If Curzon was courting her, his idea of courtship involved some critique of her counselling technique as well as introducing her to Ferengi drinks and sulking over her lack of enthusiasm about his Klingon aria renditions, disguising this as training of her diplomatic skills. One day, after giving her tips on how to soothe an Andorian widow who was the only survivor of her marriage, trying to distract herself from grief for her fellow husband and wives, Curzon said to her: "That's why I never got married after Torias."

She rarely thought of him as two lifeforms instead of one, but remarks such as these reminded her again.

"Was he your last host?" Arandis asked, and wondered whether she was truly talking to the symbiont now, and what Curzon had been like before joining. A shadow passed over his face, but he nodded.

"Got himself killed in a crash," he said. "Too damn young. When I woke up as Curzon, it took all my initiate training not to track down Nilani immediately. Torias' wife. Sometimes I woke up crying for her, and I hadn't even met the woman. Still haven't. He loved her beyond reason. If she had died instead of him, I think he would have committed suicide, never mind that would have meant a century in the pool for Dax before getting another host. So I thought, no, not for me. Not in this life, not again. Friendship and sex, and that's it. One single person just shouldn't be your life."

Arandis had similar plans for herself, though she wasn't willing to exclude the possibility of falling in love at some indefinite later point. Not just now, though. There was still so much time left.

"And were you able to keep your resolution?" she asked, genuinely wanting to know.

"I think my shoulder aches a bit," Curzon said, and she didn't push. Instead, her fingers went after non-existant knots. She could feel his bone structure and the frail, aged flesh under her fingertips. From behind, his head turned to the side, his profile reminded her of the holoprograms recreating ruins of ancient worlds. On Risa, everything was new; the planet had been completely terraformed by human settlers, not having had an indigenous sentient population and a less than hospitable climate. Its weather control net was the most sophisticated in the Federation and a marvel of engineering, which meant nothing on Risa could ever be allowed to age. But people loved looking at old monuments occasionally, and monuments from several cultures and species were recreated as holograms on several spots on Risa, changing every second year so no species would feel permanently left out. Thus, Arandis had had the opportunity to walk in the shadow of the ruins of Tagus III, look up to the columns of Karnak, and stand in the midst of the T'Karath Sanctuary on Vulcan. Truly, there was something beautiful in ancient relics in their state of decay which could never be found in the smooth, identical surfaces of every dwelling. But decay was decay nonetheless, and she found a deep sadness in herself that this was so.

"That girl," he said at last, "my student."

"The one you broke," Arandis said, and he shook his head. He looked proud and regretful at the same time.

"I broke a lot of other students, but not her," he said. "Never her. You have to understand, with the others, there was nothing personal in it. It's not easy, being a host. If you're not ready, not sure of yourself and your own personality, you can get overwhelmed by the intensity of the symbiont. And that's not good for either host or symbiont. It learns nothing new, and you, you don't exist anymore in any meaningful way. So when I get assigned initiates for field training, I am tough with them. A lot don' t make it. But they remain themselves for the rest of their lives, and the symbionts get hosts who remain themselves as well. I know they curse me as a mean old son of a bitch, and they're not wrong, but I don't think anyone can claim I was unfair. Except for Jadzia."

Arandis was silent. Sometimes you didn't have to say anything, just to listen.

"Great legs, a face to break your heart and a quicksilver mind," he said, not looking at her. "Even a sense of humor, though she usually was too polite to use it in my company. Still, there were other Initiates like that, and I never fell for them. You just don't, on Trill. It's a sacred trust. Not the Initiates, not when their entire future life depends on your judgment. I don't know why it happened this time. But it did. I even walked around with recordings of songs that reminded me of her and wrote out the lyrics, and even Torias hadn't behaved that idiotically. You'd have to go back to Emony for that one. At first I thought that this was it, I clearly was finally going senile. But then I figured out it was even worse, that I had fallen in love with her."

Her hands left his shoulder and moved down on his back, and Curzon sighed. It was an odd, questioning sound, and so Arandis broke her silence.

"Did you tell her?" she asked.

"No," he exclaimed horrified, pulled away from her, rolled on his back and sat up. He clearly meant to do it as one fast series of movements, but his body failed him, and he grimaced even before he got to the sitting up part.

"Afterwards, I meant," Arandis clarified. "I do understand why you couldn't tell her while she was your student."

"I made sure she'd never talk to me again," Curzon declared grimly. "Recommending she'd get dropped out of the Initiate program after my field training with her would do the trick, you know."

This shocked Arandis as his confession of having fallen in love with his student had not done. She knew what it was to hope and work for something so hard, to make plans for your life and then to have them all depend on some supervisor who could crush them in a heartbeat.

"And she did nothing to deserve this but have the misfortune of being attractive to you?" she said, forgetting to keep her voice even and non-judgmental. Curzon finally looked at her again. His gaze was steadfast.

"No. In fact, I'm pretty sure Jadzia would be a splendid host. But I had to get her away from me as quickly and thoroughly as possible. It was a completely shitty thing to do, and I did it anyway, and then I got drunk and called Benjamin and started to ramble about wanting to go to Risa one more time. I didn't get sober again until the morning I requested you."

"Turn around," Arandis said after a while. "I didn't finish the massage."

Silently, he complied. This time, she worked on his legs, perhaps a bit harder than necessary. He didn't utter a sound.

"You can't make it up to her by being nice to me and helping me advance," she murmured. "And stop playing the martyr. These massages are designed to make you groan, so groan!"

"My dear, you only had to ask," he said with his old glibness. She didn't call him on it. It would probably be safer to go back to banter and stay away from intimate confessions for a while.