"And darling, it was good

Never looking down

And right there where we stood

Was holy ground"

- Taylor Swift, "Holy Ground"

/

"What were the Prophets like, when you met them?"

There was a time Nerys would have bitten her tongue rather than ask Commander Sisko a question like that, but that was before today. Now, in this runabout, with the Celestial Temple still on their sensors and the reverence in his eyes that surely matched her own - now that they had seen a Prophecy come true in a way they'd never have predicted … When, if not now, was the right time to ask?

Sisko smiled, slowly, ruefully, and looked down at the controls. "I should've known you'd ask me that someday," he said. "Still not easy to describe, though. I'm sure Trakor and other Bajoran authors have written about them better than I could."

"I'm not asking them, sir. I'm asking you."

"Fair enough."

For a moment, the only sound in that small space was the thrumming of the impulse engines as the tiny dot that was Deep Space Nine slowly grew larger from the viewport.

"The thing about living outside linear time," he said suddenly, "Is that everything's so … immediate, for them. Everything happens for the first time, or maybe the last time - but it never gets taken for granted. They've been watching over Bajor for, what, thousands of years? But from the way they talked, you'd think they'd never met a corporeal being before. They seemed so innocent in some ways, but … they understood things about me I'd been afraid to admit, even to myself."

"Like what?" Nerys realized as she said it what a deeply personal question that was, especially to someone who was still her superior officer, but it was too late to take it back.

Sisko's expression darkened, but not with anger; it was old grief that gathered like thunderclouds around him. "You know my wife - Jake's mother - was killed at Wolf 359 … "

She nodded.

"And you know - you must have read about it - how the Prophets speak to us through memories?"

"They didn't - !" Nerys guessed what he was about to say, and it knocked the wind out of her. It was one thing to read in the scriptures about experiences that, however powerful for the writer, had happened thousands of years ago. It was quite another thing to sit next to a man she'd served with for almost three years, who fried up spicy Human food for his crew and worried about his teenage son's social life, and find out the Prophets had forced that man to relive the death of a beloved wife and mother.

She thought of Bareil in the infirmary, kept barely alive by machines, calling her Major and saying he couldn't feel her holding his hand, and it was suddenly hard to breathe.

"Why would they do that to you?" she gasped. "How could they?"

"They didn't," Sisko said. "I was doing it to myself. All they did was show me."

"But still … !"

"I'd been trying to explain to them about linear time, but they showed me not everything was linear," he said. "'You exist here,' they kept telling me - with Jennifer buried in the rubble, me trying to dig her out, our tactical officer dragging me away before I got myself killed too … and they were right. I did exist there … but I didn't have to. I had a choice."

A choice? Nerys had never thought of it that way. Did she still exist at Bareil's deathbed too? Or was it an earlier moment than that - running from the Cardassians through the mountains of Dakhur, lining up for food at the refugee camp, or staring at the burned-out fields of her parents' farm?

"You mean," she asked, struggling for clarity, "That this was their way of … helping you?"

"I believe that, yes," Sisko said gently. "They might be the most alien beings I've ever encountered in all my years in Starfleet, but I do know empathy when I meet it."

Nerys thought of Bareil again and, by main force of will, pulled her soul out of that hospital room and onto the Promenade, where candlelight shone through the open doors of the temple, and Bareil was giving Winn and the children she'd been preaching to a much needed reminder that the Prophets' love was unconditional. Not that Winn had paid any attention, but Nerys had never needed to believe that so much as now.

"Do you think he's safe with them?" She could hear her own voice cracking. Her eyes stung, and the outlines of the station through the window became a metallic blur. "Vedek Bareil, I mean - do you think his soul is safe?"

Bareil himself had been so certain, even as he was dying. He had truly believed it was the will of the Prophets to finish that peace treaty with Cardassia, even if it meant working himself to death. What kind of unconditional love would treat a servant that way? The Parable of the Gardeners said that Bajor was like a vine that needed pruning to bear fruit, but could such gardeners really keep the whole vineyard in mind and still feel love for a cut-away twig?

"I wish I could tell you for certain." Sisko's voice had gone so deep, she felt it in her bones. "I've asked myself the same thing about Jennifer. What I do know is that, every time I remember her - every time I look at Jake - we're painting stars on the nursery ceiling, or she's reading Maya Angelou to Jake at bedtime, or we're arguing about what our aquatic crewmembers need versus what's practical for the rest of the ship - she was a marine biologist on the Saratoga - and I exist in a time when she's alive … Vedek Bareil was a good man, and he loved you. Find a moment when you knew that - really knew it - and you'll know where his soul is."

The monastery. That was the first place that occurred to her; of course it was. But not their first meeting in the gardens; not playing springball or arguing over minor theological points or even making love, although she treasured all those memories and still regretted not making more time for them. It was the moment Bareil had told her the truth about Kai Opaka's collaboration with the Cardassians, and how he had covered up for her and taken the blame himself. He had sacrificed his career rather than let Bajor lose faith in the spiritual leader who had seen them through the Occupation, and when Nerys had been ready to run at the first sign of his flaws, he hadn't held it against her. They had forgiven each other in the shade of the sandstone arches, with the smell of incense and autumn leaves in the air. He had kissed her hand and taken her arm, and they had gone to pay their 'respects' to the newly elected Kai Winn, determined to face her together.

Bareil Antos had been a good man, and he had loved her. Yes, that was the moment she had known.

"Thank you, sir." She wiped her eyes. "What this means to me, I … I can't even say."

Thank you, Emissary. However much Benjamin Sisko might dislike being addressed that way, it was who he was, and her soul recognized it. He was as flawed as anybody - he'd been known to turn the methods of people like Quark or Garak against them, and woe betide whoever made him angry - but the Prophets had sent him, and he was right here. Their kindness might be alien and unfathomable to her, but his was not.

"That's alright, Major," he said, with a brief but solid touch of her arm, rather as Shakaar or Furel would have done to encourage her before battle. "You're my first officer. We're here for each other, that's all."

Her rank was a welcome anchor to the linear world; probably for Sisko as well. He reached for the comm channel and hailed Ops, asking for permission to dock, in a matter-of-fact voice as if setting up this communications relay had been a mission like any other.

Soon they'd be sending off the Cardassian scientists back to their homeworld and getting back to their routine. She'd get annoyed with him for something petty like leaving empty raktajino cups sitting around, and he'd get annoyed with her for being late with her reports or snapping at someone, and the Dominion would still be lurking in the background … but in the non-linear world, something had shifted, and she would not soon forget.

If the monastery was holy ground to her, this shuttlecraft was as well.