Work Text:
Fandom: Star Trek; Deep Space Nine
Character: Ezri
Rating: PG
Timeline: 7.03 - Afterimage
A/N: I love Jadzia. She was extremely cool. But Ezri's a good character.
Beta: Insane Vampiress (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/293946/)
Disclaimer: Not mine. I play with other people's toys.
*~*~*
The shrine has a strange pull on her. She doesn't want to be there, but she can't seem to leave and instead of turning around, she walks to the very spot she (no, not her, Jadzia) died. Ezri can remember the exact words Jadzia Dax said, the thrill she felt knowing she and Worf could have a child and the overwhelming agony as Dukat shot her with the energy from the Pah-Wraith. The sensation of having every nerve in her body fried, as if she were being electrocuted, with her body spasming in the air so hard she felt like her neck might stop supporting her head at any moment, comes back to Ezri so fast that she has to lay down, not even realizing she's laying in the exact place, staring at the exact spot on the wall that Jadzia did, knowing that she was dying and praying that she would get to see her Par'machkai one more time before she's gone.
Dax isn't sure how much time passes before she remembers she is Ezri, not Jadzia, and that she's not dying. She could ask the computer, but the last time she asked it for the time, she got flashes of it waking her after a particularly long night with Worf, and she really doesn't need to deal with that right now on top of everything else. She gets up, Dukat's last words to her, his last words to Jadzia, playing over in her mind as she backs out of the temple, asking herself why she ever agreed to be joined with the symbiote in the first place. She didn't have any training and she'd had enough troubles with 'self' issues, thanks to her mother, even before she went into the operating room. How could she ever have thought she could manage to handle seven other people's memories?
Once she's on the Promenade she takes a deep breath, her eyes still focused on the entryway. She still doesn't know why she keeps going back there. None of her, Dax's, previous hosts had this fascination with places they remembered dying. It can't be healthy, and she'd see a counselor, but that's her job and none of the other hosts ever had much use for 'shrinks' anyway. She can recite Curzon's reasons therapists are useless without even thinking about it, and she can't help feeling Joran's distrust and disdain by the concept that someone could give his twisted urges and feelings a label, as if it might make them somehow less his, less unique to him.
Ezri starts towards Quark's, automatically craving a raktajino, and it isn't until she's halfway there that she remembers she hates the stuff. Not even thinking about it, she drifts back into the shrine, and just stands there, without thinking, without feeling, just concentrating on her breathing as she lets her mind go blank, until Kira walks in and reminds her that she's still alive, despite that she recalls differently.