Author's note: Just wanted to say thank you to those who have taken the time to review! Thank you to anyone else who's reading. I hope you're enjoying it so far!
5
60,055 (Kurillian Calendar)
In the end, Hellad Metro Center went up anyway. Even the footprints of a Founder couldn't stop it, not once Soltoi found experts who attested up and down that the footprints that Eris had uncovered were obviously modern forgeries. The argument may have convinced the Senate voting body, but not the general public, and the outcry against destroying this sacred relic was so great that Yelar Industries was forced to make concessions, as the shadow of the Clone Protests loomed large. The footprints would be covered with a small shrine, which ultimately would cower in the gloom cast by the massive frame of the shopping center.
Rather than be forced out prematurely, Eris redoubled the excavation efforts, working long hours every day until she'd completed as much as she could. Weyoun never knew if he'd wake up late at night to find her crawling into bed with him or if she'd sleep at her own flat; once or twice he got up in the morning only to see her sprawled on the couch. He hated to wake her in those cases but knew she'd never forgive him if he didn't. It was the only time they really saw each other, and if he had to sacrifice sleep to have a few moments with her, he did. Parnon was understanding when he was bleary-eyed and slow at work; far more understanding than he should have been, but when Weyoun pointed that out to him, he only laughed and said, "Again, Weyoun, that's why you came to work for me, isn't it?"
To deny that it was difficult would have been untrue, and in his unworthier moments he looked forward to the deadline for all work to be done and the excavation team to be forced out. Sometimes he worried that Eris and her team wouldn't leave the site and that Yelar Industries would call the police in.
One night towards the end of Firstmonth, he received a curt interface call from her at work. The anger in her voice was an immediate tip-off that something had happened at Hellad, and she said, "I'll be at home early tonight. Yelar forced us out this afternoon for surveying."
"Disgusting," Weyoun said, already mentally calculating how much time he needed to finish the day's work. "Can't they wait until they take control of the site back?"
Her furious hiss of air was enough to tell him that she'd already had that argument with whatever unlucky surveyor had showed up at Hellad that afternoon—and lost. "I'm making dinner. Come over," she said curtly, and then cut the connection. Weyoun wasn't offended; it was clear she wasn't angry at him.
But she was angry. When he got to her flat, his ID disc allowing him access, her briefcase was laying at a crazy angle where she'd obviously thrown it to the ground, and there was a padd sitting on the table with a furious, half-composed message to the Permits Office in the Complex. Weyoun hoped the fact that it was only half-finished meant that she'd channeled her anger into something more constructive—the Permits Office had been in Soltoi's pocket for years and writing to them would do nothing, except perhaps give Soltoi the satisfaction of knowing that she'd rattled Eris.
"Oh, haven't I deleted that yet?" Eris said suddenly, appearing in the doorway to her bedroom. He glanced up quickly, embarrassed that she'd caught him reading it, but she didn't seem to care. There was a pair of folded trousers in her hands, which she hastily dropped. Weyoun's eyes followed their trajectory and noted an open bag sitting against the wall. It appeared to be half-packed already.
The direction of his gaze didn't escape her notice, and she sighed. "I'm going to Dala," she said, with the air of someone who had spent hours thinking of the best way to break the news, and in the end come up with nothing but the blunt truth.
He glanced towards the bag again, unsure of exactly how to act or feel. Dala was a city on the western coast, several thousand kilometers away. Finally, he just said, "I thought you might." This was true—she'd mentioned a site there that she had interest in working at. If it didn't quite express the scope of what she was saying, well, maybe his diplomacy needed some work.
Her gaze remained focused on him, unblinking. "My grant came through from the university there. Remember, the one I applied for a few months ago? As a contingency plan?"
"I remember."
Tilting her head at him as though searching for more of a reaction, Eris added, "I'll be there for the rest of the dry season. I have a first-priority shuttle ticket pending the cessation of work at Hellad."
"First-priority?" Weyoun asked, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms across his chest. "They must really want you there."
"They do. Hellad has impressed a lot of people."
"Those that weren't already impressed, you mean." Finally, he gave her a wide smile, knowing that it was the right thing to do and genuinely happy that she was well-respected enough to be able to secure a new excavation on such short notice. "That's wonderful, Eris. I'm pleased for you."
