In the Fire Caves
Chapter 4: Penitential Prayers
Summary for this chapter: Winn prays to the Prophets and is answered. (Note: This would be the chapter that earns the R rating.)
For disclaimers, warnings etc. please see chapter 1.
In the Fire Caves, day and night were irrelevant. The walls of the cave always shone with the same gentle, muted brightness. Which was pleasant, but meant that Winn Adami had no idea when to say her morning prayers.
Winn could not recall the last time she had missed the daily office. It had been expected of her as Kai, and before that as a Vedek, and before that as a young Ranjin, and even before that when she had sought sanctuary as an adolescent in the monastery closest to her ruined home. She had even led secret gatherings of Bajorans in morning prayer in the Cardassian prison camp, though she cursed the Prophets after each prayer for each and every lash-mark on her back.
If the Pah-wraiths had succeeded in their self-annihilation, if she had not stopped them with her sudden betrayal, would she still have prayed? Winn liked to think so. She imagined facing the emptiness where the time-transcending Prophets had now never been, and finding in their nonexistence something at last worthy of veneration.
Winn remembered the first time she had tried to kill a Prophet. It had been during the Reckoning, the foretold time when the Prophets and the Pah-wraiths would fight their final battle for the rule of Bajor. She had known that it was coming. The ancient Prophecies predicted it, and the Prophets, when they could be bothered to speak, had never lied. Still, she had not imagined such destruction. Hundreds dead in earthquakes. Thousands dead in floods. All for a battle that was not even on Bajor.
What gods would demand this death? What kindly gods would demand such sacrifice from their children? On Deep Space Nine, Kai Winn had knelt before the Prophets and begged them to take her.
"Forgive my blindness," she had said. Cure my blindness, she wanted to say. Open my eyes that I may see the sense in this death, and worship your justice.
"I am the Kai of Bajor," Winn had said. "I offer myself to you as your humble servant."
Even in the prison camp she had never ceased to pray. Now here was the one to whom she had prayed, at last before her. Surely this Prophet would listen. Surely this Prophet must. "Only speak to me," she whispered.
The Prophet walked past her. Winn did not know why she was surprised. After all, the Prophets had never answered her before.
As the chroniton radiation had filled the station, the Kai finally allowed herself to weep. "Prophets forgive me," she had said.
Sheltered by the warmth of the Fire Caves, Winn Adami, no longer Kai, wondered what she could have meant. Did she believe that the Prophets would speak forgiveness as they fled or died? You are right, child, and it is we who have sinned.
And if her gods were to die, where could she turn with her prayers?
It was an unsettling question. Shaken by it, she found herself kneeling to pray. Her priestly d'jarra reflexes had not failed her. Resigned, she spoke the series of meaningless monosyllabic sounds that always began Bajoran formal prayer. "Prophets," she said after a time. Then she stopped herself. "Pah-wraiths. Come to me. Make me one with you. Let me serve you. Make me a vessel for your will."
It was a tired prayer, and Winn felt tired saying it. It had been her litany since childhood, and it was almost habit that kept it on her lips. Still, this time the Pah-wraiths were near, and perhaps this time they would answer.
After a time, Winn could not say how long, she felt the warmth around her begin to deepen. She felt a presence, soft and gentle, heralded by tongues of fire. Could it be that the beings who had once been Prophets had at last found her worthy? "Only take me," she whispered. The presence surrounded her, close and intimate. She shivered at the noncorporeal touch. "I never doubted," she said, which was only half a lie, and was rewarded for her words by feeling the presence closer, as if the being could penetrate through her very skin. "Prophets. Pah-wraiths." Perhaps there was no difference, or did not need to be, in the moment of this intimacy.
All her life she had longed for union with her gods with a longing so intense that its non-fulfillment was ceaseless agony. Now as this noncorporeal presence caressed her she felt her lifelong anger begin to dissolve. There were no answers in the touch, no words beyond the simple knowledge of love that in the moment was all the answer she needed. This being, Prophet or Pah-wraith, held her, accepted her gifts and returned them, moved gently around and in her.
