Chapter Two

Asylum and Revelations.

Benjamin Sisko was deeply asleep in his quarters, Kasidy beside him, when the chime from the computer sounded insistently. Long years in Starfleet, where late night calls could range from a meeting to a ship-destroying disaster, had made him a light sleeper. Of course, the same thing could be said for his wife. "You get it," she muttered, "it's your station."

"Go ahead."

"Bashir here. Could you come to my quarters? I have someone here requesting Political Asylum."

"In your quarters?"

"Yes, and please hurry, because I think Ezri is liable to tear Ezri apart with her bare hands." The Siskos exchanged looks, neither sure they had heard him right.

"Would you repeat that?" He did, verbatim, and it didn't make any more sense than it had the first time. "I'll be right down. I'd tell you to make this good, but I have a feeling you're going to."

-

When the door slid aside in front of him he was greeted by the early morning sight of Bashir in his quarters flanked by two Ezri's. They were both absolutely identical, except that the one on Sisko's left had long hair with a distinct wave and wore a blue tee shirt at least two sizes too small, and a short black skirt that reached for a spot past her hips but didn't quite make it. The Ezri on his right was the familiar one, wearing her usual Starfleet uniform and a decidedly unusual look of barely contained fury. O'Brien might describe her as seconds from a core breach.

"I take it that you are from the Alliance universe?"

"Very good, Captain."

"I've been there. And you are asking for Asylum?"

"Asylum doesn't start with fucking the CMO!" Ezri snapped at her twin. Sisko took a moment to assess the situation, knowing that whatever he'd stepped into, it was more than just politically explosive.

"Would someone tell me -" he held a restraining hand up to his Ezri, "about the Asylum request?"

"My life is in danger."

"There's a war on!" Ezri told her hotly, her feelings about her twin's potential fate clear in her tone.

"Not for us. For us, the war is over."

"Who won?" Sisko asked.

"The Terrans. Their Confederation controls most of the sector. The Defiant fleet saw to that."

"Fleet?"

"Twelve ships so far, based on the design you helped perfect. Supercharged ships that can run rings around a Destroyer or Battleship, and punch through any shield this side of Andromeda."

"And you backed the..."

"Alliance, that's right."

"So now you're getting what you deserve." Ezri said. The other turned on her.

"Will you give it a rest?! Yeah, I fucked your 'boyfriend', and he was one hell of a lay - you probably taught him a lot - and I'm not sorry! But that has nothing to do with this!" Sisko saw his own Ezri turn red, and knew this would devolve into a shouting match at the least.

"Please, old man. One calamity at a time."

"'Old man'?" Ezri asked with a definite smirk.

"Yeah, what's it to you?"

"Nothing, except that someone here needs glasses!"

"All right!" Sisko's hard voice cut through them both. "It is oh-oh-fifty hours, and we've a lot to do. We can continue this in my office, or here, but the personalities get shoved out an airlock, clear?" Everyone agreed, Ezri with a sharp but reluctant nod. "If it's any consolation, I don't know of anyone who got along with their doubles." She was about to say something, but bit it back, and he silently suggested that everyone sit down. Ezri and Julian sat on his couch, Ezri pointedly leaving no more room. Her twin sat in one of the chairs at Julian's other side, and Sisko in the remaining chair at the couch's head. "All right. Tell us all about it."

Ezri took a moment to prepare herself. He could see for all her bluster and bravado that she was not having an easy time hiding her uncertainty, and perhaps more. "Terok Nor is the seat of the new Terran Confederation. The war is still on, but the Alliance is being beaten back, parsec by parsec. More and more Defiant-class ships are being built at shipyards, and nothing the Alliance has can match them."

"And Bajor?" She shook her head.

"Bajor was a stronghold of the Alliance, and the Confederation couldn't have an Alliance center so close to its main headquarters. Bajor was given the chance to capitulate, and turned it down. I think there are a few microbes left in some of the more remote regions."

"My god. How could Smiley permit such a thing?"

"Smiley?"

"One of the leaders of the rebellion, Captain Miles O'Brien." She shook her head.

"The Intendant had him assassinated. I'm afraid he has no more say in anything."

"What about Jennifer Sisko?"

"I'm sorry. She is also dead." Ben tried to keep the pain he felt from showing. As long as one Jennifer had been alive...

"And the Intendant?"