She didn't answer, instead just eyeing him as though she was expecting him to do something, and he wasn't fulfilling her expectations. "You don't seem unhappy about this," she finally said, sounding puzzled.
Chuckling, he replied, "Did you want me to be? I thought you'd be pleased that I'm secure enough in this relationship to let you go across the continent for an entire season without argument." Still, as he said it, a pang went through him. He well remembered how miserable he'd been when'd they'd broken up—and that had been a mere month, not the four and a half that remained of the dry season.
Eris looked relieved. "I am. And you should be secure."
"Though I'm not happy about the prospect of not seeing you for four months, if that helps," he added.
Coming closer to him and taking one of his hands, she said, "I'm not happy about it either. But this is what I do. I can't stomach giving up an entire excavation season."
"I know," he said. "You don't have to explain yourself."
Relief passed over her features again. "Thank you," she said.
"For what?" he asked, amused.
Instead of answering, she put her arms around him. "I'm already looking forward to coming back," she said, low and close to his ear.
He wrapped his arms around her, feeling simultaneously as though he was trying to memorize the sensation of holding her against him, and that that feeling was maudlin in the extreme. Four months was a long time but he had no doubt that at the end of it she'd come back to him, and he supposed that was more than many people had. After a moment, he leaned back and put his hands on her upper arms. "When do you think you'll be leaving?"
Eris's expression darkened, but then she made a clear effort to brighten as she reached up and laid her hands on his. "In about a week, if I had to guess."
There didn't seem to be any point in asking her if that was enough to time to finish at Hellad—the answer would be no. Even if she had another complete season there, it still wouldn't be enough time for her. He could only hope that she wouldn't feel the same way about Dala and that another site in or near Tira City would capture her imagination.
"Will you tell me about Dala?" he asked. "You're well acquainted with my ignorance on all subjects historical."
She gave him a quick kiss and then stepped away, smiling swiftly, and going to the kitchen. "Over dinner."
One week later, Eris allowed herself to be interviewed for the daily telecast on her team's last day of excavation. Weyoun watched it from his office, his arms crossed over his chest pensively, as she mustered every shred of her dignity reiterating the importance of the site not just to Tira City's history, but for all of Kurill's. Construction equipment rolled onto the site behind her but she never flinched.
Her first-priority ticket got her onto a shuttle the next morning. The two of them spent that night together, sleeping only when their desperate passion exhausted itself—a passion driven by their imminent separation and by the flare of anger still burning in Eris about the loss of Hellad. And then, the next morning she was gone, with only her bag slung over her shoulder and a promise that she'd message him as often as she could.
Weyoun had a full schedule at work to keep him busy. The spaceflight legislation was going ahead with debate within the next month and Parnon was determined to make good on many of his campaign promises, which meant plenty of late night drafting of legislation of everything from tax reforms to permit registration to security protocols. With another term, the possibilities seemed endless. Parnon, certainly, treated them that way.
He found, now that he'd had about a year to settle into this new job, and having won an election, that he was happy he'd come to work for Parnon. Not just because of Eris, but because for the first time in his life he really liked all the people he worked with, and his employer. Of course, beggars couldn't be choosers, and when it came to politics, everyone was a beggar. He could work with people he didn't like; people he loathed, but it was much more pleasant when everyone got along.
Eris's infrequent messages reiterated what he could have guessed: she was busy, she was happy in Dala, and she missed him. Sometimes he woke up at night expecting her to be there; when he put a hand out to pull her closer and met nothing but the empty bed he felt colder, and all he could do was try to imagine what she was doing in that moment. The time without her was harder than he liked to admit. He was—there was no other word for it—lovesick. His younger self would have scoffed at him now, but then his younger self hadn't known Eris.
It took them three weeks to arrange a time to speak via video interface, and when the appointed time arrived and the interface trilled, Weyoun went right to it, answering the call immediately. The routing prefix sent a thrill of recognition through him. There was something about seeing the visual confirmation of the call's origin before Eris's face that added to the anticipation thrumming through him.
