The BLTS Archive - Visions of The Night
by KyRoka (kyroka@aol.com)

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NOTE: This takes place after "Children of Time."

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Major Kira Nerys tried to shake the images of the people of Gaia from
her mind.  They haunted her even as she focused her eyes on the panel
in front of her in Ops.  The last thing she needed was another
nightmare to plague her forever.  As if this one wasn't enough to
intimidate all others into submission.

From what she could gather, it had all started on the bridge of the
_Defiant_ when the energy surge in her console had knocked her out.
It really was all a bit farfetched: descendants of the crew of a
_Defiant_ marooned two hundred years in the past; an Odo that loved
her and had waited those two hundred years just to see her again; an
Odo who had sacrificed eight thousand lives, who had sacrificed
himself, just so that she could get the treatment she needed.

No one would have believed it, and so she told no one.  What was
perhaps the strangest part was that no one seemed to question her on
any strange behavior.  To be sure, after Julian had jumbled her brains
back into order, everyone had seemed to tiptoe around her but she was
sure Julian had been behind that.  Now, after two weeks, they still
regarded her oddly -- especially Odo.  He seemed so distant, and there
always seemed to be some remark on the tip of his tongue; she could
see it in his eyes.  And yet, every time, he stopped himself or
supplemented an ordinary request about something trivial.  It was
almost as if she had woken from surgery into a different world.

At the same time, something told her that this was the same reality,
that this was where she belonged, but she still could not shake the
images of Gaia from her head.  It had been the most vivid dream she
had ever had, as well as the most persistent.  Every night she relived
every moment from when the "other Odo" had walked into Sickbay aboard
the _Defiant_ to the confession of "her Odo" in her quarters aboard
the _Defiant_.  Where did her mind come up with these things?

---

Odo paced his quarters.  It had been two weeks, and she had made
neither hide nor tail remark about Gaia.  Not that he had expected her
to come running into his arms, but every time she seemed just about to
say something about it ... she would turn her attention to something
trivial about the station.  Why was she keeping so distant?

*Because of you; you put eight thousand people between the both of
you, even if you were pushing them out of the way at the time.  Things
have changed, and it's just something you're going to have to work
with.* Odo peered out into the abyss of space.  How long had it been
since that had been his home, since he had floated, undiscovered and
inexperienced as to what he was, dead in space?

And could he say he had really made any progress?

---

They couldn’t be hers, the memories she was having.  Not dreams
anymore, for these images had an almost tactile sensation to them.
And yet, they were of something that had never been, of a time two
hundred years in the past, where the damage to her brain had started
to take effect.  She remembered the feeling as... as what exactly had
happened?  Her thoughts had become disjointed, moving from one moment
to another ten years later.  Her life in her mind became non-linear,
folding and falling in on itself. 	 *Probably just the effects of
the surgery.  Something got a bit too jumbled up in my brain.  Give it
a day or two more, Nerys.*

A day or two.  She could manage that.  The last thing she wanted was
Julian going over her with another million tests.

---

"Major?"

Kira jolted awake. "What..." She quickly took in her surroundings: the
Temple. *That’s right.  You came here to meditate, remember, Nerys?*
Her quarters had brought too many memories of dreams, and she had
retreated to the Temple.

"Are you all right?"

Kira glanced up at the person standing a few feet from her. "Odo." Her
voice registered slight surprise. "I’m fine, why do you ask?"

"Because you’ve been meditating for four hours now, and according to
the computer you weren’t awake for most of it."

Kira noted the concern in the crystal blue eyes staring at her, and
turned away from the penetrating gaze. "I... I haven’t been sleeping
well."

"You could always ask Doctor Bashir for..."

"No.  He’d only want to run more tests on me, to figure out *why* I
haven’t been sleeping well.  No more tests." Kira’s gaze threatened to
snuff out the candle she was looking out by intimidation.

"That I can understand," came the soft comment.  A personal comment.
Kira relished it, knowing how infrequent they were.

"Odo?"

"Yes?"

"Can you help me up?  My legs didn’t take too kindly to the...
meditation." She offered a smile, trying to hide the foolish
vulnerability she felt.

Odo made no comment but gently lifted to her feet, steadying her as
the circulation returned to her legs.

Kira’s mind flashed back to another Odo and her hands involuntarily
tightened their grip on Odo’s arms.

"Major?"

"I’m... I’m all right, Odo.  Just a little dizzy.  Could you take me
back to my quarters?" Kira rubbed mildly at her temple with one hand,
the other still steadying herself against Odo.

There was a slight nod that she almost missed.

---

They walked in silence to her quarters, Kira trying to ignore the
visions, and Odo trying to seem his normal non-plussed self.  When
they finally reached her quarters, Kira mindlessly keyed the code and
walked in.  Surprised by her behavior, and worried that their was some
side-effect to the surgery that Bashir had not anticipated, Odo
followed.  Kira had already curled herself into a seated position on
the couch.

"Odo," she asked after a moment, "can I talk to you about something?"

"Of course," he answered, taking a seat in a nearby chair.  What was
she going to say, to ask?  Surely it had something to do with Gaia.

"It’s about the mission.  I..." Kira stopped, not knowing where to
begin.  And then she decided simply to tell the story. "I’ve been
having dreams, visions of what happened there.  I thought the surgery
would erase them, but they’re still inside my head.  It’s why I
haven’t been sleeping very well lately."

