickly changing to warmth as it seemed to spread across her chest before it dissipated. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said. "But you won't know in days, it takes weeks. It always works in the beginning. You need a complete genetic mapping of me before you can begin to determine where and why the failure occurs before it becomes widespread. Janice had one but she lost it when the Klingons destroyed her shuttle."

"Easy enough to repeat," Bashir assured.

"Here?" she asked.

Bashir hesitated, only slightly. "With the proper equipment, yes. I can conduct any screening I care to with my tricorder. What I don't have are the necessary medical and science banks. But then we didn't come here to make sophisticated determinations, only to collect appropriate botanical samples."

"Are you done?"

"With the field outings? Or with your treatment? Yes, to both. Long ago."

"That was it?"

"That was it," he said.

She sat up with a nod. "Next time you'll come better prepared. You should know that even better than I. You never know what you'll find; look at me."

"Something else I don't suppose Anar should have considered mentioning," Bashir belabored his latest criticism hours later as they trudged better than a third of Lange's staggering number of samples back to the Ark. Apparently upholding this continuing idea they were going to be able to complete cataloging her study before docking at the station. A goal that continued to seem highly unlikely to him, what with less than a third of the third's gross compound even identified.

"Well…" Dax said, not about Lange's lack of organization, but Anar's failure to mention Nadya during his invitation while they were still at the station, before they left, and hence insure they came equipped to do something other than cross their fingers and wish they could do more to help.

"You said mistrust," Bashir dropped the heavy field pack off his aching shoulder.

Yes, she had said that. Anar's, as well as theirs, the Federation. She had said, or reminded, Maquis. Elaborating on what she had said several times, all of which could be capsuled very nicely under the fair presumption, "Would we have believed him?"

"Rather than suspect some sort of murderous plot to kill us and steal a fully-equipped, state-of-the-art Federation runabout," Bashir agreed. "Yes, you also said that."

"Close enough," Dax supposed to what she had said with an eye on the field pack dropped on the floor of the cargo hold while he worked on rotating his shoulder in an effort to relieve the painful muscle spasm creeping across his upper back. "Are you just going to leave that there?"

"No," Bashir returned sweetly facetious. "I'm going to pick it up and place it neatly next to yours on the counter. Treating it with all due and earned respect -- when I'm damn good and ready, I might add."

"Why," Dax wondered aloud what she had been wondering about for several hours, "do I get the idea there's more to your mood?"

"Because you're right," he took her by the hand with a cautious poke of his head through the doorway and the sight of Kira to go along with the sounds of Kira attempting to pound the life support systems back into consistent working order. "Is there a particular reason why she has to concern herself now? Tonight? In the middle of the night, for God's sake?

"Is there a particular reason why," he chanced pulling her into their cabin, pulling off his jacket and T-shirt and tossing them aside, "the man just doesn't seduce her, making his life happier, and mine certainly as well?"

"It's not the middle of the night."

"Close enough."

"And…" Dax smiled, "last night you were complaining why Kira hadn't taken the time to work on the systems."

"Two nights ago," he took her in his arms. "Last night I was complaining about the freezing cold and the smell of the Cardassian bedroll."

"Because you like complaining," she said. "As far as seduction, I believe it takes two."

"So it does," he kissed her. "Rather the same as I suspect we stand about a fifty percent chance of agreeing there's no difference tonight opposed to last night, no greater risk to enjoying each other's company."

"Oh, there's a difference," Dax assured.

"Less room and about three feet difference in the thickness of the walls," Bashir nodded. "In the meantime these are our assigned quarters. We are assigned to these quarters. Have been always assigned to these quarters -- together, you might recall. The same as I distinctly recall asking you the first night, never mind any other, what you thought, how you felt about risking discovery, minimal as I maintain that risk is. Apparently that's changed, or you've changed your mind. We can sleep together, provided we don't sleep together. That makes sense to me, anticipated it, actually. Though I admit I didn't expect any change in what was fine, suddenly not being fine, until we were en route to the Defiant -- where, no doubt, regardless of what was fine, or not fine before, is definitely not fine once aboard."

"No, it isn't," she shook her head.

"Of course not," he said. "Though there we're capable of being decks apart from anyone, not mere feet. Quite all right. Saves my wondering, as I said, if we'll be sharing quarters, or when that sharing is bound and obligated to end."

"Tonight?" she proposed only half-joking with her smile on her face.

Bashir eyed her. "Due to Kira or my ragging?"

"I would say more the latter."

"Why?" he smiled. "Also told you come the end of the week however good I'd been or attempted to be it was all going to fall to pieces."

"It's not the end of the week."

"Close enough for my liking," he pulled her close; she let him, his breath and whisper in her ear. "Suppose I could rephrase some of what I've just said…"

"You might want to consider that."

"Wouldn't be near as honest," he assured, his eyes closing in frustration with the sound of her com badge and Kira's aggravated request for assistance. "Time nevertheless to think about it."

"A little while, anyway," Dax left to find Kira under the shuttle, deep in mud and the heart of the engineering compartment.

"I'm better with Cardassian technology," Kira offered annoyed. "Admit it. I'm better with Cardassian."

Admit? Agree perhaps, sympathetically. "Especially when the Federation's is twenty years too old."

"You got it," Kira said.

Dax smiled. "So's Anar apparently a little lost, interestingly enough -- "

"No, I wouldn't let him touch life support," Kira shook her head.

"Understandable at the time," Dax supposed. "Not to say Julian and I didn't try to lend a hand the other night, probably making matters worse -- something to do with a choice between suffocating or freezing to death," she laughed at Kira's horrified expression. "We settled for leaving the cargo hatch open. Finding air, even cold air, the better of the two."

"Well, that's fine while we're here," Kira agreed.

"But not if we plan on lifting off," Dax understood. "When are we planning to rendezvous with the Defiant? Is that all right to ask?"

"Two days out."

"If we can get it to warp," Dax nodded, seeming to remember they had some minor difficulty with that also.

"I'll settle for one," Kira disappeared altogether, hoisting herself into the compartment.

"Maybe three days out then," Dax calculated time needed versus distance traveled at only warp one, versus how long past the scheduled rendezvous Worf would be inclined to wait; not very. "Where do we start?" she wormed her way across the cramped internal underbelly of the shuttle to joined Kira lying on her back, a neat row of isolinear chips lined up next to her. "Are you sure it's not the unit rather than a faulty chip?"

"Don't even think that."

But she was. More than about the possibility of Worf having to secure them from the planet surface. "How did they transport 2,000 bodies ten miles to the grotto… More than 2,000 if you start to count Klingons," she said to Kira peering at her. "How many more; a few at least, I would imagine."

"They didn't," Kira said flatly. "The bodies buried in the grotto -- "

"Are Klingon," Dax interrupted as several of her questions came together in a plausible answer. "Away from the settlement, and probably only the handful or so who escaped being tossed in the pit; Lange objected apparently."

"Probably," Kira said.

"Where are the Bajoran graves?" Dax asked curiously.

"The fields," was Kira's guess. "The vineyard. I don't know. It's really just -- "

"Supposition," Dax smiled. "It's a good one; so's mine. I don't care if it's 2,000 or twenty transported. Those who survived were largely injured, shortly thereafter dead or dying from their injuries and some mysterious plague; quite possibly presumed to have been brought by the Klingons. They had little time and less strength to move any suspected contamination ten miles from the town."

"They had transporter ability," Kira shrugged.

"For a period of time after the Klingon attack," Dax agreed. "It's very possible they still do whether or not they have the power supply to run it; I say they don't. They do have a sophisticated holographic system somewhere supporting a projection of thirty Bajorans -- they were short five; six, counting you, on Julian's tricorder," she disclosed, "if their implants are deactivated. If they're not, there were twenty-nine too many."

"The mines," Kira said.

"I keep forgetting that rule," Dax admitted. "'What do you think I would do?'"

"That's not the only one you forgot," Kira assured. "We agreed to no scans."

"Curiosity as to our visitor," Dax apologized. "Annoyance; or I was annoyed. Julian was convinced I was imagining things. I wasn't. But it's all right. Maybe, just maybe, Anar can stumble upon a working Federation thermal unit somewhere in his eclectic graveyard?"

"No questions asked?" Kira verified after some time.

"Not by me," Dax swore. "The Chief's bound to have something to say."

"What's he care?" Kira insisted.

"When it has to be better, if not a lot newer than this one," Dax laughed. "You're right."

"Yes, I'm right," Kira glared at the thermal core they were probably going to have to remove regardless of how much they didn't want to. "In the meantime…"

"It would be nice if we could get this one operating, at least for the night," Dax said.

"Yes, it would be," Kira assured, tired of being cold, wet; it was all too familiar. Far too keenly familiar, the sensation of déjà vu continuing to haunt her.

Bashir joined them about ten minutes later, attempting to add strength to the leverage none of them had, making it an extremely tight squeeze and putting them generally in each other's way; his point. "Wouldn't it make more sense to raise her to a hover?"

"Are you going to trust it?" Kira countered.

"Point," he said. "Yes, all right. Wait a minute…" Twenty minutes later he was wiggling his way back down between the crushing weight of a conduit holding the believed offending component roughly the length and size of one of his arms, and definitely far less impressive looking than all the trouble it was causing.

"Regulating unit," Dax identified.

"Yes," he accepted. "Of course when you said thermal core, I'm thinking thermal core…" and apart from whether or not Anar had a dozen spare never-used cores in his inventory he was not going to be the one to attempt to lift and carry it anywhere.

"No, it's not the core," Kira slammed what regulated the core down on the commissary island and set to work.

"We would be issuing a distress signal to the Defiant," Dax nodded.

"If it were," Bashir agreed, "rather than bothering with this. Still may end up issuing one if Anar can't or won't come through, my question. Why bother since it's likely he does, as likely will produce…particularly if someone bats her eyes and prefaces her request with a beguiling please," he grinned at Kira hardly amused. "Point being, is there a reason why we can't ask before we herniate ourselves reinstalling what's only going to have to be removed?"

"You're right," Dax agreed with Kira. "It's more obnoxious when he's right."

"Of course I'm right," Bashir replicated himself a cup of coffee, which should work wonders in keeping him up all night should the bitter cold followed by periods of searing heat once again prove insufficient.

"Yes, we can ask," Kira kept her attitude, climbed down off her one-legged stool and aimed for the communications console, the thermal unit in hand.

"Perchance he isn't quite sure what one is?" Bashir surmised.

"Or at least considers she's serious," Dax said.