After a second of load-time, the video displayed, and he saw Eris's face for the first time in three weeks. Her skin was slightly less pallid and dark purple shadows arced out from beneath her eyes, but she was smiling and looked content. Behind her, he could see a window, the light fading outside from purple to black as night fell in Dala. It was five time zones away, which was part of the reason it had taken them three weeks to set up a time to talk—by the time she was done working for the day, it was late in Tira City. Finally he'd sent her the message that he didn't care, he just wanted to see her.
Their first couple sentences were lost in the jumble of both of them trying to speak at the same time, and finally Eris laughed and held out her hands, palms facing out. "You first," she said.
A bizarre urge to reach out and touch the screen took hold of him, but he didn't actually do it, aware of how strange it would look, not to mention how pointless it was. "How are you?" he asked instead.
"Fine. Busy." She paused, her eyes earnest as she stared at the screen. A network of tiny cameras placed around the borders of interface screens captured the image of whatever was in their field and used facial recognition to construct a final image for transmission, which gave the illusion of actually speaking directly to someone. It was effective technology, but Weyoun found it slightly hollow at the moment. It felt more as though she was looking through him than at him.
The interface screen froze, pixellated, and Weyoun checked the signal. Odd. Something was interfering, and he'd never seen that happen during the dry season. Kurill's communications centers were the most advanced technology they had. They had to be impressive, to handle any amount of traffic during the high interference of the monsoon. Hail could take entire sub-stations out with barely a blip in signal strength.
Her voice was garbled for a second before the signal returned to normal. "Can you hear me?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "Are you seeing that interference, too?"
There was a harsh burst of static and her face pixellated again, this time enough to be almost unrecognizable. Weyoun narrowed his eyes and reached around the back of the interface terminal to check the wires running to the back of it—all firmly in place.
"—must be something wrong with—nection," her voice said, though the visual had degenerated into jagged artifacts.
He waited a moment to see if it would get any better. It didn't, and with the sound only coming through in static-filled bursts, he said, "Maybe we should try this tomorrow," though he had no idea if she could hear him. With a heavy sigh, he ended the connection. This sort of thing was extremely uncommon—Kurill's communications grid was robust; not something that was prone to faulty connections or interference from either exterior or internal sources. Still, it must have been a bad line somewhere, most likely on her end. Tira City was never unconnected, ever. It was unthinkable.
Within a few minutes, a message came through from her full of profuse apologies—not that there was anything she could have done—and with the offer to try again the following evening, if he wasn't too tired. He sent back a reply that he'd see her then. Whatever was wrong with the connection in Dala would no doubt be fixed by then.
They did talk the following night, and on many nights after that, and whatever deeply-buried worries that Weyoun had about her preferring Dala over Tira City, or one of the other anthropologists on the site to him, evaporated before he'd even quite acknowledged their existence. He was able to content himself with this arrangement pretty well, helped, obviously, by the fact that he knew he'd be seeing her again soon.
As the weeks went on, Parnon tasked Weyoun more and more with readying the manned spaceflight legislation, until finally the day arrived that a preliminary draft went before the Council for its first test. Weyoun sat in on the session at Parnon's side, answering questions as they were addressed to him. Soltoi grilled them both and had one of Dessa Exarchate's senators on her side, but a sufficient portion of the Council was intrigued enough to let it go to a vote, scheduled for the following week. The way Parnon played up Pegrill Exarchate's dwindling dilithium deposits and Soura's plentiful ones probably didn't hurt.
On the day of the vote itself, aides weren't allowed onto the floor of the Council chamber, and so any of them interested in the vote gathered just inside the runners' door. Weyoun, of course, was there, along with quite a few of his colleagues. He watched the senators' faces for any clues as to their votes while most of the Council's three hundred and twelve members cast them.
Once silence fell in the chamber and the senators were no longer tapping at their padds, the Adjudicator took a moment to compile the data on her interface. "All votes have been received," the Adjudicator intoned, staring around the chamber for a moment before announcing, "Motion to proceed with legislative debate carried."
The Adjudicator's round gavel struck the small, resonant gong on the podium, and from the side of the Council chamber, Weyoun exhaled a sigh of relief that he hadn't known he was holding. The pronouncement put Parnon's manned spaceflight legislation one step closer to being a reality. It had one final hurdle of legislative debate to clear before going to an up or down vote, at which point, if it passed, a committee would be formed to handle its implementation. Even if that happened within the next few months, it would still be years before any Vorta would be orbiting Kurill, but it was an important victory, and one that Weyoun savored.
