"But I'm a fire, and I'll keep your brittle heart warm

If your cascade ocean wave blues come

All these people think love's for show

But I would die for you in secret

The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me

Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?"

Taylor Swift, "peace"

/

Nerys didn't think anything of it at first when she got a message from Odo, submitting a new training regimen for the crew for the approval of Captain Sisko and herself. Odo took his position as Chief of Security very seriously, all the more so since the Dominion had started stirring up trouble. His language, as usual, was dryly professional; it took her a moment to realize what exactly this training plan entailed. Once she did, she jumped to her feet, marched along the Habitat Ring, jabbed the button on the door to his quarters, and stormed in as soon as he said, "Enter."

"What in the Fire Caves, Odo? You want us to use you for target practice?!"

"Good evening to you too, Major," he said wryly.

She'd interrupted his shapeshifting. Even as his face looked back at her, the rest of his body was still flowing down from the arches of the sculpture at the center of the room. She blushed - it felt a bit like walking in on someone half dressed - and looked away at a stack of marble cubes to give him time to put his "clothes" back on.

"Sorry to barge in like this," she said, taking several deep breaths. "It's just - I saw your report, and I wanted … You know Sisko wouldn't make you do this."

"He's not," Odo retorted, back in full humanoid form, standing in front of her with his arms folded. "I'm volunteering. I'm a tactical asset, we both know that."

She did know that, even if it made her stomach turn over. Knowing one's enemy was essential in war; Bajorans and Cardassians knew each other intimately by now. The more they practiced with Odo, the more they might actually learn. On the other hand … he'd been raised in a laboratory by people - her own people - using him for their own benefit, and now he was volunteering for more of the same. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair.

"Don't talk about yourself like that. 'Tactical asset' - you - you're our colleague!"

"It is as your colleague that I mean to train you all to protect yourselves from further Changeling incursions," he said sternly. "And non-lethally at that. The last thing I want is another failure."

That last word came out as a growl, as bitter as day-old raktajino grounds. She could practically taste his self-reproach in the air. He walked over to the porthole and stared out at the stars, arms still folded, back stiff.

"You mean on the Defiant? That was self-defense." Nerys followed him. "We all know what happened. O'Brien was there."

"No Changeling had ever harmed another." Odo stared at his reflection. "Until I did. They'll never forgive this, you know."

"Never, huh? I'd say abandoning you when you were a newborn, hijacking our ship, trying to start a war with the Tzenkethi and forcing a Link with you also counts as harm."

Odo winced. Nerys could have kicked herself. What did she know about Linking, anyway? Only what he had told her. It wasn't her place to judge where the ethical boundaries were in a process she couldn't even understand. Even if O'Brien's description of Odo struggling to push the enemy soldier off him sounded like her own personal nightmare.

"I still should have been more careful," he rasped. "It was … I'd never seen someone just … wither away like that. In so much pain, and so far from home."

For the life of her, Nerys would never understand how so many people could believe him when he pretended not to feel anything. He was the most compassionate person she'd ever known, perhaps with the exception of Vedek Bareil or Kai Opaka; compassionate as only a shape-shifter could be, becoming the other until their pain was his own. Solids like her had their bodies to shield them from the rest of the world, but his boundaries were so terribly thin; no wonder he had to reinforce them by acting like an emotionless lawkeeper. And no wonder, she caught herself thinking, the Founders had become the way they were. Other people's pain couldn't hurt you if you convinced yourself they weren't people.

"Do not let them walk alone," she murmured in High Bajoran, a prayer for the dead, ironic as that might be for the Founders who considered themselves gods. She turned briefly in the direction of the wormhole and lifted her hands.

Odo watched her movements and gave a small, silent nod.

"I, uh … I think this training plan of yours might not be such a bad idea," she conceded.

"You do?"

"But only if you're in charge of it, every step," she added. "You start the drills. You decide when and where. And if we ever hurt you or anything gets to be too much, you let us know immediately, understood?"

"Yes, Major."

"Good. I'll let the captain know."

Now that the matter of the training plan was settled, she knew she ought to go away and let him have his privacy. On the other hand, she dreaded the kind of thoughts that would close in on him once he was alone. She'd guard his back against a squadron of Jem'Hadar if necessary, but she couldn't protect him from himself.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing. It's only … I wish I could give you peace."

He did not scoff or make any sarcastic remarks about how childish that must sound, in a time like this. He merely unfolded his arms and let them fall to his sides, looking at her with eyes the color of the sky above the Dakhur Hills, just before sunrise.

"You do," he said, to her astonishment. "By just being here."

"Really?"

"You are the first person who's ever been angry on my behalf. I … I can't tell you what that means to me."

Nerys had never thought of her anger as good for anything before, except maybe in combat. Trust Odo to see the best in her and the worst in himself. She would have hugged him if the image of him being held in that forced Link weren't so vivid in her mind.

"Hey, Constable?" she said instead as she sidled toward the door. "When you start those drills … "

"Yes, Major?"

"Bet you first crack at the new Dixon Hill novel that I'm the one to find you."

Odo snorted and, though he disapproved of betting in general, said: "You're on."