"Ah," Bashir believed he grasped what she was saying. "Rather than unwilling to openly admit she finds him as fascinating as he finds her…Of course," he grinned, "if he had the brains to match his arrogance, it might occur to him, however awkward she might feel in confronting her attraction, covering herself in gray slop and disemboweling the shuttle just to have an excuse to talk to him really is a touch extreme."

"We're talking about a man," Dax took his coffee away from him before he kept himself awake all night and her as well.

The man on the viewer screen on the other hand, Anar, while he also had a mug in his hand when he answered Kira's hail, it was probably tea. The same as while he might have been startled to see Kira looking the sight she looked, clutching what she appeared to be clutching, he covered whatever surprise he had or felt fairly nicely and quickly. Not that she gave him much of a chance to say or do anything else.

"I need a thermal regulator," she announced leaving equally little room for him to deny he had one, or request she elaborate on a suitable model number.

Smooth, no fool, he attempted neither. "Yes, I have one."

"Thank you," Kira said.

"Anything else?" he asked, secretly suspecting there was a dual purpose to her call. To accuse him of sabotaging the life support system, while it might be crossing his mind, he was dismissing it.

"No," Kira said.

"As you wish," he toasted her with his coffee, tea, whatever it was, severing the hail before she did. Dax's jaw literally slackened, Julian gnawing on the back of his hand trying not to laugh aloud behind her.

"I'll be…" Kira just waved in the direction of the two of them, secured Bashir's coffee for herself, kept the regulator unit and headed back out for the underbelly of the shuttle where she could work in peace and quiet. Whether it was muddy, whether it was cold, she was already muddy; inside it was equally cold.

"She doesn't know what she's missing," Julian cracked in her ear.

"He apparently thinks so," Dax agreed, wondering if Bashir was rocking and bending in mirth, because he was cold, or because he needed the toilet.

"No, wait a minute," he caught her hand before she followed Kira.

"Shouldn't you be complaining to the UFP about the modifications to the access crawlway?" Dax asked.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, no. I know why they modified the crawlway; the warp engines."

"Would you prefer impulse power?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

"No," she decided.

He smiled. "Can if you insist. Yes, I'd prefer impulse power. I'd prefer ending up being stranded here for the rest of our lives, regardless of the hellhole it is."

"Speaking of extremes," she scratched at the drying mud clinging to his jumpsuit.

"Just a touch," he tipped her chin up, her eyes watching his. "What if I just say I love you? Because to me that says everything. If not, the only other thing I can say is as quickly as I have become used to you just being there, it isn't going to be a habit as easy to break."

"We're slated to meet the Defiant two days out."

He gave up trying to guess if she was talking about something to do with the engines, or what she was talking about. "What does that mean?"

"It's nowhere near the end of the week?"

"Darling!" he grabbed her, tripping over her feet, or her tripping over his, it didn't matter.

"Julian…" she said.

"Yes, I know," he gasped in between his determined kisses. "You like my touch, don't change it. Except I rather suspect this is my touch…" When he was feeling anxious, desperate, excited, in particular all three. The sharp edge of the island gouging into the back of his hand as she kept her balance against his weight pressing her backwards really meant nothing; her com badge sounded.

"Actually that's what I meant," Dax laughed as he stared at the communicator and Kira's order for assistance or company. Whichever it was she really wanted or needed.

"Damn!" Bashir said, inviting himself along even though he hadn't been asked.

One step through the hatch of the shuttle however neither of them were likely going to prove wanted or necessary. The spiraling swirl of colorful light greeting them was not a transport signature Dax recognized. The figure emerging she did; Anar. Dressed for work, not play. Holding the precisely wrong model of what was probably not a Federation thermal regulation unit, suggesting he either knew what he was doing or he didn't, so why waste commenting?

She didn't. "Why walk?" she mentioned instead.

"Especially in this weather," Anar agreed, unzipping his jacket in anticipation of a tight fit.

"It's raining," Dax explained to Bashir just in case he was wondering why his head was wet.

"Yes," Bashir said, fascinated. "Shocking."

"You missed your calling, Doctor," Anar admitted with a gesture for the underside of the Ark. "Kira?"

"Access crawlway," Dax nodded.

"Modified access crawlway," Bashir hastened to add. "You may want to -- " Dax's hand clapped over his mouth.

"That not only makes sense, Doctor," Anar had already disappeared except for his voice and dry, parting shot, "I am aware."

"Lose more than the jacket and slather on a little mud," Bashir removed Dax's hand with a slick and oily grin. "Unnecessary, you're right. For some reason I suspect our Mister Anar can slither his way through most anything despite his manly size."

"Manly?" Dax verified, but only because while she could borrow his T-shirts and jacket, she shared Anar's height and weight.

"Well, yes, when describing him," Bashir kissed her. "Luscious when talking about you."

Dax smiled. "He's aware of the crawlway because Kira allowed him to assist Rom with the engines. She just wouldn't let him have anything to do with the life support systems."

"Solid waste disposal," Bashir agreed. "And, no, I don't want to know about it either. I'd much rather just go about my business and not worry that I'm taking my life in my hands every time I answer a call of Nature."

"Coward!" she laughed at him and the twisted, sick image that sprang to mind.

"Absolutely," he encouraged her back inside where it may not yet be warm but it was dry.

"Well," Dax supposed they would only be in the way.

"Definitely," he kissed her.

"And," she smiled, "there's my report for Benjamin."

"Oh, yes," he said, "and a hundred or so samples I can't wait to catalogue."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Anar tossed his jacket up into the hole, lifting himself up after it into Bashir's modified crawlway better described as bastardized.

"I can't…" Kira started to say she either couldn't do it alone, couldn't get the unit to work, hearing the metal of the jacket strike the alloy floor and stopped with "I can't" when she realized the low slung figure swiveling its way toward her wasn't Dax.

She eyed the Cardassian modulator cradled in Anar's arms like a rifle. "I can't use that," she picked up where she left off.

"It'll work," Anar promised.

"No, it won't!" she snapped.

"We'll make it work."

"Fine," she flung her regulator at him; he caught it. "Make it work."

"Faith never hurts," he smiled, pulling his jacket forward to collect his tools.

"Faith," Kira snorted. "That's not a Federation regulator module."

"But it is compatible," Anar patiently worked at integrating the circuitry for several minutes following a brief inspection that had him concluding it would be simpler to use the Federation housing rather than attempt to modify Anon's for a secure and stable fit.

Kira watched him. Tiring as the time passed, growing annoyed when he didn't fluster over the tedious project, angry when he tested the integrity of the chips and they held. The regulator refusing to seize and explode into frozen crystallized shards. "Do you even have a Federation regulator module?" she stuffed her face in his just in case he had forgotten her in his concentration, along with misunderstanding why and what she was most angry about.

"Not one I would trust in this instance, no," Anar agreed. "This unimpressive hulking piece of trash is as heavy as she is old. Sisko surprises me that he would be far more concerned with protecting Federation technology than the lives of his staff."

"No!" Kira said. "And that's not all you lied about!"

"The transporter," Anar replied. "If you speak with Commander Dax I am certain she will reassure you it's not the technology we lack, but the power resources. This has occurred to her recently…since coming to realize the world we inhabit is not living, but long dead." He eyed the narrow squeeze between the air conduit and increasing heat of the system's thermal core in danger of overheating and then, yes, they would be stranded until the Defiant could secure them. He just might have to call Bashir to thread his slender frame up to reaching the exposed control panel. But then what to do even with explicit instructions, Anar highly doubted if the doctor knew despite his enhanced intelligence. It wasn't someone's body, after all. Merely a large and unattractive collection of wires and aging isolinear chips requiring logic, not art.

"What are you doing?" Kira demanded as he grasped the steel conduit as if it were a rope, trusting it to hold his weight or not; it held.

Anar pulled himself up the necessary few feet, the tips of his fingers quickly bleeding from the strain of digging into the merciless coil too thick to wrap in his hands. The thermal core was hot under the soles of his boots when his feet touched it. Using the power and strength of his legs to force the coil back, he was braced securely between the two, but for the coil supporting his back, his feet propped against the master unit, suspended in midair, the control panel well within reach, directly in front of him. It was a position he believed he could hold comfortably for twenty minutes or so before his legs began to tire. He doubted if he needed anywhere near that much time.

"Accomplishing our objective?" he saved his answer for Kira until that point. "Please," he requested she hand him the regulator he had left behind.

She slapped it in his hand. He nodded, beginning the last of the necessary adjustments to the master circuits before reinstalling the unit. "Curiosity only," he prefaced his question, "am I too like him or not enough that irritates you more?"

"You're nothing like him," she spit; he could hear the saliva wetting her lips.

"Adon," he presumed since it had already been established he was so like Dukat as to make her sick. "Only in the face," he took a moment to smile down on her. "You're right. A similar affliction, some might say, Pfrann shares with his father."

She was silent before she muttered something under her breath. He heard it, understood the words but said "What?" anyway.

"I said!" she said with venom. "I happen to like Pfrann!"

It was Anon she loathed. For no reason other than the mass, the power, the size of him. The advanced age of young adult that had him incapable of being swayed without good reason. Anar could say it had him questioning her ability in making good judgment in people but that would be untrue and unfair to Pfrann.

"So do I," he assured. "At seventeen. Believing, trusting, knowing, with Anon's direction and guidance I will like him at fifty-seven. Whatever your beliefs and perceptions of Anon, they are wrong. He is not his father, no more than Dukat could ever hope or be his son."

"Uh, huh," she sneered. "So he would like to think."

The expression with its contempt was Federation, reminiscent of O'Brien, adopted by the Ferengi Quark. The subject of her statement simply unclear. He was down from his perch, sitting on the floor, no longer walking on air.

"What?" Kira said.

His head tipped. "It's words like those that have me confused. I cannot tell if you are condemning or defending him."

"Who?" she insisted.

"Dukat," he said. "Prefect Dukat. A concern and wonder I haven't mentioned since you requested I not. I am though asking you now. So who would like to think what? Anon that he is not his father? Or Anon that he could ever be his father?"

"You don't have to mention it," she assured.

He stared at her. Uncertain if he was angry that she refused to answer his question or that she refused to hear it. "Nerys," he said sternly, "that's not what I asked you."

"Don't tell me what you asked!" she had his laser in his face, the knife he had used to slice the modulator open rather than waste time prying its locked seal loose.

"And don't!" she held him off from any personal advance he might be considering. "Even think about it! Why would I ever defend Dukat? Why would you ever think I would ever defend Dukat?"

"I don't know," he reached to move the threatening laser from in front of his face. She knocked his hand aside so he grabbed her wrist and took the knife. The force she pulled away from him with had her twisting backwards. Crouched, as he was, in an area where the two of them could barely fit, she fell over. He heard the crack as the back of her skull struck the base of the cooling thermal core. Saw the grimace of pain on her face as she grabbed her head, struggling like a toppled turtle to sit up.