A few of the other aides around him murmured their congratulations to him before slipping out the runners' door. Loura Thelesoi, still Soltoi's senior aide after her failed campaign against Parnon, gave him a condescending look. "I can't believe you're wasting your time with this," she said with a derisive sniff.
He tucked his padd under his arm and gave her a hard, bright smile. "I'll remember you said that when astronomers start transmitting their data back from orbit."
Thelesoi glared but didn't say another word, following the other aides out the door. Weyoun wrinkled his nose slightly in contempt after her, then turned away, hooding his eyes. For a moment longer, he remained at the side of the chamber, staring up at the tiered seats and imagining what it would be like to be the one casting the votes. He was twenty-eight years old, with his prospects stretching out in front of him, just waiting for him to seize hold of them.
With a small, private smile, he turned and left the Council chamber, returning to Parnon's offices, where he found Deimos waiting. His friend broke off his conversation with Leto and asked, "Weyoun, are you and Parnon busy at the moment?"
"I'm not at the minute, but Parnon isn't even back from session yet. Why?"
Leaning against Leto's desk, Deimos said, "I heard about the vote—that's good, well done." He paused long enough for Weyoun to nod in acknowledgement, then went on, "I want to talk to both of you about final drafting."
"You want credited input?" Weyoun asked, raising his eyebrows.
"No. I just want to make sure it passes. And," he held up a finger, "I want Parnon to get me onto the committee as the science lobby's representative."
"I doubt he'll object, though I can't speak to that for certain." Weyoun stared thoughtfully at his friend for a moment, then said, "You think it's going to pass."
Nodding, Deimos replied, "Yes, I do. And not just because I think it's a good piece of legislation, and something that we should have done a long time ago—because I'm doing everything in my power to make sure it does."
"And what do you get out of that, Deimos, besides a seat on the implementing committee?" Leto spoke up.
Deimos glanced at her. "I'm going to be on the first orbital, Founders help me."
At that, Leto shuddered. "You can have it. I'd never want to go into space."
"Never?" Weyoun asked her, surprised. "You're not the slightest bit curious?"
"Would you go up there?" she countered.
Looking thoughtfully towards the window and the periwinkle sky arcing over Tira, Weyoun replied, "I think I might, given the right circumstances."
Chuckling, Deimos said, "Well, maybe you'll live long enough to see those circumstances. I have a feeling we won't be letting non-specialists into the orbitals for quite some time."
"That's all right," Weyoun replied, then raised an eyebrow. "I'm not exactly eager to get on any first-generation orbitals."
"Content to leave that sort of death-defying adventurism to people like me, eh?" Deimos asked.
Mildly, Weyoun replied, "That's one way of putting it."
A faraway look settled on Deimos's face. "What I really want is to be the first Vorta to leave Kurillian orbit. We've got unmanned probe technology that's never been implemented, and if we could transfer that to manned vehicles we could be exploring the whole solar system."
With another shudder, Leto said, "It sounds awful. I'm glad people like you exist, Deimos, so the rest of us don't have to do it."
Deimos laughed, and the three of them chatted until Parnon came in and agreed to speak with Deimos. Over the next several hours, the three of them overhauled the spaceflight legislation to give it the best chance to passing. Deimos brought his technical expertise to bear and left with a promise from Parnon that he'd see to the seat on the implementation committee. As the legislation's main author, he had the right to name one lobbyist to the panel, and even if Deimos hadn't asked for it, Weyoun was certain Parnon would have chosen him. The other man had been indispensable in the drafting of the legislation; it was no more than he deserved. And he was the best man for the job, besides.
True to Deimos's prediction, in the next few months, the legislation passed debate, and then proceeded to pass the Council's vote. The implementation committee was put in place, consisting of seven senators and one representative from the science lobby—Deimos. The eight of them would work over the next several years to make manned spaceflight a reality.