"Killed in the destruction of the Regent's flagship. That destruction was the turning point of the war. Then people started to believe the Confederation had a chance to win."

It was a lot to take in. "Then what happened?"

"The Terran Empire stood for over three hundred years. There are some that 'remember' the 'glory days' of the Empire. In fact, in some races like the Vulcans, that may be literally true, I don't know.

"All I do know is that there is a great affection for the power the Empire controlled. I don't know too much about it, but there are a lot of people who advocate going back. Knowing what it is like to live under martial law, they see little difference. There is an appeal to a strong Emperor."

"What do you believe will happen?"

"I believe that the Confederation will wipe out the Alliance, and then the Empire will evolve from the Confederation. What I know is that I will not survive to see which way things fall if you don't grant me asylum."

"And why do you need asylum here, of all places?"

"To escape the pogrom." She paused, studying their faces. "The Confederation, with their quasi-Empire leaning factions, has decided that the backers of the Alliance are not to be trusted." Ezri Dax gave an inelegant snort, her twin ignored it. "Anyone like me, who supported the Alliance, who remains in their space is to be hunted down and executed."

"Why not go back to Trill?" Ezri asked.

"There is nothing for me on Trill. I'm known there as a collaborator. They would kill me too."

"You were an operative, not a major player." Sisko pointed out.

"All the easier for me to be killed."

Sisko was silent for many moments, contemplating the ramifications of all he'd heard. Certainly these developments were not for them alone. "Computer." There was a small chirrup from hidden monitors, just to let him know that the controlling 'intelligence' of the station was receiving his words and prepared to act on his commands, "Alert the senior staff. Meeting in the Briefing Room in thirty minutes." Chirrup. "Dax, please see about finding our guest some quarters." Dax started to rise, her resentment not well under control, but her twin looked at her curiously.

"Dax?"

"Yes, that's the name of my symbiont. I'm Ezri Dax."

"You're joined?" Ezri's tone was astonished, mingled with awe. "My god, an actual Joined Trill!" She breathed, clearly taken by surprise. "I thought I'd never see one!"

"Why not?"

"On Trill there hasn't been a symbiont in over two hundred years."

"WHAT?!"

"The Terran Empire mistrusted anything that could carry memories and intelligence from one host to another. Strategy, weapons, just the memory of being free. When Trill was conquered every Joined Trill was hunted down and executed, the symbionts awaiting joining were destroyed. There is no such thing as a Joined Trill."

Ezri felt her legs go out from under her, and sat down heavily on the couch, stunned. Sisko sympathized. Evolving over millions of years as a joined species, bred and trained to support and protect the symbiont even over one's own life; for one half of that to no longer exist... It had to be devastating.

"Come with me." He told Ezri Tigan, and when Ezri Dax looked up he waved her back, his meaning clear. "I'll take you to the Briefing Room. You two follow when you can."

On Sisko's right sat Ezri Tigan, Kira, Odo and Worf; on his left Bashir, Ezri Dax and O'Brien. They had already been told such facts as had already been revealed downstairs. "So," O'Brien started, looking at one Ezri, and then the other, but addressing Sisko, "are you going to grant asylum?"

"That's what this meeting is to decide, based on your recommendations."

"I think the lot of us are just getting a handle on the fact that there is none of us alive over there."

"Except Captain Bashir?" Julian asked. "What about him?" Ezri shook her head. He had another question for her, but it was too personal for him to ask here.

"All right. Opinions?"

"If you were only an operative of the Intendant," Worf rumbled, "why are they determined to hunt for you?"

"I told you. They're hunting everyone who allied themselves with the Alliance."

"That is a lot of people. A lot of resources."

"The Empire was founded on ruthlessness. There are some who advocate returning to that ruthlessness."

"Ruthlessness on a small scale is one thing. On a large scale it is genocide."

"It's already been genocide." Kira pointed out. "Bajor is destroyed." She looked at Tigan.

"The planet is still there, but nothing will be on it for millennia."

"Odo?"

"I've never been there. You, Kira and the Doctor have. What do you say?"

Whatever Sisko would have replied was cut off by the intercom. "Ops to the Captain."

"Go ahead." When he did, the speaker's voice was monumentally uncertain.

"Captain, I - I don't know how to - to tell you this, but - ."

"Spit it out!"

"Your wife is here. And so is a 'Captain' O'Brien."