"Don't touch me!" she warned him before he tried, before he asked, activating her com badge to holler for Bashir.

It was an inopportune call, rousing Bashir from the throes and deep passions of making love. Threatening him with reality at a point when no one cared about reality, topped off by the Chief's voice running through his subconscious mind, rambling something about if you weren't doing what you shouldn't be doing you wouldn't have cause to complain, paying money and taking chances.

Taking chances here was taking chances on being interrupted with what was an interruption regardless if the drawn lines between professional, personal, timing, opportunity, behavior, conduct, were blurred; they were blurred. Distorted, out of control, any viewing audience of reasonable intelligence would be shocked, concurring with the Chief, and perhaps they knew better than he, because he didn't know at all. Uncertain if he ever knew where the lines belonged drawn. When professional, duty, responsibility, became personal life and hence no one's business but one's own. At what point. With whom. What time. Where.

Chances were it wasn't there. Still, in the face of the rude awakening of reality, reality was he was no worse or more out of control than Dax. Who was no worse or more out of control than Kira, or Anar, and so on down the line. They were all crazy, having gone insane. Priorities confused with emotions. Perhaps it had something to do with the water or something in the air.

Bashir's senses cleared. Not completely, but well enough to know his shirt was calling him and the voice was Kira's, angry and impatient.

"I don't believe it." His voice was hoarse. His breathing breathless and labored, the back of his head drilling into the bed when he answered what he maintained was an interruption. The third one. What hadn't been the middle of the night before, was the middle of the night now, somewhere around 0300 or zero-four.

"Believe it," Dax kissed him, her voice husky. Her eyes sensual and dreamy. She looked intoxicated. Her movements, mood, almost serpentine, distinctly not Human if Bashir thought about it too long or too hard, which he didn't care to. What was exotic ran a considerable risk of quickly becoming unnerving at this early point in their relationship. Consumed, fairly obsessing about her and being with her, he was capable of being jarred awake from his involved trance-like state which she was not. Instead, she was impervious. Questionable to what extent she was even aware of other sights or sounds around her once induced. Her mood requiring time to wear off.

It was another one of those fascinating, frustrating contradictions that seemed to rule her. Each in their own way probably contributing to why he fell in love with her in the first place. He preferred to keep it fascinating. Believing he was in love with her and she with him. The two of them finding each other hypnotic and intoxicating, enticing and exciting, not finding themselves suffering from some bizarre addiction to the immense pleasure of giving and receiving physical pleasure, ignoring the expected subconscious vandals promoting nagging fears and insecurities from the usual to the absurd.

A cliché almost whenever broaching issues of morality and love. Both too easily becoming twisted to morality versus love, commingled, interchangeable, synonymous somehow with race, culture, and hence bigotry, fear, fanaticism. Making love to another man's wife, or making love to seven different people. Some of them men, some of them women, all of them housed within the body of a worm, nestled in the body of a woman. If he didn't believe he was making love to the woman he was in love with the puritanical ancestors of his culture would require he'd vomit otherwise.

In the meantime he had more than enough to occupy his senses reaching heights of maddened, desire-driven desperation dealing with the frustrating aspect of her lingering at being far less easy to ignite than he was, requiring a continuing degree of cajoling. Her cool clear senses prevailing until she gave in to him talking her into bed where she underwent a transformation from Commander Dax to Jadzia.

When, exactly, Bashir really didn't have any idea. But then he was usually blind and largely incoherent by that time. Nevertheless, far preferring to glide back into reality in tune and in time with her, however long that took. Not be rudely awakened by an alarm ringing in his ear especially when he heard it and she didn't and therefore she stood this enormous chance of frightening him to death until he grew accustomed to her. The surreal aspect of her. The differences between her and him that he loved and wanted to keep right on loving.

His senses were obviously not as clear as he thought they were. The alarm ringing was Kira that Jadzia heard the same as he did. He wasn't startled and frightened to find her draped over him with her half-closed eyes. He knew she was there, he wanted her there, and he was annoyed about having to get up.

Or move. He moved. He didn't get up. Not all the way. He started with his arm, sort of flailing it around out in midair somewhere until he realized that wasn't going to work if he couldn't even find the floor which annoyed him even more.

"Excuse me," he grudgingly pardoned his way out from under Dax to sit up and lean over to find the floor, his jacket and com badge and answer Kira screaming for him practically by that time in searing hysteria.

"Yes?" he answered. His voice sounding groggy and half-asleep, not consumed by passion or guilt over having been caught, or at least interrupted, in the middle of a compromising position.

That was Anar's observation of the doctor's response. Whose otherwise knowing smirk Bashir couldn't see, nor hear, if there was anything to hear above Kira bellowing "I said don't touch me! I know it's bleeding! It's fine!"

Bashir looked back over his shoulder at Dax sitting up waiting patiently for him. He looked back at his com badge. His senses apparently not the only ones garbled and confused. "What's bleeding?" he inquired, but only because he was a doctor, not because he was particularly interested.

Neither was Kira interested. Bashir rather than Dax came out of her mouth when she hit her com badge because bang head, feel pain, see blood, equaled hurt, medical, call doctor. It was simply a matter of association not what was on her mind. The thermal control unit was on her mind. The life support systems. The temperature.

"Do you have heat?" she insisted what she would have insisted of Dax.

Did they have heat. Bashir didn't know. It was a difficult question to answer in the middle of the night especially when he felt hot. In the meantime he also felt wet and that didn't necessarily mean they had water. "Do we have heat?" he asked Dax.

She looked around. Either trying to figure it out for herself or trying to figure out what he was talking about. "I think so," she answered tentatively. The cabin seemed hot. The air felt hot. However being she concluded her observation with a stroke of her hand down his perspiring back and a kiss of his shoulder when she leaned over, he was forced to conclude that alert as she didn't look she probably wasn't. Whereas alert as he didn't sound he possibly was.

Kira remained simply out there, bleeding for some reason and barking about the temperature when she wasn't barking "Bashir!"

"Wait a minute," Bashir surrendered to getting up, finding himself in a stagger that he straightened out of with a shake of his head to find his trousers, T-shirt, and com badge that he clipped to his waistband. The door to the cabin opened to the corridor where it was much colder. He stood there for a few moments attempting to decide if they had heat or simply stifling close quarters. Or no heat or simply an open hatch.

"I believe we have heat, yes," he notified Kira, overlapping her "Bashir!"

"Yes, I'm here," he said. "What's bleeding, by the way?"

"My head!"

"Badly?"

"No!"

Bashir nodded and went back to bed. Trousers, T-shirt and com badge. He pulled Dax back up to him as he laid down.

"What?" she smiled, her fingers running lightly through his hair, pushing it off his forehead.

"I love you," he kissed her, consciously aware while it was not the end of the week, at some point it was going to be the end of the week, Worf waiting in the background. He was not going to be any good at this at all. He knew that already.

Dax had an idea that might be true. Kira would leave for the township when Bashir and she did, some several hours later. Anar had apparently walked or transported home immediately after stabilizing the temperature controls. Kira claimed not to know which when Dax spoke with her in the morning, having Dax suspect Anar either walked using the time to think, or transported thinking at home. About what?

Well…Dax's objective observation of Kira, a woman she knew as well as Julian, inspired her to want to chance suggesting to Anar regardless of what he might be thinking, had he considered a different approach? By this time, like Julian, who was offended by everything, it was hard to deny Kira was very much offended by Anar even if she wasn't feeling any particular animosity toward the colony or its inhabitants, which Dax had an idea Kira wasn't. The roots of her annoyance, frustration, anger were probably found in that it was an all too familiar scene, with Kira as probably blaming the Cardassian Occupation despite the few facts they had that clearly implicated the Klingons this time around. The mines waiting in the distance were just too many and too ominous for Kira to ignore. Anar hadn't found a dead world, he had found an enslaved one now dead. Whatever species lay claim as the planet's original inhabitants, Bajorans at some point in history had settled there, evident by this town and probably several others dotting the continent, Dax surmised. Quite possibly, more brought there, and then what? Massacred upon the Cardassian withdrawal at the end of the occupation? Probably. Anon Dukat was following a known path eight months ago when confronted by the Klingons, of that Dax remained convinced. He wasn't lost. Discounting anything else, young Gul Dukat simply didn't seem the type.

Anar's obvious and ardent embrace of Anon who was as obviously Cardassian and Dukat, which Anon was by name and his embrace of the power of the name even if he didn't embrace his father's interpretation of what it meant to be Dukat, was interesting unto itself. Particularly so because of the three of them the two Anar needed, Julian for the fact he was a doctor, Kira for her connections to the Federation and Bajor otherwise known as Benjamin and Shakaar, were the two he persisted in agitating.

I wouldn't say subtly as much as I would say quietly. Dax wrote in her journal for Benjamin, which was what her report was. A journal. A letter. Trying hard for it not to be she decided to just let it be what it was, lacking only the salutation Dear Benjamin. She chose the long, tedious method of actually etching her words by hand rather than the standard spoken log, understanding what Jake, Benjamin's son, meant when he said there was just something about the pen touching the paper, or in this case, the magnetic face of the padd. Watching the words stain the log with the personal touch of her own handwriting, hoping to impress upon Benjamin the nature of the experience, the world. The slowness and privacy of the writing allowing her to formulate her thinking as she wrote what she was thinking, her suppositions, observations, quietly in the background of Julian arguing with Kira about returning to the township to retrieve Lange's inventory and that was all. Countering Kira's stubborn no with a ludicrous claim of not minding four round trips, or however many might be necessary to gather the studies, limited data, and return to the shuttle where he could work in peace and quiet for the next two days.

Julian had his points. If he were telling the truth beyond finding Kira's presence largely a personal nuisance, Dax just might possibly have believed him alongside knowing Kira was as obsessed with just being contrary as he was; Benjamin's main reason for including her, she knew. Julian and Kira's responses and outlook were commonly and typically emotional, as was the Chief's. Railing against what they didn't like, they were not Benjamin's peacekeepers it was probably easiest to put it that way.

She, like Worf, and in general, Odo, were the opposite. Calm. An abiding sensitivity to all and others that maintained they remain calm and objective and fair as possible in the face of whoever or the heart of whatever public display. In the meantime, Worf wasn't there. Nor Odo, nor the Chief. It was just Julian, Kira, and her. Jadzia Dax the diplomat. Jadzia Dax the arbitrator stationed between the two giants-in-their-own-right positioned to either side of her and sure to clash over something. Other than that she was extraneous. Someone to assist Kira with the security and safety of the landing party, someone to assist Bashir with his cataloging. An extra pair of hands to help collect, carry, tote, and lug the samples, Lange's inventory, if in existence, Benjamin probably expected something to be there.