Still, the dry season dragged as it approached its end. There came a point when Weyoun realized he was physically tired of eating alone, living alone, waking up in his bed alone. It wasn't just that he missed Eris. Of course he did; his longing for her was like a presence, it was so substantial, but this was more. This was the realization that he had no urge to go back to being single. It was the realization that he didn't want Eris to leave his life. Ever. Maybe he'd had some inkling of this back when he'd chosen between Soltoi and her, but then the relationship had been too new to articulate what he'd been feeling. Even if he had, it wouldn't have been something to act on. They were both middle caste and at the very least, Vorta of the middle caste waited a full year before marrying.
He drew a deep breath the first time that the word crossed his mind in a serious way, when he knew that he'd ask her and pray to the Founders that she'd agree. Somehow it didn't seem like the major decision that he'd always expected it to be. It was just…something he had to do. And there was no point in waiting that he could see; she'd be returning to Tira City in a month and the thing to do, it seemed, was to ask her the day she arrived home.
On the night he made the decision, he found himself staring out over Tira City. Headlights flared from the streets below, from the skimmers and mopeds still traversing the Tir and Hellad districts, while the lights mounted on buildings and poles cast a steadier, bluer glow over the city. The river was a black strip dividing the two city center districts, the water reflecting the blue lights where it eddied in the wakes of small craft or underwater hazards. Further along the river's banks were two of the gutter districts, their light orange and oily. Weyoun crossed his arms over his chest, looking away from the slums and raising his eyes to the exurbs, visible beyond the edges of the more densely populated city. His living room window faced towards the west and the bluffs outside the city where the Athoun District, one of Tira City's most affluent exurbs, lay. It was a place he could imagine living, were he to become a senator someday—with Eris. If, of course, she would have him.
"Have you seen any of the bizarre reports coming out of the OCSS?" Deimos asked without preamble as he sat down across from Weyoun in the canteen's outdoor patio. It was the day before Eris's scheduled return; the end of the dry season, and every table was taken as Capitol employees made the most of the last few days of it. Weyoun had already had to glare imperiously at several runners who had attempted to filch the second chair at the table.
"That's your job, isn't it?" Weyoun asked. He'd never heard a senator call it the 'OCSS'—it was the orbital communications satellite station; but then, the science lobby was fond of acronyms.
Deimos sighed. "Where would any of you politicians be without people like me?"
Raising his eyebrows, Weyoun said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were a politician. Or have you gone back to astronomy?"
"I'm a lobbyist. There's an important distinction." Deimos looked amused. "And no. Though maybe I should. A couple of my friends over at Ground Control have been sending me some of this data—and trust me, Weyoun, I'd show it to you if you had any hope of understanding it—" He paused to check Weyoun's reaction, which was bland, as he was well used to this sort of thing after years of friendship with Deimos, "—and it's…well frankly it's impossible."
Underneath his typical gibing tone, there was an undercurrent of something else, an emotion that Weyoun had rarely heard in Deimos's voice. It was confusion—confusion tinged with anxiety. "What's so impossible about it?" Weyoun prompted.
Deimos opened his mouth, then closed it, furrowed his brow, and glanced around. There was something of the absurd in it, like playing spy in the holo-arcade that the two of them had frequented as university students. Finally, he leaned across the table and said in a low tone, "They're detecting something. Several large somethings. In orbit of Kurill. But the odd thing is—there's nothing there."
Weyoun furrowed his brow. "What do you mean, 'there's nothing there'? They're detecting something they can't see?"
"Exactly." Deimos still looked troubled. "It doesn't make sense." He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, then began again, in a tone that would have been pedantic if that odd anxiety hadn't been running under it, "Sometimes if a chunk of rock passes between the moons, it can create this sort of false reflection—our instruments get the wrong readings, in other words, from the sensor data bouncing around off all the orbital bodies out there—but Ground Control's convinced that that's not what's happening here. And having looked at the data, I agree." His eyes flicked around the room again. "Whatever they're picking up out there, I don't think it's natural."
Weyoun abruptly leaned back, trying hard not to smile. "Aliens, Deimos? Really?"
"Keep your voice down," Deimos said in a quiet, very serious tone; a tone so serious that it wiped the nascent smile from Weyoun's face. "Space is a big place. It's not so far-fetched. The Founders visited, didn't they?"
"And maybe the Founders are the only ones out there," Weyoun replied.