The touch of her deity was more than intimate. It was erotic, bringing her pleasure in the depths of her body and soul. She opened herself and felt the being move deeper. In all her longings, she had never imagined that the touch of the Prophets would feel so sexual. It felt like the last time she had taken a lover to her bed, and the pleasure she had felt when he moved inside her. It felt like...
Winn froze, then jumped to her feet, her arousal turning quickly into nausea. "Dukat," she said.
He materialized, pressed against her, his right hand on her shoulder and his left on her waist. He was in his Bajoran form, naked and glistening. Once, she had licked the sweat off his Bajoran chest, savoring the taste and the heat and the hunger in his eyes. She could feel his warmth and moisture through the thin cloth of her dress. "Get away from me," she said.
"I see you still want me," he said, self-satisfied as usual, keeping his hands firmly in place. Tendrils of fire curled out from his limbs, surrounding her with flashes of heat.
"Go to your masters, the Pah-wraiths," she said, pushing him away and stepping a few paces back. "If you want mercy," if you want love "seek it from them."
"Adami," Dukat said. "Never forget that you need me. You always have." He stretched out his hands to her, displaying the Bajoran body that he had shaped to deceive and pleasure her. "And I need you. I need you to tell me what I am."
This was not a question about his physical state, as he had clearly discovered its uses. Perhaps he was even beginning to move outside of time. She expected that he even knew that he was becoming a Prophet. His question was deeper than she had imagined. As was his need.
"You are deceit and lies," she said. "The violator of Bajor, and the betrayer of its people." It was not the true answer, not the one which had been written in the book of the Kosst Amojen. It was the only answer she was willing to give him. He understood this, eventually, and left her in peace.
When Dukat was gone, she fell once again to her knees in the dirt on the floor of the cave. Prayer was of course impossible, with Dukat among the Prophets. And her book was gone, burned in the flames that somehow only warmed her with their gentle heat. Without prayer, she was utterly alone. She wondered if in time she would welcome even Dukat's company, and hated herself for the thought. "I will never forgive you," she said aloud. Let that be her only prayer. She dug her hands into the dirt and ashes on the ground, and cursed the Prophets and their Temple.
Her fingers connected with something that felt like parchment. She pulled it from the ground and placed it in the palm of her hand. It was a fragment of the book of the Kosst Amojen. What else could it be? Its edges were charred, and she could read only one letter. It was an ara, the first letter of the Bajoran alphabet. Winn kissed it, and clenched it to her chest.
In the ashes surrounding her she found other fragments, none of more than a few letters. There was nothing for her to arrange them on, so she pulled off her penitent's shift and tore it in half. The top half would be enough to cover her, in case Dukat should return. She lay the white cloth from the bottom half of her shift on the ground and placed the letters on it.
There was no hint as to how to arrange them. Nor did Winn have any idea how much of the book had survived. She could not know how long she spent rearranging letters, but they produced nothing that she could understand. Then she remembered what had first caused the book to reveal its secrets.
She stood, and walked to the stone wall of the cave. She picked up a rock from the ground and struck it against the stone to form an edge. She stood over her burnt fragments and held the rock over her, a last salute to the Celestial Temple. If the Prophets - or the Pah-wraiths - did not approve of what she was about to do, they were welcome to stop her. Deliberately, she brought the edge of the rock slowly down across her outstretched arm.
The first cut threw splatters of blood over the fragmented page. The letters glowed, suddenly alive. Winn cut again across her upper arm, and watched the letters dance before her with each drop of shed blood. Still, the words made no sense.
"Do you give yourself to the Pah-wraiths willingly?" Dukat had asked.
"With all my heart," Winn had answered.
She tore her makeshift knife across her chest. The letters bust into flame as the blood fell, rearranging themselves into new patterns, but still gave no answers. The loss of blood weakened her. She could no longer stand, so she bent over the burning page and let it take the blood from her body. "Prophets," she said, laughing that she could ever have believed that she was strong enough not to pray. "Pah-wraiths. Prophets." As her consciousness faded, she looked down on the words of black and white fire beneath her. For a moment, she thought that she could understand what they said.
Thanks to merrymaia for betalistening.
Next chapter: The Pah-wraiths ask Kai Winn for a sacrifice that she is not willing to give.