Dax continued to wish he were here. She looked up from her journal for Kira and Bashir with a smile. "It makes more sense to catalog what we can there."

It was the diplomat Dax speaking, agreeing with Kira, although she knew Kira was simply disagreeing with Bashir. Not with the idea of taking the samples and working anywhere but Lange's laboratory was separating the Federation from the township and hence the Maquis. Drawing a line at a time when they were supposed to be entertaining the idea of erasing one, employing the fine art of looking the other way, here, anyway. With this surviving group. Whose leader, town elder, just by sheer coincidence happened to bear the name Shakaar.

Benjamin would probably prefer to think that reality played a very small role to his agreeing to even sending them there, beyond the concern for the national security of Bajor and Shakaar once the quadrant was confronted with his uncle's exploits.

In reality it probably played less of a role than it would have with others, and more of a role with Benjamin than he would care to admit, but then either way Benjamin was no fool.

Julian's retorting "What?" by contrast was nasty, not even simply insisting or challenging. Dax looked at him.

"Fine," he added abruptly and was gone, through the hatch and heading for the town leaving Dax to look at Kira looking back at her.

"His priorities are confused?" Dax offered what was true, just not sure if she would be able to define what she meant and which priorities to Kira's satisfaction if asked to elaborate.

She wasn't asked. Kira was satisfied to have simply won the argument with or without Dax's deciding vote. "And how," Kira supported and was gone. Through the hatch, quickly on Bashir's heels, sparking a new argument that consisted mainly of her touting the wisdom of Dax's words and Bashir as empathic in not caring if Kira enticed the galaxy into agreeing with her, he was still right, and Kira was still wrong.

Dax looked at her letter to Benjamin, wanting to digress and write something along the lines of speaking of Julian. Who was Human like Benjamin was Human and therefore Benjamin was probably qualified in either supporting or explaining what Julian had identified as the fragility of the Human male libido. An idea she believed she understood without fully understanding the historical or psychological details behind the premise. Just simply puzzled as far as how to avoid trampling the intangible erratic sexual-based energy of which Julian seemed to incorporate more than a balanced share in his psyche, before it announced she was stepping on it, which was what she was doing, or had done, again.

She had certainly done something again. Julian's words were nasty, his eyes accusatory when he had turned away from her to exit, his libido bruised and bleeding. She had chosen Kira over him, she understood that much, as much as she understood he was wrong. She hadn't chosen Kira. Merely refused to join him in crossing her fingers that Kira's impatience would rise long before completing four round trips to the town and back to the shuttle and she would decide to remain in the town regardless of what they did, through the night.

Whereupon if they remained at the town throughout the day, eating the common evening meal with the residents, chances were Kira would have tired of Anar long before that time, looking forward to returning to the shuttle where she would remain, as they remained, through the night.

The key to Julian's frustrations could be found in the phrase through the night where Kira's presence made him uncomfortable enough to complain about it and want to manipulate his way around it, though not uncomfortable enough to sleep in their assigned bunks rather than together. Julian's logic was as convoluted as his moods and personality. If Dax thought about it too long she'd have a headache rather than a feeling of sympathy for how he gave every indication of being the Human male libido not simply incorporating it in his psyche. She settled for finishing her thoughts on Anar's embrace of Anon and his hesitancy in embracing the Federation and Bajor Prime. Twenty minutes later she set her journal aside, her long legs and easy stroll eventually catching up with Julian and Kira still spitting back and forth.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Julian's face was tight and red with aggravation, redder and tighter and almost embarrassed when he caught sight of her.

He looked away, ending his participation in the debate with Kira. "Yes, well, there really is no point in discussing it any further." Uncomfortable with the thought Dax could read him so easily and clearly. She could. It crossed her mind how perhaps he might want to exert a little effort in learning to read and understand her? She was not maliciously or intentionally usurping him or flaunting her will over his, discounting his feelings or him, or whatever it was he thought she was doing. She maintained his priorities and thinking were confused, during the daylight hours anyway, however clear and straightforward he submitted to being come night.

Other than that, when it came to a variety of specific issues and the colony she simply held a different opinion than him. Ones that she wanted to pursue discussing freely with Kira since the only two arenas available to her in discussing them with him were during an alternating exchange of arguing and soothing his injured ego, or between his kisses in bed. She was free of such pressures with Kira…or generally free.

"Yes!" Kira's sharp nod greeted Dax, once again satisfied to have emerged victorious upon Julian's relenting.

"Maybe I should just bang the two of you together," Dax smiled back. "Or at least your heads," she clarified when they both looked at her. "Sorry. But asking me to be a babysitter really is a bit much."

"Huh?" Kira said.

"Yes, well, if you're going to bang anyone's head," Bashir further added to that before falling into a muttering silence under her leveling look. "Yes, all right, fine."

"Thank you," Dax said.

It was a pleasant, though quiet two-hour walk from that point; it was a reasonably quiet day. They worked in Lange's lab cataloging several samples before packing up this latest group for transportation back to the shuttle. Julian found Anar's cooperation in requesting permission to examine the pregnant twenty-six year comfort woman whose name was Noya, again no family identity revealed. Noya was fine. Healthy and cooperative, friendly as two evenings before. Bashir found her "charming" opposed to Dax who decided she couldn't stand her anymore than Elise could. Kira was off for the second of a half a dozen or so encounters with Anar disguised as discussions and town council meetings, the last of which Bashir and Dax were invited to attend before dinner and before returning to the shuttle.

What Town Council Anar neglected to explain though the Town Council of three days ago had consisted of the town less the attendance of the two minor children, Nadya and her infant brother San.

A mistake Anar acknowledged to Kira earlier in the presence of Bashir and Dax, the cause behind Nadya's feelings of separation and subsequent boredom that had led to her investigating the Federation for herself.

He proposed this with a straight face, Kira answering without emotion, "Makes sense."

The two of them oblivious to Bashir's agog expression quickly followed by his clipped retort to Dax not failing to notice him, "Yes, I know. Mind my own business."

"It does make sense," she said. "If you think about it."

He didn't want to think about it anymore than he wanted to attend the council meeting, but he did. The newly conveyed entity consisting of Nadya, her mother Elise, Anar and four of the colony's male members. One of them the father to Noya's child destined to be birthed five months from then, and on a darker note, one of the surviving amputees from the Klingon attack, the dangling short stump of his left arm shrunken in comparison to the intimidating muscles of his right. A notice the Bajoran was quick to address with how he was in no more of a particular hurry to accept a prosthesis from the Federation or Shakaar as he had been in a hurry to surrender to a Klingon bat'telh that missed his ear and took his arm. After that they all went to dinner.

By 2400 surface time they walked into the shuttle's cargo hold to set their field packs neatly down next to the others. It was not an arrangement to Bashir's liking anymore than any other. He labored over rearranging the samples for an hour or more, confusing himself long before that time between what had been catalogued and what hadn't.

A difficulty he put to and pointed out due to Dax and Kira's chronic inattention throughout the day, aggravated by their incessantly long and frequent coffee and/or tea breaks. Distracting as the one that engaged their attention now, fairly continuing to ignore him as they sat down on the floor, their legs and respective line of cups stretched out in front of them. He retired to the peace and quiet of the cabin by 2530 in sheer desperation to get some work done. Dax let him go, continuing to want to pursue sharing her opinions and observations with Kira, her lengthy monologue that touched on just about everything she had written to Benjamin thus far, ending several minutes later.

"And?" Kira said.

"And…" Dax agreed after a moment, followed by a smile, "that's what I think."

Kira nodded, got up and retired to her cabin, leaving Dax sitting, drinking her tea.

"And…I think I have it," Dax nodded eventually, understanding what she already knew. Benjamin was there. Through her, he was there. Their field study as much a scouting party. She, Benjamin's eyes, his ears, his recorder, and his reporter. It was just another reason why Benjamin had included her, in return expecting a report.

She could see him listening attentively as always to Kira's brief, bottom-line account, requesting politely, usually at the end, "If you could please explain, Major, what you mean when you say it's nothing I haven't seen before."

"Explain what?" Kira would as usual reply. At which point Sisko would turn to Dax and her record for the answers to the questions that Kira found unnecessary to be asked or addressed. He should understand it all by now by instinct the way she did. He didn't, couldn't; however, with Dax's assistance and clarification he might realize he understood more than he thought. Finding Dax's revelations and impressions insightful rather than a reiteration of what Kira, being Bajoran, already knew.

"Such as the already discussed probable location of the Bajoran graves opposed to the Klingon?" Dax spoke aloud though she was speaking to herself. "The convenience of the Cardassian mines to house the remnants of much more than simply Cardassian technology?" To the plausible explanation behind Anar's trepidation with the Federation put alongside his embrace of Anon Dukat.

"What do you think I would have done?" Kira's stock answer was ringing in her ears.

"Well, maybe not embrace Anon Dukat," Dax guessed whether Anon came bearing gifts or whatever he came bearing. In that way Anar was the prostitute in Kira's eyes regardless of what she was in his. Selective yes, in that it was only Anon Dukat not his father, but a prostitute nevertheless. Kira understood he had his reasons, she understood his reasons. Forgave him probably, even though it was not something she would have done.

However, confusing to her that he had? No. None of this was confusing to Kira. Certainly not anything new. Aggravating, yes, in that it reeked of a life she had lived for the first thirty years of her life. The unkempt slums if one was one of the lucky ones. The settlement camps if one wasn't. The elements of Nature. The mud, the mines, ragged fields, and dwarfed trees.

The technology that was worthless without the power resources. Dax glanced at the organization of the samples Julian had steadfastly endeavored to destroy before he gave up and left. He was behaving like a spoiled brat. Totally, totally, fixated on having his will and his way and throwing a tantrum when he couldn't. When the field study took precedence over what he'd rather be doing. When the heat, the life support systems. Kira.

Completely ignoring, not even forgetting, the reason why they were there; he really didn't care. If she wasn't truly feeling sympathy for him, if she wasn't perplexed as to why, she would be very annoyed, angry by this time. She wasn't. She lingered another hour or so straightening out the disarray that would take eight hours to re-catalogue.

He was lying on his stomach on the lower bunk, shirtless and probably naked under the thin sheet covering him, his head resting on his arms crossed in front of him like a pillow, facing the wall. He turned from the wall to look at her when the door opened, his chin propped and resting on his arms. His eyes and head following her approach that ended bedside. She crouched down, lightly touching his fingers lightly touching hers.

"I thought you might be asleep," she smiled, refraining from suggesting he say something like What if I just say I love you? As he had the other night. Having an idea he might think she was mocking him, rather than only teasing him.

