a ST:DS9 fanfic, O/K, post-"What You Leave Behind"
Written September 2000
Some adult material. Over 18s only, please.
No attempt is made to infringe the copyright of Paramount etc., etc.

"Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it."
- William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1

PART ONE
The Fugitive

"It's a good story, Colonel," Caben said, regarding her with faint, dry amusement. "The story of how one young, wilful changeling managed to fragment the Great Link and almost bring the Dominion to its knees."

Colonel Kira Nerys of the Bajoran Militia, commander of the space station Deep Space Nine, drew a deep, steadying breath and said coldly, "I didn't agree to see you so you could sit there speaking in riddles, Caben."

The Vorta inclined his head slightly. "Very well. The Dominion believes that the fugitive may attempt to flee through the wormhole and seek asylum in the Alpha Quadrant. Inevitably, he will come here to Deep Space Nine. You are fully aware of the terms of the treaty between the Dominion and the Alpha Quadrant's Allied Forces, I assume, Colonel?"

She nodded tightly. "Of course."

"Then you will know that should Odo board this station, you are required to place him in confinement and immediately notify the nearest Dominion outpost of his detention so that a Jem'Hadar ship can be despatched to collect him."

Kira surveyed the Vorta with barely contained antipathy. Curtly, she said, "I'm aware of the responsibilities imposed by the treaty."

"Good," Caben said serenely. "The Dominion doesn't favour traitors, nor does it look well on those who break their word. I'm glad we understand each other, Colonel."

"Will that," Kira asked him coldly, "be all?"

-oOo-

"Starfleet Intelligence," Admiral Ross said, a few days later, "has been monitoring the situation since the insurrection began. According to the reports from our operatives in the Gamma Quadrant, there's no doubt that for a while the Dominion was in complete disarray. Now, however, they seem to have reinforced their core systems and they're beginning to strengthen their grip on the outlying territories. It seems there simply wasn't enough impetus to finally topple the Dominion against such impossible odds. Most of the prominent renegades have now been captured - including several dissident Founders - save for a hard-core still being pursued by the Jem'Hadar."

"What does that mean for the Alpha Quadrant?" Kira asked him.

"In the short term, very little. The Dominion is committed to obeying the terms of the peace treaty, at least for the moment. They simply haven't the resources to maintain their grip at home and embark on another costly war. It suits them very well to maintain diplomatic relations with us. Who knows what will happen in another twenty or thirty years?" The Admiral shrugged his powerful shoulders. "The current status quo is perfectly acceptable to the politicians, so we're all obliged to keep our heads down and play the game. Caben was right, I'm afraid. By the terms of the treaty, if we encounter a Dominion citizen accused of crimes in the Gamma Quadrant we are obliged to detain him and inform them of his presence."

"And you're happy to go along with that?"

"I didn't say that, Colonel. We don't always have the privilege of being happy with the things required of us." He studied her for a moment, then said, "Let's be frank; it would be very bad for everyone concerned if Odo did arrive on DS Nine. As a Starfleet officer, my advice to you would have to be to refuse him permission to dock. If he sets one foot on this station, your responsibility according to the treaty is certainly to arrest him and notify the Dominion."

Kira stared at the smooth surface of her desk for a moment, then looked up. "I know what my responsibilities are."

"Good," Ross said soberly. "If the Dominion should ever suspect that we were harbouring a fugitive... whatever his potential value to the Alpha Quadrant."

"Are you expecting me to read between the lines, Admiral?" Kira asked him bluntly.

The Admiral didn't blink. "I'm expecting you to do your duty as the commander of this outpost, Colonel. And as a citizen of the Alpha Quadrant. Remember, however, that neither the Federation or Starfleet will condone any violation of the treaty that is brought to their attention."

"I see," Kira said calmly. It was true. She was beginning to see the situation very clearly indeed.

-oOo-

"What do you want me to say, Nerys?" First Minister Shakaar Edon asked over the subspace communications link. "I can't give you official permission to do anything that will put Bajor at risk. As Bajor's political leader, I have to remind you of your obligations concerning the peace treaty."

"Thank you," Kira said with bitter sarcasm, "for your help, Edon."

Her former lover shook his head slightly. "What do you expect me to do? Officially? Bajor isn't in a position to defy the Dominion."

It was the truth, and she knew it. With a heavy sigh, Kira said, "Oh, I know. It's just..."

"Nerys," Shakaar said quietly, "it looks to me as if there's a storm brewing. I could arrange for a transfer for you. Good, experienced officers are hard to come by. Let someone else worry about Deep Space Nine for a change. You've been there close to ten years now, haven't you? Why not come back to Bajor? Take a post here?"

"No," she said, but with some regret. "No, Edon. This is my station. It's where I belong."

"I knew you'd say that." A gentle shake of the head. "Well, all I can do is wish you luck. If the Dominion ever have cause to ask for your head, I won't be able to save you. The interests of Bajor must come before the interests of a... friend. If you make the wrong choice, you could find yourself completely alone, Nerys. I'm sorry."

Kira changed the subject abruptly, spoke to him for a few minutes more about other matters, then terminated the communications link, closed down her terminal and headed for the Promenade and Quark's bar. The eponymous proprietor was talking to Ezri Dax and Julian Bashir when she walked in. It seemed that they, too, were discussing matters in the Gamma Quadrant.

"They've spent a year chasing him halfway across the Quadrant," Quark was saying, sounding viciously satisfied, "and they still haven't come close to catching him."

"Odo," Kira correctly surmised, taking a seat next to Bashir.

"Who else? The hero of the revolution," the young doctor said with a raise of his dark eyebrows. "Quark thinks we should put up a holo-statue of him on the Promenade. With a strategically placed contributions box for the Gamma Quadrant Liberation Army Fighting Fund."