Deimos's brow twitched. "Maybe it's the Founders out there right now," he said, quietly and earnestly. The way he said it made Weyoun glance towards the sky. He immediately felt foolish. Not only because there wasn't anything to see—of course there wasn't, just the bright periwinkle wash of a dry season sky—but because there was something mildly alarming in what Deimos was saying. It was one thing to pray for the Founders' return, but it was quite another to contemplate that return as fact.
Weyoun grinned, though he could feel the nervous tension in it. "Deimos, the readings are probably wrong. Isn't that more likely than—than anything else?"
His friend was silent for a long time, and in the end, he didn't answer, instead asking slowly, "Have you ever thought what it would be like for the Founders to return during our lifetimes?"
The truthful answer was 'no'. The scriptures said that when the Founders returned, they would make the Vorta into powerful beings and put them at the head of an empire. It had been a justification for plenty of ancient wars (and there had been many, with the entire population confined to one continent, until certain clans had turned to diplomacy to prevent the Vorta from ripping their civilization apart), as this or that clan leader had claimed a vision, or sometimes even a visitation, from the Founders. Now there were no empires, just a single planetary government.
"Not really," he finally answered. "The chances of it happening seem somewhat…remote."
"Maybe the Founders are guiding us towards spaceflight for a reason."
"Maybe," Weyoun said doubtfully.
The troubled look flickered over Deimos's face again. "I just wonder…if it is them in orbit of Kurill right now…why are they hiding?"
Weyoun didn't answer, having no idea how to respond to this flight of sheer fantasy, and after a moment, Deimos shook his head as though trying to physically rid it of his thoughts. "Never mind all of that, though," he said with a smile. "How's Eris? She's coming back tomorrow, isn't she?"
"She is," Weyoun said, grateful for the change of subject. The monsoon was on the verge of beginning—ominous dark clouds clotted the horizon in the east every morning but never made their advance, and the sun continued to beat down. If Eris didn't arrive via shuttle prior to the first onslaught of pounding rain and hail, then she would need to take a train cross-country; one of the hulking freighters that could stand up to the monsoon's abuse. If that happened, it would be at least a week more before he saw her—probably longer, as seats on the first several trains to leave at the onset of the monsoon were hard to come by. Part of the price of traversing the monsoon was doing so slowly. "She's planning to, at least."
"Morning shuttle?"
"Yes, luckily." If the monsoon did pick tomorrow to start, at least the roiling black thunderheads didn't advance until mid-afternoon or later. Weyoun remembered a year when the rain had begun so late at night that everyone had been convinced it wouldn't start that day at all. Unconsciously, he glanced east, though of course the city center skyscrapers blocked the view from this angle. Still staring into the distance, he said determinedly. "I'm going to ask her to marry me."
"Are you really?" Deimos grinned, then reached across the table to clap Weyoun on the shoulder. "Well, if she's stayed with you this long, I suppose she'll probably say yes."
"I'm encouraged that you think so."
Deimos leaned back in his chair. "In all seriousness, though, let me be the first to offer my premature congratulations."
"Thank you."
"Are you nervous?"
Weyoun shrugged. "Not really. I suppose I should be—or will be."
"In other words," Deimos said, "you think she's going to say yes, too."
"Well." Smiling slightly, Weyoun asked, "Over-confident?"
"I've never known you not to be," Deimos replied cheerfully. A group of runners carrying full trays came out onto the terrace, eyeing their table, and Deimos threw his napkin on his empty plate. "Well, duty calls. We're beginning the arduous task of drawing up schematics for the manned orbitals today."
"I thought you were supposed to have started that a week ago," Weyoun remarked.
"Oh, you're a fine one to talk about bureaucratic delays," Deimos snorted.
Weyoun grinned in tacit acknowledgement. "When you've got something, Parnon's interested in seeing it," he said, getting to his feet.
Deimos did the same, nodding. "I appreciate his scientific curiosity. Tell him he'll be one of the first to see what we come up with. And Weyoun," he added, before they parted ways, "not that I think you need it, but good luck tomorrow with Eris." He hesitated, then said a bit stiffly, "I'm happy for both of you. She's a lucky woman."
This show of un-ironic affection both touched and surprised Weyoun, and to mask that, he said, "I'm a lucky man."