He would have. "No, I'm not asleep," he replied, refraining from saying how he felt like she was intentionally sabotaging what he viewed as an opportunity to spend time and share time with each other. Harsh words. Accusing ones. Inflammatory. Having great potential to trigger an argument, so he avoided them. A familiar and apparently ongoing problem in their relationship. Willing to talk, wanting to talk, trying to talk, in fact talking, they remained only open so far to the new and startling idea, severely limiting each other and the odds of success in what they were trying to accomplish.

Or at least in what he was trying to accomplish. Her, he wasn't so sure. Worf, Curzon, pressing on his mind, he didn't need Kira, Anar, some helpless child named Nadya, and thirty-three more hapless peasants; his head was spinning. Hers apparently wasn't. Taking everything in stride and, yes, if anything about her flabbergasted him, that was what flabbergasted him most of all. He sat up to give her room to lie down once she finished undressing, watching her while she did, confessing this much, "I should have just refused to become involved, requesting a damn two week holiday."

"Refused…" Dax slipped down into bed.

"Yes," Bashir insisted. "On principles alone. What could he have said?"

Principles being Anar et al were Maquis and they were Starfleet. He being? Who? Benjamin? "What would you have done on your two week holiday?" she asked rather than comment on what Benjamin would have said insofar as his Chief Medical Officer refusing to follow an order regardless of whether or not the order measured up to his principles.

Take her with him. Do what he wanted to do there. Get to know her. "Damn it all, Jadz," he said, "I can't feign interest where there is no interest, anymore than I can deny who and what I'm interested in; you. Why do you think I even agreed to come? Why do you think I ever do?"

Jadz. He didn't finish her name, shortening it to a frustrated term of endearment. As far as a two week holiday, Worf would probably have as much to say about that as Benjamin, something else she refrained from mentioning. "No interest other than in Nadya," she smiled though knowing what was frustration would be fury when he found out they were leaving without Nadya, for now anyway.

She was right. When he found out, tomorrow, he was furious once he recovered from his shock, exploding in a tirade of angry words that all the attempted reasoning in the galaxy only made worse. In the end, mid-sentence, he gave up attempting to scream some sense into them and walked out of Lange's lab and headed home to the shuttle without once looking back.

That was tomorrow, however, here it was still tonight. "Come here," she kissed him. The kiss escalating to making love until they feel asleep, until it was tomorrow morning, and they left with Kira one more time for the township and Lange's laboratory to finish cataloguing what they could. Collecting all remaining samples neatly set aside for them to take, and Anar made his nightly appearance around 2100 surface time to remind Kira of her standing invitation to the community meal, theirs as well.

"No," Anar answered Bashir's inquiry into the status of Nadya and her mother and brother returning with them tomorrow to the shuttle. From there the rendezvous with the Defiant, from there Terok Nor that they insisted upon calling DS9 as if it somehow made the station less Cardassian and more Bajoran. "We find it is not wise at this time."

The phraseology set Bashir off before he finished digesting what the man was actually saying. "Not wise?" Bashir erupted in a string of Federation expletives, each one more damning, condemning and accusing than the last.

It was something else about the Federation doctor that surprised Anar, finding vulgarities, even mild ones, in contradiction to Bashir's general demeanor.

He wasn't the only one who felt that way. The Trill was also caught off guard by the outburst. Bashir walked out against her efforts and will, ignoring Kira altogether, who gave up early in disgust after her first or second commanding "Bashir!"

Tempted to follow him the Trill resisted, burying her frustration with deciding it was time to just pack and leave, though not without flustered apologies, "Julian really is very dedicated as a doctor."

Anar's head tipped in condescending reminder. "Again you offer explanations where no explanation or excuse is necessary."

"What about some words of advice?" Dax slammed the field pack she started to pick up back down on the console, a breath away from giving him some together with a fist to the side of his face.

It was the first time Anar had seen her angry rather than calm and cajoling and persuasive. He had to honestly say he preferred her calm. Viciousness crossed his mind. Unchained violence if unleashed. She had the power and physical strength Kira and the doctor lacked. Sisko was not without his hidden reasons for including her. Here he had been wondering about her attraction to the Klingon. She might be Bashir's lover, but she was her husband's mate. A Klingon herself for a moment facing him, unyielding in the heartbeat it took him to rear. "What words would those be?" he snapped though the Trill had already caught herself, collected herself before springing for his throat.

Kira turned from staring annoyed at him to staring in surprised irritation at Dax to return to staring strikingly angry with him. Anar believed he gave up at that point wondering what he had done, never mind anyone else wondering what they had done or not.

Dax took a breath. Her advice directed toward Kira. "I think it's best if we leave."

"Yes," Kira agreed heatedly.

Anar refrained from inquiring if they would like assistance now that Bashir had abandoned them, Kira making a point to relieve any confusion or questions he might have regarding her position. "They're my friends. They're not my officers, they're my friends."

Anar paused. "Admittedly something I had not considered."

"Consider it!" she barked and left with Dax.

"I will," he said, the sudden silence around him supporting how perhaps he should.

"They'll be back," Nadya announced confidently from her hiding place between the sleeping mummy and the far length of the console. Her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms wrapped securely around them, she grinned up at him.

"Tomorrow, I would think, yes," Anar assisted her in wriggling out from her tight corner.

"Two weeks less two days," she took his hand, "with Keiko O'Brien and a Federation runabout -- it has a science module," she explained. "I think it's better that way. You'd miss me if I went to Terok Nor."

"I would," he agreed, mystified by what else she was saying.

"She's a botanist," she reminded. "You asked for a botanist. She'd be here but she had to come from Earth first. That's even farther from Terok Nor than we are. Two weeks by runabout if she were a very good pilot, which she isn't. She isn't a pilot at all. So she has to take a passenger transport -- several of them. Which must take forever," she scoffed in innocent disgust. "I'd never have the patience for it, I know that. I'm surprised she does. She needs to be a pilot. I can show her how if you or Kira don't have the time. It's really not very difficult. It doesn't have to be a cruiser, it can be a personal shuttle. If you ask Kira I'm sure she'll bring one back for us when she returns; if you even have to ask," she agreed. "Anon said he would give us one if he had one, I can't imagine Kira not thinking the same thing."

"Earth…" Anar was still all the way back there.

"It's where she lives," Nadya nodded. "With her daughter Molly who's almost my age, and her son Kirayoshi who's three times older than San but has only just learned how to walk -- that might be something we want to tell Anon," she thought of suddenly. "So when he and Janice have their children Anon doesn't think something is wrong -- there isn't," she promised Anar. "Humans commonly don't walk until they're almost a year; I'm not sure why that is. I guess it just is, like Tan says about so many things."

Tan was not who was on Anar's mind. The name O'Brien possibly, yes. The missing fifth guardian of the Prophets' immortal number five incomplete with Kira, Bashir and the Trill Dax with her Klingon mate Worf waiting in the background where Anar trusted he would wait for some time. Knowing they were a long time away from accepting a Klingon, he wasn't quite sure how ready they were for an O'Brien. Found innocent of Janice's vicious attack was not the issue. They knew O'Brien was innocent and Hawk guilty. But the charges, accusations were very serious, brutal, violent and very fresh. A week old? The actions, behavior of Sisko's Chief Engineer not above reproach, contributing to O'Brien finding himself in the situation he later found himself in to no one's greater surprise than his own. It was a harsh lesson to learn. Awkward. In the aftermath of O'Brien's awkwardness of having to face family and friends and explain how this could have happened to him, it was awkward for the family and friends of Janice Lange also. Made worse by the Federation preferring to get on with its life and politics, refusing assistance from the Maquis in tracking down the criminal responsible for the rape and assault of the Human wife of Cardassia's young Gul Anon Dukat, regardless if the child's father was Shakaar Adon, the elder, his blood or simply his love running in her veins.

If awkward for them, how awkward could it not be for O'Brien's wife to walk into the world, the lives of the family of the woman her husband had only just been cleared of attempting to murder? Anar stared down on his granddaughter looking so innocently up at him. He presumed this Keiko O'Brien was O'Brien's absent mate. The recipient of Bashir's urgent priority transmission to Earth at the time the UFP stood ready to remand O'Brien for trial.

"Ziyal told me," Nadya sighed, not quite sure why she had to tell him that. "I'm sure it's right. Her passenger transport is probably only just docking at Terok Nor now."

Anar smiled. "A few days out still, I would think. You are right. Forever is probably very close to three weeks travel. I do not question your information or knowledge anymore than I question Ziyal or the Prophets. O'Brien is simply a name that I know."

"Federation," she tugged at his hand. "It's okay. She's not Starfleet. Come on. I think we should go to the field tonight. It's really no colder than the Temple."

"Much colder than the Temple," Anar corrected. Where the flickering flames of the candles kept them warm and comfortable as they kept them focused and calm. "You have only just had your therapy, child. Think of that. Bashir is good, but he is not his God. You can assist in your recovery by prayers, but also by paying attention to what is injurious to your health. Cold and not enough sleep are injurious to us all."

"So we'll take a candle with us and you can wrap me up in your cloak," Nadya shrugged. "Commander Dax thinks it's a very good idea I confront my fears; Kira too. Though neither of them feel I should sleep there until it's much warmer, they agree with you about that. The same as they think you should spend the first few nights with me to make sure I'm all right -- what?" she laughed at his surprise. "Yes, I told them about the field because I knew you wouldn't even though you might want to. Kira doesn't think you're weak. She thinks you're very brave. Me, too. She's just annoyed because they were Klingons not Cardassians -- which she really would prefer if only because she really doesn't like them," she whispered discreetly. "Commander Dax just laughed and said she had to agree with her there -- so please, can't we go? I promise I'll stay inside your cloak…"

"Definitely," Nadya burrowed down against the warmth of Anar's chest and heavy robes as they sat looking out over the grapevines that he promised would grow and cover the field before too many years, her candle clutched tightly in her hands. "However, I think…"

"Yes," Anar took the candle before they were both a little warmer than they truly wished to be, setting in down on the ground in front of them.

"Perfect," Nadya approved, pulling his cloak around her, up to her chin as she settled with a brush of her dangling stands of hair out from her eyes. "I like it here. I really do. The Temple is nice but this way if I die I know I won't ever die afraid."

"You die when I die," Anar reminded. "Not before."

She grinned. "I told Kira and Commander Dax that, too. Kira said it was morbid but when Commander Dax explained to her what we meant she said she guessed it was okay."

"It's perfect," Anar assured.

"Definitely," she nodded again. "You're fifty-eight. That's extremely old to someone my age, even though I understand it's really not very old at all."