"What kind of visions?" Odo asked.

"The _Defiant_ had established orbit of the planet when we were hailed
by people claiming to be descendants of ourselves.  Sisko and the
others beamed down to investigate, but Bashir had me in Sickbay for
tests, trying to stall whatever was happening to me.  They put you in
stasis, something about the quantum fluctuations affecting your
ability to hold any shape.  Then Bashir left and I was going back to
my quarters to rest or read or do something... but I never made it
because you walked in -- only it wasn’t you.  It was the you that had
been living with this society for two hundred years.  He looked
different, more human, and there was something in him, too.  The way
his soul seemed to shine out through his eyes and he was *so* happy,
happy just to see me.  And then he..." Kira pulled her legs up tighter
to her. "He told me how beautiful I was and then he said..."

"I love you, Nerys.  I’ve always loved you." Odo quietly voiced the
words, knowing that he had been wrong to be angry with her for not
talking to him, realizing that she had put herself through more than
he had put himself through in the middle of the nights.

But Kira paid no attention, did not even seem to notice his words, as
if they fit in so perfectly that she did not even realize she had not
spoken them in telling her tale. "Then he said he’d been waiting two
hundred years just to see me again because I hadn’t survived and..."
Kira paused, the faraway look in her eyes disappearing as she seemed
to register her surroundings. "What did you say, Odo?"

Odo walked over to the table, fingering the edge. "Nerys, you’re not
having visions or dreams, you’re just remembering.  It’s all true, it
all really happened."

"What?" she whispered, her eyes wide with astonishment.

"Gaia was real.  He... I..." Odo stopped, confused by it all.  Things
always became so jumbled when he thought back to Gaia and the memories
he had acquired.  Someone else’s memories -- and yet his.  He ventured
a glance at Kira, but her gaze was fixed somewhere else.

Kira’s mind was turning somersaults, acclimating itself to the visions
turned memories.  What did this mean? *That Odo destroyed 8,000 people
-- an entire civilization.  That Odo did this for me... because he
loves me.* Kira broke her gaze on the past and looked at Odo.  He
stood next to a chair, his hands gripping the frame.  What had he been
through these past weeks, thinking, as he must have, that she was
ignoring him, brushing him off?

"Odo?"

"Yes?"

"Why didn’t you say something to me sooner?"

"I thought that you no longer wished to continue our friendship," Odo
stumbled. "After all, his actions went against your beliefs, your
wishes. He betrayed you, and in a sense I betrayed you as well."

"No, you didn’t, Odo. And even the older Odo didn’t. He just did what
you have always done: protect me." Kira found herself resting a hand
on his shoulder. What had she expected? For him to comfort her, to
tell her some platitude that would ease the questions running circles
in her mind? Always there to save her from something.

"Would you do the same thing, Odo? Would you eliminate 8,000 lives to
save mine?" Kira asked the question with the steadying force of steel
in her voice. If he said no, she could try and push the whole thing
behind her, but if he said yes, there would be an entirely new set of
questions to answer.

Odo walked over to the window, looking out at the stars and wondering
if there were similar worlds created by temporal flukes. When the
answer finally came, it was the barest of whispers.

"Yes, I would." He heard the sharp halted intake of breath behind him
as shock registered in Kira’s mind, but he had weeks to ask himself
the question, to decide on what his decision would have been. "At
first I told myself that I couldn’t make a decision, not until I was
in the situation myself -- but in a way I have been. I know what it
was like to stand there and know that I ... he was going to lose you.
Then I convinced myself that I couldn’t live knowing that I had gone
against what you had asked of everyone on the _Defiant_, I would need
your forgiveness even through death.

"But in the end, when it came down to actually making a choice, of
deciding whether it was *just* enough to let you live and sacrifice
all of those people, I didn’t care about justice or order or even what
was right or what was wrong. It was a little unnerving, to feel the
thing you have clung to all your life slip away into unimportance, but
that’s what happened. I couldn’t let you die, I couldn’t let you
sacrifice yourself for people who never should have existed."

Odo paused, rubbing his thumb against the inside of his fingers. "It
was selfish of me, but I can learn to live with that. What I know is
that I cannot live without you -- even if it’s only as the friend who
comes in every Tuesday for a raktajino and to listen to me droll on
about criminal activity reports."

"Odo, I ..." Kira felt her mind swimming, trying desperately to absorb
the changing environment around her. She wanted to run away, to flee
everything, to be back on Gaia where everything else seemed so far
behind her. "I need some time ... some time to think about all of
this."

"Of course, Major. I do have some reports that I should tend to yet
this evening." Odo nodded and started to leave.

Kira watched him as he went, each stride measured and concrete and so
... so *Odo* that a chord was struck inside her. Some capacity of life
had been given to her selflessly, without regards to anything except
her survival. She was alive.

She was alive.

"Odo," Kira called out, catching him as he stepped over the threshold.
She scrambled over to him from across the room, stopping a few inches
away. "Odo, thank you ... for my life."

Odo felt himself shiver inside, but he controlled and channeled the
feeling into a terse nod. "Goodnight, Major."

"Goodnight, Odo." Kira watched as the doors closed in front of her and
wondered what visions would visit her that night.

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The End