"That goes without saying," Deimos said, sounding more comfortable. He clapped Weyoun on the shoulder again and disappeared back into the Complex.
Weyoun stood outside a moment longer, staring up into the hard, cloudless sky, sensing the black thunderheads on the obscured eastern horizon. Tomorrow, if the Founders willed it, he'd know if the woman he loved would consent to be his wife. It seemed like a very long wait.
Weyoun took the train to the shuttleport the next day, the scheduled arrival time of Eris's shuttle into Tira City firmly in his mind, and when he reached the gate, nervousness suddenly swept through him. It felt oddly like he was meeting her again for the first time, though he suspected that neither of them could have possibly changed so much in the preceding four months to justify such a feeling. The fact that her shuttle was late, which he found out once he'd gotten there, only increased his anxiety. The minutes ticked by and all he could do was watch the massing of the black monsoon clouds to the east. The light seemed brighter and thicker than normal as it streamed down; a final flare of sun before the thunderheads rolled in. Meteorologists up and down the continent predicted that it would happen today and something about that light and the way the clouds drew it in made Weyoun believe them.
That shuttle couldn't land fast enough.
There was a sudden hiss of pneumatic machinery and the shuttle walkway uncurled outwards to meet—thank the Founders—the morning shuttle from Dala. Its wings folded upwards against its body as it swung into position, and after a moment the walkway hooked into the door mechanism. Weyoun crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall, a sigh of…something, relief or satisfaction, or possibly apprehension, escaping him.
Another few minutes passed, and with docking procedures complete, the shuttle door opened and Vorta began exiting. They were too far away for Weyoun to see their faces clearly, but he recognized Eris by her stride, and he straightened, squaring his shoulders, before pushing off from the wall and moving forward to greet her.
In a minute, Eris appeared in the gate doorway, and when she saw him, her eyebrows shot up in happy surprise. "You came to meet me," she said, smiling and shifting the shoulder strap of her bag. "How unlike you."
"Of course I did," he replied, taking one of her hands in both of his. "You can't seriously have thought I wouldn't after you've been gone for four months."
She gave him her other hand and he resisted the urge to pull her into an embrace in the middle of the shuttleport, with other Vorta streaming around them as they disembarked. "Well, after four months, what would another few hours have been?" she asked archly, though the look in her eyes told him that those few hours would have felt like months to her, too.
They looked into each other's eyes for a moment, and then Weyoun held out an arm. "Can I carry your bag for you?"
"I can manage," she replied. "Just please tell me you're going to bring me back to your flat."
He laughed as they started walking towards the shuttleport train platform. "I was hoping you'd say that. Do you want to go out to dinner, at least?"
"If you want. I'd be just as happy eating carry-out. Or leftovers. It doesn't matter." She looked at him, a vehemence in her eyes that the interface video just hadn't captured through those months apart. "I've really missed you."
Weyoun's grin refused to leave his face, and he brushed a hand lightly across her elbow, desperate to touch her after so long. "The feeling's mutual." Maybe they were better off eating in—if they went out, he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop himself from being in physical contact with her, and that was simply bad form. Of course, that wreaked havoc with his plans for the night. He'd had grand designs of romancing her; sweeping her off her feet and then, at the end of the evening, proposing marriage to her. At the very least, she'd be less likely to say no by the end of all that.
As they waited for the train, he bombarded her with questions about the excavation; she eventually pulled out a padd and showed him photos of some of the objects she and her team had uncovered. When the hiss of the approaching train reached their ears, she stored it away again in her bag, assuring him with a mischievous glint in her eye that he'd see plenty more of it in the coming months.
The train was full, but the two of them were able to find seats together near the back of it. She pushed her bag under her seat and leaned back, looking at him with an irrepressible smile of her own. The backs of their hands rested against each other's as the doors slid shut and the train began moving away from the station and towards Tira City. The shuttleport was about ten kilometers from the city center and on its own metro line, which traversed the flat Tiran plain.
As the train sped along, she asked him what had been happening in the capital since she'd been gone, but when he opened his mouth to respond, the plain around them suddenly and dramatically went dark, as though a curtain had been dropped around the sun. A hush fell on the train's passengers as every head turned to face the windows. The black thunderheads had finally covered the sky, blotting out the sun on their march across the continent. They flickered with lightning and in the distance, near the shuttleport, a bolt spidered from the sky to the ground. Weyoun's hearing was just sensitive enough to pick up the deep rumble of thunder that rolled across the plain.