"No," Anar laughed. "And I'll remember that when I'm 135; fondly, I'm sure."

"I'll remind you," she promised.

"You will," he agreed.

"I also told them about my dream," she yawned as she stared out over the field searching for any signs of Klingons she only thought she couldn't see. "They liked that much better; my mother, too."

"What dream is this?"

"The one about the grapes," she nodded. "And how they were red for many years before they turned plum. But you said that was all right, also. That we would find lots of things to do with them before being concerned about harvesting them for wine -- a matter of growth and development," she yawned again.

"What?" Anar said.

"Commander Dax's words," she assured. "Not yours. She was trying to explain my dream to me even though I already understood everything. But I remember my mother said I had to be polite and listen or the Federation wouldn't invite me to go with them again -- so, see?" she said. "I'm learning. It's really not too difficult. I already like Kira and I promised Ziyal I would like Commander Dax because that would be much, much harder."

"A Klingon's mate," Anar agreed. "A task before us."

"That we will triumph and survive," Nadya knew her oath by heart. "It's still applicable. You just have to look at it a little differently, that's all." She was focused on the field remembering the horror where she lay in the mud thick with bodies and blood of the dead for over twelve hours, kept quiet and warm by Janice, her grandfather dying beside her.

"Pfrann," she shook her head, knowing what her grandfather was thinking. "Actually I was thinking about Pfrann."

Remembering him crouched next to her grinning, surprised by the rambunctious child who could suddenly be so afraid, wary, even if she didn't run away screaming from something that was only a field. She intrigued him with her missing ear and half-bald head. He knew he was looking at a mutant. He just wasn't sure what had happened to her. Who had done what to her. Him and his brother's Union. The Federation. Or if she had just been born that way, a by-product of his father's occupation. No thought however was a thought of shame. Anger, yes, when the answer was Klingons. But before that? No. Not his shame or blame or his brother's. Anon's face long set and silent behind him, surprising the Bajorans attempting to startle them with the answer "Klingons" to Anon's terse question about his scans showing a field of dead. Two thousand his computer counted before he stopped it and so there were probably several hundred more. He wanted to know what happened to the people. About this plague they claimed he and his troop had and he knew they didn't.

"Klingons?" Pfrann repeated, his yellow eyes flashing in contrast to the concentrated knit creasing his brother's brow. "What do you mean Klingons? What are you talking about?"

"We're not afraid of Klingons," the funny looking little child clutching her grandfather's skirt assured him. "Anymore than we're afraid of you."

"Hush, child," the elder shushed her. "They're only asking questions."

Pfrann eyed him, the face of Dukat studying the face of Shakaar Adon, wondering himself about the Bajoran's quiet stance. Was it courage or was it cowardice? The heavy head of the giant Tan slowly shaking behind the elder who wasn't so old. It was courage. The body young beneath the cloak of an old man. Tight. Strong. The blue eyes clear and bright. They were peasants like he was a peasant. Anon was right. They were Maquis. Thirty-five of them in the town. Two thousand buried in the ground. How many more of them hiding in the hills that they couldn't see or find behind their cloak of holographic projectors? It was all right. Anon was also right that they had better things to do the same as the Bajoran did other than die that day.

"About the field, yes," Pfrann agreed, his gaze dropping back to the little female that he studied again for a long minute before he smiled suddenly. "Yes, the field. A field. It's only a field. Come here, I'll show you." He took her by the hand; she let him. But then she wasn't afraid of him. Nor of the dead buried beneath her feet. The ghosts of the Klingons who ran there with their disruptors and bat'telhs? Yes. He could see it in her eyes.

"Field," he crouched beside her with his grin, his hand sweeping out in demonstration. "Not Klingons, a field. Who cares who ran here? Who cares who died? Did you? No. Did you run? From them, not at them. Did you run in fear from them is what I am asking you."

"No," she scoffed.

"I didn't think so," he laughed. "And you don't run now. Strong as any Klingon. Me, too," he assured. "Vicious. Brave. It's not the race, it's the attitude. That's what you have to remember when you are afraid, anytime you are afraid. Strong as any Klingon. Vicious. Brave. It's not the race, it's the attitude…" he returned her to her grandfather with advice for Anar. "Tell her. I shouldn't have to. She's Bajoran, just like you. We didn't win the war, you did." He grinned. With his grin turned with a saunter for his brother. The walk cocky, the hips at an angle, the head at a slant as it tipped in answer to his brother mumbling something Anar couldn't hear as the Cardassians turned to leave. Considering Pfrann's answer however that Anar could hear, the question was probably something close to "What do you think you are doing?"

"What? Nothing," Pfrann said. "She has to confront her fears. I told her that; they know that; she, too."

"Okay…" Janice blew a slow, quiet whistle between her lips where she stood at Anar's side.

"Yes," Anar just said, not quite sure what else there was to say.

"Other than they have the fever," Janice shrugged.

"Yes," Anar agreed. Within two days.

"I guess we'll just put them up in the Town Center," Janice sighed, making her plans as she did so. "I'm sure they have bedrolls."

"Yes," Anar was sure as well.

"Maybe we can talk them into leaving a few behind," she turned away with a smile for Nadya as she took her by the hand. "Pfrann -- is that his name? He was only teasing you, not wanting you to be afraid. You don't have to be vicious at all, ever. Brave and strong, yes. In that way I guess he's right. It's not the race, it's the attitude."

"Yes, Pfrann," Nadya nodded. "But I don't think he was teasing. I think he was serious."

He was serious. Quiet when his youth didn't inspire him to be silly, watchful and digesting when he wasn't brash. Such as the daring action of taking the Bajoran child by her hand unmindful that he could have been killed before he took her a step.

Indeed, he could have. Though his granddaughter had moved only steps from him, Anar distinctly recalled it crossing his mind at the time, as it crossed it now in fond memory. He smiled down on the child he held in his arms listening to her whisper half under her breath "It's not the race, it's the attitude" as she faced the field from the warmth and strength of her grandfather's chest.

"You're much better," he congratulated her.

"I am," she agreed. "Pfrann would be proud of me."

"Yes. Anon, too," Anar assured. "Very impressed."

"Yes," she said. "I wish Kira could see them the way we do. She needs one of your lectures. If I'm too old for a lullaby, she's much too old. My mother's right. You need to stop singing to her."

"I've tried," he had to laugh again at her candor. "As you speak of things you should not even be thinking about at your age."

"Maybe," her eyes closed, pulling his cloak tighter around her shoulders. "You can make that my lecture, if you like."

"Perhaps some other night," he agreed. "Are you cold?"

"No. Nor frightened. Sleepy. We're going to have to leave soon."

"We can leave now if you like."

"Give me my lecture first. You can make it short."

He could try. He thought for a few moments, choosing her questions about Kira's refusal to accept Anon and Pfrann. "Kira forgets the occupied world was Bajor not Cardassia Prime. Pfrann is much too young to understand what is history to him, nothing else. Past to Anon, much too young himself. One a child, little more than your age at the time of the Cardassian withdrawal from Bajor. The other no more than his brother's age now. They only know they find solace in evidence that it is not always the Union at fault. Surprised, yes, perhaps a little, that they would find discomfort at the idea that it might be. But that is how it is supposed to be. The younger generation is not supposed to understand the wars or politics of its elders or ancestors. It is we who are supposed to learn and understand what they are questioning and why. As why, most of all, it has to change. Do you understand why?"

"Growth and development," she said. "Versus stagnation at best. Doctor Bashir's frustration. He's afraid we're going to stagnate here if we don't die out first in a life that was never supposed to be ours to live. I heard Commander Dax explaining that to Kira when they left Janice's laboratory to take a walk and get some fresh air."

"As you apparently take what Commander Dax says to heart," Anar rose to his feet with her cradled comfortable and warm in his arms. The candle they left burning where it rested in reassurance to the souls they may be dead but not forgotten.

"I'm supposed to," Nadya said. "She's my friend. You need a friend; Kira doesn't count…Not because you like her," she teased, "but because she's Bajoran. Who can't like a Bajoran? So there you have it," she nodded firmly, "a choice. It must be Doctor Bashir or Keiko O'Brien…which means you have time, more time than Ziyal gave me. Because you haven't met Keiko yet, and you can't pick someone you haven't met. Ziyal is very strict about the rules."

She was more than strict. Asking close to the impossible which Anar felt confident she knew. Some choice. Keiko O'Brien or Doctor Bashir.

"Why do you know the name O'Brien?" Nadya wondered interested. "Did you meet Chief O'Brien on the station? Did you like him?"

"No," Anar said. "I met him yes, but did not like him much, in all honesty. No more than I liked most of them. The Ferengi Rom, yes. I was very impressed by him. His elder brother Quark, I also found no argument with him. A marked compliment to them, my child," he advised her. "Cockroaches of the galaxy I'm sure most view their species as, rightfully so."

"Keiko O'Brien," Nadya decided ignoring his wince. "I haven't met Rom or Quark, I don't even know if they really exist or if you're trying to cheat."

"I would never cheat, child," Anar swore. "Certainly not you."

"Keiko O'Brien," she maintained. "Definitely. If I can like the mate of a Klingon, you can like a mate of the Federation. We'll leave Doctor Bashir for someone else -- my mother, maybe. Or my brother, perhaps," she yawned, moments away from closing her eyes for hours. "Father. One of them will take him, just so we don't have to. He's all right as a doctor, I suppose. He knows as much as Janice at least. But I'm not so sure how long I could tolerate him as a friend." She was asleep.

And to whom do we leave the Klingon Worf? Anar wondered as he stroked her tired head. A Guardian himself, I tell you now, though I tell you not of him.

Atila. He heard the Prophets chorus answer the concern deep inside of him. The first answer to how many prayers spread out over a week. Daughter of the defiler Dukat who without the Klingon will not be born to live. We tell you now what you need to know. Worf of Mogh will never walk on your world by his choice as much as yours. You are wise not to labor the child with concerns that are not hers. Believing what her soul needs to know, she will come to know, the same as you, and will never turn on you in wrath. In tears perhaps at times. For guidance always. Your task is trust in silence as well as you have learned to trust in action. The words are there if you listen. The knowledge you seek as well. We say again the chain which binds, binds not you or anyone charged to your care.

"Kira," he said aloud and they fell immediately silent.

"What?" Nadya stirred in his arms, her drowsy eyes too heavy to open.

"Nothing," he kissed her brow, wishing her back to sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"How pathetic," Q reviewed the touching scene of grandfather and granddaughter. Neither of them really caring about the Universe they professed to care so much about. Neither of them thinking about anyone but themselves. But then that's the way these lower lifeforms were. That's the way they operated. Their worlds in ruins. Their galaxies laid to waste. Their attitudes?

