The BLTS Archive - Quiet
by Unzadi (unzadi@aol.com)

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Disclaimer:  Paramount owns everything even vaguely Star Trekky.  I'm
just playing with the stuff they didn't want.  This story follows
"Tears of the Prophets," a look at how it might have been, were it
Julian to lose Jadzia.

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Julian Bashir entered his quarters.  His quarters.  Bachelor officer's
quarters now, no longer the family quarters he had shared with Jadzia.

He hadn't told anyone where he was going, only that he wanted some
time alone. They would find him soon enough, Miles, or maybe Captain
Sisko.  Both had extended invitations for the night, so that he
wouldn't have to spend the night alone, with the quiet, without
Jadzia.  So that he wouldn't have to lie alone in their bed,
remembering the sweet way her warm body would curve into his, so that
he wouldn't wake alone and feel her loss once again.

Those were noble sentiments, Julian knew, but in the end, there would
have to be a time when he would enter these quarters and face the
quiet.  Soon enough, it would be time to cede these rooms to a family,
and take up smaller quarters for himself.  It was only right.

He passed by the small room he and Jadzia had set aside for the child
they hoped to adopt someday.  Someday soon, they had decided only
what...months ago?  Weeks?  They had talked about it that morning.
The pain of knowing they couldn't conceive was always there, a dull
ache that had settled in after the first surprise of the fact.  Still,
Jadzia had been quick to find a solution.  Julian had always loved
that about her; the way her scientist's mind worked.

There were already so many children who needed loving parents, she had
said one morning over her raktajino, while Julian was bustling about,
collecting the padds he'd need for the day's work.  Bajoran orphans
who would fit right into their family as naturally as if they had come
from her body and Julian's.  He had put down the padds then, taken her
face in his hands and kissed her, told her she was beautiful and
magnificent.  That he would appreciate the symbiont's knowledge of
parenting.  They wouldn't make all the new parent mistakes, he'd said.

It hurt to think of it now.  With weary fingers, Julian set about
removing his uniform.  It was filthy and itchy, and he wanted to be
out of it.  He left the garments on the floor where they fell, hoping
in some corner of his mind that such action would make Jadzia
magically come through the door and scold him, pick them up, bring in
yet another parade of dinner guests.  It wouldn't happen, he knew, but
the dream was enough to get him as far as the closet.

He took out the dressing gown she'd given him on their wedding night,
a floor-length robe of emerald green silk from Trill, and wrapped
himself in it.  He couldn't lie on the bed, not her bed, not their bed
yet.  Maybe the next night, or the one after.  Neither did he want to
take away the sheets that still smelled like her, that still held her
laughter and their loving.

Instead, he stood in the middle of the room, staring at everything.
With the symbiont safely on its way back to Trill, and the promise of
a new host somewhat of a balm to the wound of Jadzia's loss, Julian
knew that Dax's things would have to be transported.  Her research,
her books...

Julian's gaze wandered over the room, resting on things Jadzia had
owned, Jadzia had touched.  Her box of hair ties lay on the dresser,
open, as she had left it that morning.  There hadn't been time to put
it away, or even close the lid.   She'd do it later.  There hadn't
been time for later, though.

His steps slow and heavy, Julian moved to the dresser and picked up
the box.   He had always liked the silver circle clip, and the one
that looked like a stylised golden butterfly.  Jadzia had studied a
species of Bajoran moth soon after their wedding, becoming so
fascinated by her work that Julian had been forced to find creative
ways to coax her out of her lab at the day's end.  He'd always
managed, as she was eager to discuss her work with him.

Julian's fingers tightened around the clip in his hand, an abstract
collection of brushed metal squares from...where?  Betazed?  He
couldn't remember.

They had worked so well together, he and Jadzia.  He smiled as he
thought of all the sentences she'd finished for him, the nights they'd
spent in her lab or the infirmary, working until Kira or Sisko came to
get them for duty shift.  Those had been the beautiful days.

Reassociation was forbidden to Trills, and so it would only be a
matter of time before Julian had to separate Dax's things from
Jadzia's, to make the distinction between wife and stranger and pack
them in the appropriate boxes.  The things that were Jadzia's,
whatever had belonged to the wife of Julian Bashir, he could keep and
look over and hold during the long nights when her absence was a
palpable presence, a near-physical entity.  When it was achingly
obvious that she was not sitting in her favourite chair, not throwing
one of her parties, not setting their table or putting her cold feet
on his to make him squeal, he could at least know that there was
something besides himself that she had once touched, once loved.

It was Dax who he would have to let go.  That was the difficult part.
Enhanced eye-hand co-ordination or not, Julian knew he'd need help in
putting Dax's archives of data, her equipment, her professional
journals, into packing for their transport.  For the next host.  For
the Dax he could never know.

Logically, it was right.  They had discussed this before they married,
he and Jadzia.  If it ever did happen that Dax would receive a new
host, then Julian would undergo a separation as well.  She had left a
list against that day, to make it easier.

Julian had thanked her then, but now he bit back a curse.  How could
it be so cut and dried?  This was from Dax, but this was from Jadzia?
Had he worked with Dax, loved Jadzia?  He was sure that he would spend
the rest of his life with that question and not find an answer.

Still, she had been there.  Jadzia Dax had shared his life, his heart,
his home and his body.  She had worked beside him and played with him,
lovers' games in the privacy of these rooms.  He had seen himself in
her eyes, the truest mirror of all.  He would miss her, but he would
heal, made all the stronger by the love he would carry with him
always.

Affixing the clip with the squares to the chest pocket of his robe,
Julian walked to the replicator and ordered a raktajino.  Staring out
at the stars, he lifted the glass in silent toast.  "Thank you,
Jadzia," he whispered to the room that smelled like her, like them.
"And godspeed to you, Dax."

He drank slowly, listening to the quiet.

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The End