Then, the sky opened up with the monsoon's first deluge, and everything outside was obscured as water ran in waves over the metro's duraplastic tunnel. There was an almost audible sound of release from the present Vorta—not relief, precisely, as no one exactly longed for the monsoon, but there was a certain satisfaction to the end of the waiting.
Gradually, conversation began to pick back up in the train car, and Eris remarked, "Good thing I made it back when I did. I almost didn't get on that shuttle, but someone cancelled at the last second and I got their seat."
He looked at her, saying nothing. The wash of water behind her, outside the train, lent this moment a dynamism that it hadn't had five minutes ago, and he had a sense that he could do anything in that moment and it would be the right thing—but that likewise, there was only one thing that he should do. Somehow the knowledge that he almost hadn't gotten her back today made him feel as though waiting to ask her to marry him was pointless; that everything he'd had planned was superfluous. Only two things mattered: the fact of his feelings for her, and the fact of hers for him.
"Eris." He took her hand and looked into her eyes, searching them for any sign that he shouldn't do what he was about to and finding none. He was almost thirty years old; his career was stable and promising. He felt certain—as certain as anyone ever could be about these things—that there would never be another woman in his life like Eris Arethoi and he'd be a fool not to make her a permanent part of it.
This wasn't the way he'd planned on asking her this question—romantic lighting had definitely played a role in that vision, as opposed to the harsh overhead lights of the metro—but suddenly the fact that they were surrounded by other people didn't matter. He'd rarely felt more alone with her, as though the entire world consisted only of them, squeezed between the window and the aisle of a train hurtling through the monsoon.
She looked surprised, and a little mystified, by his tone and the way he was holding her hand. "Yes?" she asked, her brow crinkling slightly.
And then words—what he was good at; his ability to twist them to any meaning and use them to get what he wanted being the one quality that had propelled him from gutter-scum to ascendant political aide—words failed him. Her eyes held his; that perfect, clear violet gaze of hers pinning him and making his heart hammer, and all he could do was draw in a breath and ask, "Would you marry me?"
Her eyes widened and she drew in a tiny breath, but for a moment she didn't say anything. Finally, she asked quietly, "No grandiloquence for the occasion?"
He didn't blink. For that matter, he barely breathed. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. "I had something, but I've forgotten every word of it," he replied. Somehow, his other hand had moved to clasp hers, so now both of their hands were twined together.
"Oh." It was more of an exhalation than anything. "Weyoun—"
It occurred to him that if she said 'no', then he might feel the presence of every other Vorta on that train most acutely.
Then, without another word, she kissed him hard, her hands gripping his tightly. Every pent-up bit of longing that they'd had for each other in the past four months leeched into that kiss; every time in the past four months that he'd needed and wanted her; every time in the past four months that he'd known he wanted her to be his wife, it was there, in the press of their lips and their palms, the only two points of contact between them.
Finally, her lips brushing his as she spoke, she murmured, "I was beginning to think that I'd have to wait for you to become a senator before you asked."
"Is that a yes?" he murmured back.
She bit her lip to hold back a smile. "Don't be stupid."
Weyoun reached a hand up and gently touched her face. Raising an eyebrow, he said, "I pride myself on the fact that I rarely am."
Her attempt to repress her smile failed and with a wordless noise, she met him in another fervent kiss.
Their sense of place was finally reinstated when someone nearby cleared her throat, and the two of them broke apart to see an older woman staring at them. Everyone else's gazes were conspicuously averted, but the woman just looked amused. "Congratulations," she said dryly, "but it might be better for the two of you to confine your celebration to your home?"
Eris's eyes were bright as she glanced at Weyoun, then back to the woman. Bowing her head, partly to hide the grin on her face, she said, "Of course."
"Our apologies, Doyenne," Weyoun added, certain that he'd never uttered a more perfunctory apology or honorific in his life. She looked like she knew it, but the amusement was still on her face as she turned away. Weyoun and Eris looked at each other and settled back in their seats for the remainder of the ride to Tira City, their hands clasped together tightly.