"Pathetic," he said. "Pathetic. A veritable disgrace. Salvation d'amour; I think not." He tapped his toe disgruntled though carefully so as not to shake, break, or wake the dead. A risk, he had been recently reminded, when one was as potently powerful as he. A not-so-clever thing to do, it had been brought to his attention by a distinctly divine being with an extremely large head.

"Highbrow," Ziyal crunched at his elbow on her lunch of a thousand plus four Kaferian apples. A bushel of them draped over her arm like some sort of good luck charm.

"Whatever," Q said with a sharp, quick, arch of his left eyebrow à la Mister Spock and a knowing smirk smearing across his lips à la Gul Dukat for the Organian he knew was there. "Oh, yes," he nodded, "I know you're there."

"What?" Ziyal paused in mid-chew to frown.

"It's logical," Q said.

"Logical?" Ziyal hacked out the half-eaten hunks of goo, vomiting them into her hand. Spitting, choking, gagging them up from the bowels of her intestines and depths of her boots.

"I'm talking!" Q reminded. "Thank you!"

"What's logical?" she insisted.

"A being!" Q ignored her for the sheep in white robes sneaking up behind him, the stars shivering brightly as he fell into a hushed roar and they clung to their gravitational pulls. "Who for some reason seems to think lurking in the shadows somehow equates don't see to can't see. Don't know to can't know, can't hear, can't sense, can't feel. Wrong!" he turned around to greet the bleak and silent blackness. Devoid, hollow, lifeless. Not a soul, not a sight, not even a smell around.

"Who were you expecting?" Ziyal grinned, extending him one of her prize-winning apples before she gobbled them all up. "Some Organian?"

"Will you give me that!" Q tore the apple out of her hand, flinging it on the ground for whatever vole, mole, rat, or rodent who cared to devour it as long as it wasn't her. "I'm incorporeal, I don't eat!"

"Well, I'm dead and I do eat," Ziyal shrugged.

"I've noticed," Q assured. "And may I say your incessant chewing is beginning to grate! Is it just something about your race that insists if one is good forty-six has got to be better? Is there a particular reason why you must be obsessive and compulsive about everything you do? It's an apple!" He grabbed the bushel, firing its payload into the heavens like intragalactical Ping-Pong balls. "It's not gold. It's not latinum. It's apples!"

"You introduced them to me," Ziyal reminded.

"My error," Q breathed deeply to calm his frazzled nerves. "Had I known I would be contributing to some sort of exotic addiction, there's a good chance I wouldn't have."

"Doctor Bashir just thinks too much," Ziyal shook her head. "Commander Dax no more has a carnal fixation with him than he has with her."

"And talks too much," Q agreed wearily with the good physician's audiences past, present, and future. "But do we care? No!" He grabbed her. Spinning her around to face what they did care about and it wasn't apples anymore than it was Bashir. "Au contraire! It is tall. It is built. Brazen, bold, bronze, blue-eyed, and white-haired."

"Anar," Ziyal sighed like there were a hundred of them out there to choose from.

"Yes!" Q said. "Oh, yes. That is precisely what we care about. That is precisely who. Because quite frankly, my dear, if you had a choice, who would you prefer to wake up and find sleeping next to you? That man, or your father, Mister Spock?"

"Dukat," Ziyal said. "My father's Gul Dukat."

"Whatever," Q waved. "Just answer the question. I'm divine, not Data. I can't keep everyone straight."

"Who?" Ziyal said.

"Answer the question!" Q insisted.

"My father," Ziyal assured, and she said that awfully quickly for someone who was supposed to be thinking her answer through.

"You fib," Q accused.

"No, I don't fib. I would prefer to wake up next to my father -- "

"Then you're sick!" Q's hand clapped over her mouth. "You're not dead, you're sick. Your father is a derelict. He's vile, putrid, and a host of other surly adjectives that shall remain unspoken for the sake of the minor child within our midst. Agreed?"

"Mess my mamee," Ziyal nodded.

Q stared at her.

"Mess my mamee," her leathery lips strained against the delicate power of his hand.

"Oh, for -- talk!" Q surrendered. "Yes, all right, fine, talk!"

"Thank you," Ziyal said. "And, yes, I agree. But I still would prefer to wake up next to my father, yes. Definitely."

"A conversation you should perhaps have with your psychoanalyst," Q suggested. "My interest in such primal matters is restricted solely to an acute understanding of how Major Kira has no such desire to sleep with your father whether or not you do."

"I didn't say I wanted to sleep with my father," Ziyal groaned. "I said I would prefer to wake up next to him rather than Anar."

"Silence," Q reminded her about that nine-year-old ear that may be singular but worked rather well; just ask Commander Dax and Doctor Bashir. "And that cannot be if only because it must be -- your Prophets words, my little Bajoran-Cardassian apple-sucking Guardian of Future's past. Not," he emphasized further, "mine. To quote. 'IF the mother dies before the father, or IF the father dies before her!' No vine, no grapes, no wine, the end. Which IF you think that Bajoran Anar is not going to kill your father when he finds out about Major Kira and your father methinks you best think about that again."

"Kill my father," Ziyal repeated.

"Yes!" Q waggled his head in front of hers just so she would be sure and see how he was waggling it yes, he was not waggling it no. "Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Kill your father. Kill him. Not kick him in the eye. Not punch him in the knee. But kill him. Kill the defiler Dukat. The butchering pig. The dastardly beast. Kill him."

"Oh," Ziyal bit her lip, and while it didn't taste as good as one of her apples, it was at least there.

"So!" Q's arm clapped its way around her shoulders as it always did at these points in their conversations. "We need to tell him. We just need to tell him. Clearly. No mirror writing. No figure-me-out-if-you-can speeches. No raining grapes. No Klingon chains -- he's not listening to the Prophets anyway," he pointed out to her. "I'm sure you've noticed. He's not listening to a word they say. Not to the words that are there. The knowledge he has but continues to seek. Therefore we need to tell him how we are very sorry but he cannot have Major Kira for his mate, his housekeeper, or his lover, because she is in fact -- IN FACT the Eternal Mate of your father Gul Dukat."

"Tell Anar," Ziyal said.

"One more time!" Q agreed.

"But you said he'll kill him!" she shrieked even louder than he, and while her Bajoran dead did not waken anymore than they had when he had tapped his toe, it was entirely possible a few Klingon ghosts did get up and leave.

"You said," Ziyal said much more calmly and quietly once Q removed his hand from her mouth, "Anar will kill my father if he finds out about Kira."

"So I did," Q recalled, thinking about what he had said extremely long and very hard and it was difficult. It was quite difficult to think of something else to say.

"Then why would we tell him?" Ziyal questioned.

"Not him!" Q's hand clapped her on the back. "Your father!"

He was gone. Just like that. In a blink of her watery eyes, back and dropping down beside her sitting cross-legged on the ground. Resting back on his haunches, his elbow propped to support him, his breathing just slightly heavier than when he left, his crown just slightly askew. The collar of his gown stained with the impression of the clenching fingers of his former Cardassian Excellency Gul Dukat as he lounged there thinking, just thinking.

"Interesting," he mentioned shortly.

"My father?" Ziyal interpreted. "Oh, yes."

"For a humanoid," Q clarified.

"For any lifeform," Ziyal laughed.

"Hm," Q agreed. "Yes, I'm sure someone somewhere has mentioned that…Made note of it. I'm not really too familiar with Cardassians as a species in general or as a whole ...well, look at me," he shrugged with an acknowledging wave over his robes and gown that were golden for the occasion and flowing as always. "I'm clearly Federation."

"Oh, yes," Ziyal said. Yes, she could see where that was so.

"I mean, I'm not Federation," Q clarified, "in the sense of being Federation."

"Oh, no," Ziyal agreed. No, she could see where there was this distinct unFederation quality about him as well. She smiled. "There is no UFC."

"No," Q assured, "there most definitely is not. Not in this lifetime or in any other. Your Prophets called me with the simple knowledge I would answer; of course I would. Why wouldn't I? The Federation has always held a special interest for me. A particular favorite of mine -- in this galaxy, anyway. I know who the Cardassians are naturally. The Klingons. The Romulans. But there's just something about the Captain Picards…the Captain Siskos…Janeways…their casts and their crews…"

Q reminisced about the Starfleet gods who may not go as far as being pleasantly surprised whenever he came calling, but they were at least smart enough to acknowledge his omnipotent power, being, self. Apparently quite unlike his Gall Dukat who didn't even bother to feign interest in the madness surrounding him, the awesome power it represented, notwithstanding the majestic entity controlling it all. A nuisance, he had looked upon Q as, not even a mere man, invading his dreams, interrupting his sleep.

"I just hate to see it all just go away…" Q eyed Ziyal wondering where he was going wrong with her never mind with her luckless father hardly lucid enough to understand one doesn't ever argue with one's hallucinations. But then one isn't usually with it enough to even know when one isn't having an hallucination, merely a nighttime visit from a superior lifeform more than powerful enough to do more than whip his head off and hand it to him.

"But then I am extremely large, my dear," he reminded Ziyal not only of the extent of his power, but his sheer size. "Large, you know, big. Much, much larger than even this galaxy. I am Q. A Continuum. Extradimensional, if the latter isn't impressive enough. I exist All and Everywhere. Unhindered by the boundaries of Time or Space."

"What did my father say?" Ziyal asked curiously, as if that mattered.

"Say?" Q dripped in contempt. "What could he say? I am Q, and he is only Dukat."

"I doubt if that even meant anything to him," she shook her head sadly.

"Wrong!" Q sat up straight. "It meant something. But then who did he think tore him out of his bed, whipping him out those ridiculous Federation pajamas -- "

"Orange really isn't my father's color," Ziyal was aware.

"What is?" Q agreed. "And who threw away those orange jammies, yanking his far more appropriate black and silver Cardassian outfit down over his head? Hm? Who did he think did that? Who put him in a boat? Up on a horse? In the backseat of a car?

"The reference being to speed, you understand," he explained. "Symbolic of speed. A car is faster than a horse which is faster than a boat, hence why go slow when one can go not only fast but also far?"

"Oh, yes, I think I understand," Ziyal nodded though admittedly uncertain as to the items of travel he mentioned.

"Good!" Q said. "And, yes, I suppose it all happened very fast. Mildly confusing, possibly, I'll accept, to one who's generally unfamiliar with me."

"I'm really not sure if he's ever heard of you at all," Ziyal continued to doubt.

"Well, he has now," Q promised. "Together with a thorough understanding of what exactly did happen at Little Big Horn -- to General Custer," he reassured her contorted and horrified expression. "Not to him. I didn't harm him. He was never in any more danger than he would be interacting with one of those holographic programs you all seem to love so much; can't fathom why. You're not doing anything. You're not going anywhere. It's all just doing and going around you."

"He didn't like it," Ziyal correctly assessed her father's reaction.

"Like it?" Q snorted. "My dear, you have to first notice something before you can decide if you like or dislike it. And, no, your father didn't notice, how incomprehensible to me -- if I hadn't been first apprised by you of this unusual habit of his," he quickly refreshed her memory lest she start getting this ludicrous idea in her head that she had a choice in disregarding him. "How astounding. What an inexplicable character, Gul Dukat. Rude, if he is nothing else, which I am not. Asked, I answered."

"What?" Ziyal inquired.

"My name!" Q snapped. "My being, my identity. 'Who are you?'" he mimicked the nasty annoyance of Dukat, his face twisted, his words demanding, her throat in his hands as he yanked her up to him in the manner her father had taken it upon himself to yank him. "Your Prophets' hell breaking loose around him. His world, galaxy, and throne in ruins. His name and uniform gathering dust. His Eternal Mate falling in love with someone else and that's all he can think of to ask? 'Who are you?' That's all he can think of to do?"

"He can be difficult," Ziyal refreshed his memory like she had to.

"In a word!" Q released her. "Deranged, would be another one. Who does he think I am? Some irritating Bajoran? Yet another obnoxious Klingon? Hello! I'm unfathomable, if your father cares to know the truth. Never mind him, I am…And, yes," he settled back down to return to reflecting pensively on her and where, as mentioned, he persisted in going wrong. "I think you should tell him that the next time you pop in since he's not the least bit interested in hearing it from me."

"I'll try," Ziyal agreed. "But if he's not listening to me about Cardassia Prime or Kira, I'm not so sure he'll even hear me about you."

Q smiled suddenly with an approving poke of his finger in her shoulder. "Now that's an idea. That's an idea. Major Kira. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Kira?" Ziyal said. "What about Kira?"

"Your father," Q said patiently. "That's what about Major Kira. The moons of Bajor. The Cardassian outpost Silas 4. They'll be there. They are there. The events leading up to. The ones coming to pass. Whether your father chooses to play your Prophets' game, whether he chooses not to. The only difference I can see is the outcome."

"Well, yes," Ziyal shifted uncomfortably with that thought. "I know that."

"So do I," Q assured. "So do I. Just that lingering issue of how to convey it to your father; I know. I know. I met him. I was there. Easygoing or cooperative he is not. You're so right about that."

And was it his imagination or did she seem almost pleased to hear him say that? Perhaps not as confident in her task as she would like to have him or her Prophets think? Perhaps yes? Perhaps no? Was that the key to the mystery surrounding her? She had her father's façade even if she didn't have his attitude?

"I told you," Ziyal said.

"You did," Q handed her a Kaferian apple with a permissive pat on the top of her head for her to enjoy herself. "You did. Right also when you say we may need Major Kira's assistance. Not only then, but now."

"But how?" Ziyal chewed. "Nerys is as stubborn as he is, I probably should tell you that, too."

"Maybe yes, maybe no. Irrelevant, for I, my dear, am Q," Q said with an eye to the heavens, dented, ripped, and worn by quantum torpedoes, disruptors, and phasers, none of them set to stun. "I am Q."

Unencumbered by dimension, Time, or Space; her Prophets' watchdog of an Organian was another matter. Q looked around. But all was silent. All was dark. The flickering flame of the Bajoran candle long since melted into the mud.

"Um…" Ziyal was saying, no more sure than her father really what he meant by that, though to her it mattered where admittedly to her father it had not.

"I'll tell you what I mean," Q rested back, his legs stretched out relaxed, his elbow propped to support him.

"I'm listening," Ziyal nodded.

"I'm impressed," Q agreed.

"What words of advice?" Kira asked as she pounded across the Town Center taking two steps to Dax's one.

Dax smiled. "I'm not so sure you want me to answer that."

"Dukat," Kira nodded sharply already knowing. "He's another Dukat."

"Now that's interesting," Dax admitted to having kept that part of her assessment to herself except for writing it to Benjamin, though she mentioned it now to Kira clarifying which Dukat she believed Anar bore a similarity to in personality.

"Anon Dukat," she said. "His father? Well, I wouldn't go as far as that."

"Yes, he is," Kira assured though she probably wasn't serious, only angry.

Bashir was both when they arrived at the Ark. Angry as when he had walked out of Lange's lab; serious when he said he didn't want to discuss it. Except they were going to discuss it and they had their first true argument, the three of them, Kira in the middle of it with her revelation that Anar's apprehensions in trusting Nadya to the Federation and DS9 extended far behind Lange to Worf. Impressive, Bashir said later that as heated as it was, it didn't turn personal. Meaning for all the words that were said, the ones that weren't were the ones that really mattered. Kira did not come away enlightened to the physical and personal liaison between Bashir and Dax, Bashir's main concern in retrospect.

That was his opinion, it wasn't personal. In Dax's opinion, it was personal enough for her. "Worf?" she turned on Kira in the throes of screaming at Bashir her intentions of discussing everything with Benjamin first, beforehand, not after the fact.

"Yes Worf!" Kira snapped.

"Of course Worf!" Bashir barked in agreement. "Excuse me, I'm the one who doesn't understand anything, remember? Good God, the man's a Klingon. Good God, we're talking about Klingons. They massacred them. The child witnessed a massacre. To what extent her Prophets only know."

"It was close enough!" Kira insisted what Dax already knew about the battlefield decorated in grapevines.

"Evident by her ear," Bashir agreed, though knowing nothing of the field. "Or lack of. Hardly crippling; post traumatic stress is far more crippling; battle fatigue."

"You don't know that!" Dax stared at the two of them.

"Oh, please," Bashir scoffed. "Of course we know that, and so do you. No, one can't and isn't holding Worf somehow 'accountable' for God's sake, anymore than they can hold Captain Sisko accountable for Janice; be reasonable, Jadzia, never mind me. It's irrelevant other than in that it can't nor will it negate what happened aboard the station and, yes, quite obviously what happened here."

Dax was outside. She didn't know how she got there, or even remembered walking out. Inside Bashir continued to fume at Kira arguing with him.

"I said I'll talk with Sisko!"

"You do that," he agreed as she stalked forward to hail Anar and inform him they were leaving come first light, as if it made a difference other than a chance to say goodbye. "Because no, I'm not taking no for an answer, anymore than I'm letting it drop. I'm a doctor and that child needs a doctor, I don't give a damn what or who she is -- and if someone wants to take my pips for that, be my guest!" he pulled them off his collar and flung them after her.

Kira ignored him. He turned from her to stare at the forward hatch and beyond where Dax hadn't gone far. He found her sitting on the ground beside the cargo hold, her arms furiously crossed as she huddled in her jacket. It was by far the coldest night, or perhaps it just seemed like it was.

"Don't touch me," Dax warned as he sat down beside her.

"Now that's an absurd thing to say," he replied. "Almost as absurd as 'if I truly loved you' I would do what? Spend the next six years ignoring you like I spent the first? Prove I love you, how? By replicating a teddy bear or a bouquet of flowers, or at least a cup of tea? I can't. No more than you can."

"Worf would never condone this," she insisted. "Never. You know that."

"No I don't know that," he didn't apologize. "I've no idea what Worf would or would not condone. No more than you. If only because neither of us really knows what happened here and what didn't. For all we know it could have been a battle that the Maquis lost and the Klingons simply won."

"That has nothing to do with Worf!"

"From your point of view, not from Anar's. I'm not saying I agree with him. I'm saying what I said, and have been saying. He has to look beyond Worf, Janice Lange, whoever, to the fact that his granddaughter is desperately ill -- "

"Julian…" she sighed, tired of hearing the same thing over and over.

"Dying," Bashir insisted the emotion in his voice rising suddenly, sharply. "The same as his world and that is maddening to me that he doesn't seem to want to understand that. It's contradictory, because yes, I agree with you. That is why he brought us here. The devil with Lange's cream. Secondary at best, and obviously ineffective in treating Nadya for all its reputed powers. If that makes me unreasonable, sorry, but that's the way it is. I can't accept it. I'm not even quite sure how much more of this I can take, handle, if anyone cares to know the truth…"

He was already shaking his head no, talking to himself, not her, in resignation, attempting to explain it to his understanding. "No, I can't take this. I can't. I'm a doctor. What do they expect from me? What do they expect out of me?"

He didn't know. If she didn't know, he didn't know, not what any of them expected or wanted. Bashir stared pensively just out. Toward where there was nothing, crouched in a seated position, his knees bent and drawn up, his arms resting on them, dangling down between his legs. Ziyal smiled, hardly frightening him. But then he hardly believed he even really saw her, was seeing her. There for a few moments and gone the next, leaving him knowing he was physically tired and emotionally exhausted, drained, truly. Discouraged and disgusted, and, yes, somewhere in the regions of his subconscious mind she was probably perfectly symbolic of everything he was thinking. Senseless death. Senseless injury. Tragedy. From Ziyal to Janice and now the child Nadya.

"Where are your pips?" Dax interrupted.

His head dipped like he was checking his collar before he looked at her from under his brow with a smile. "Around. I also said I was angry and didn't want to discuss any of this. What did you think? I wasn't serious?"

"I don't know what to think. I'm not quite sure if I've ever seen you…" she stopped there to eye him, deciding she had seen him as defiant or stubborn at least once or twice in the past six years. She sighed again. "Julian, you may just have to accept Anar's point of view regardless of why he wanted us here. Lange's inventory, yes. To help probably also. To do what we can do including bearing witness. But that's a long, long way from agreeing to Nadya returning to DS9 with you. The same as you just may have to accept Benjamin's position. I don't know what he's going to say. I know what I think, believe, would like to believe. But there's no way I can guarantee you Benjamin's going to agree to Nadya being on the station whether or not it breaks his heart to say no."

"And you may just have to accept that I'm not going to accept it, not without an argument," he turned to face her, his head bent close to hers, his hand smoothing the top of her hair before it cupped her chin, his thumb stroking the corner of her mouth.

"Stop that," Dax said, though not because she was angry.

"The devil I will," Bashir refused even if she was. "Six nights making love is hardly a firm base. Not quite sure what state I'd be in if I didn't have those six years to fall back on. Darling, we've just had our first argument."

They had had an argument every night but that was beside the point. "Five nights," Dax said, "and you're secure. You're a little too secure if you want to know the truth."

"Six," he kissed her. "Tomorrow makes seven. The next, eight. Interesting theory of yours otherwise, though I have a suspicion you're wrong."