For a number of months, Kira had been finding some release in the dark humour of her colleagues, but after her encounter with Admiral Ross and Shakaar Edon, she failed to find anything amusing in Bashir's words. Rather curtly, she said, "Haven't you heard? The rebellion's finished."

"Dominion propaganda," Quark said, "I heard that -"

Kira cut into his words with, "Not tonight, Quark. Give me a synthale."

Much later, sitting at a private table with Ezri, Kira relayed what both Ross and Shakaar had told her, finishing with, "The worst thing is, they're right. All I can do is hope that Odo keeps well away - after spending so long hoping he would come back. Ironic."

Ezri, latest host of the Dax symbiont, regarded her with obvious concern. "And if he doesn't stay away...?"

"Then, as station commander, I'm required to arrest him and hand him over to the Dominion to be punished for inciting rebellion," Kira said flatly. "It's been made very clear to me that if I attempt to do anything else, I'm on my own."

"But if you succeeded...?" Ezri said. "If you managed to spirit him away without the Dominion suspecting?"

"Then," Kira said with heavy irony, "the Alpha Quadrant would be eternally in my debt, given the tactical information he could give Starfleet about the Dominion. That's been made quite clear, too, in a roundabout way."

Ezri shook her head. "Lonely place to be, Nerys."

"After two years, I'm used to being lonely."

-oOo-

Standing in the shadows, dressed in drab, anonymous civilian clothing, Kira fretted. Beside her, Quark appeared unusually calm. He glanced at her, not for the first time, and said, "Relax. He'll be here."

"I don't like this, Quark," Kira said tersely. "How well do you know this Korvel?"

"Well enough to know that he'll be here. He's probably just having trouble getting past Security." Quark shot her an inscrutable look, then added, "I'm sticking my neck out for you, Colonel. I hope you appreciate that."

"I hope you appreciate I could have you arrested for dealing illegally with a Dominion citizen."

Silence. Kira let her eyes wander around the cargo bay, looking for anything that seemed even the slightest bit unusual or out of place. It pained her to know that under her administration, smuggling and illicit deals continued unabated. Soon, she thought, she would talk to Tarab Ray about the state of station security. She wondered if he was aware of the full extent of the illegal activities happening under the noses of his security force. Maybe not. Security on Deep Space Nine wasn't omnipresent. Not any more.

"We're in business," Quark said quietly as one of the smaller, side entrances to the cargo bay opened, admitting a short, stocky figure into the gloom. "Come on. And for profit's sake, don't frighten him off."

Ja'laar Kovel was a Larazoid, almost human in appearance, save for his elongated features and sharply-toothed mouth. Dark, intelligent eyes regarded Kira unblinkingly as he listened to Quark's rapid speech. When the Ferengi had finished, he said, "Information like that doesn't come cheap."

"My client is willing to pay you handsomely," Quark assured him.

"Enough to risk the wrath of the Jem'Hadar?" Kovel asked. He seemed to consider for a moment, then said, "You're talking about the man who was responsible for the near-collapse of the Dominion."

"We can pay," Kira said flatly. "Just name your price."

"It isn't just a question of latinum," Kovel said, a scornful note in his voice. "You think he would have survived this long if finding him was just a question of money? Every profiteer and bounty hunter in the Gamma Quadrant is willing to pay a king's ransom for a whiff of his scent."

Kira regarded him coldly, barely hiding her antipathy. "I was told you could help."

"Were you."

Audibly, Quark shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He said, "My client has a... personal interest. If you would communicate her interest to your... friends... I'm sure they would authorise you to negotiate further."

Kovel looked sceptical, but after a moment he shrugged. "Perhaps. Who knows?"

Prepared for something similar, Kira fished in the pocket of her shapeless jacket. Her fingers closed over the small, cool object lodged there. She withdrew it, held it for a moment, then extended her hand, opening it to reveal the Bajoran earring within. An exact match for the one adorning her right ear. "Give your friends this. Contact Quark when you're ready to talk some more."

-oOo-

Several days later, and several hundred light years away on the other side of the wormhole, Otali'klan held out his hand in very much the same way as Kira had on Deep Space Nine. He said gruffly, "The Larazoid was given this on Deep Space Nine."

Odo took the object from the towering Jem'Hadar, his smooth features remaining utterly impassive as he did so. The instant recognition he felt did not show in his intense blue eyes. Strong, tapered fingers turned the object over several times, letting the delicate chain attached to the top clasp run across their surface. Without looking up at Otali'klan, he asked, "Who did he meet?"

"The Ferengi, Quark, and a Bajoran woman," Otali'klan supplied. He waited for a moment, then prompted, "Avakar?"

"Where is the Larazoid now?"

"His ship is still in orbit around Ulinst. The Third is with him."

"And the Jaroneth?"

"Still searching the Healoran Nebula, Avakar."

"Then we'll risk moving," Odo said decisively. He paced across the small room, brushing past Otali'klan. "Tell Leevan I have a task for him, then have your men raze this building to the ground."

"As you wish, Avakar," Otali'klan said curtly.

-oOo-

"Leevan is a Vorta," Kovel said with no inflection. "Trust him or not, as you please."

Quark and Kira exchanged glances. It was Kira who asked, "Do you trust him?"

"I don't trust anyone. That's why I'm still alive. You're not paying me enough to trust."

Kira considered for several long moments, then nodded reluctantly. "All right. Where do we meet this renegade Vorta?"

"Haven's third moon has an atmosphere," Kovel said, pocketing the latinum Quark had handed over. "You'll find an abandoned mining complex on the dark side. Wait for him there."

"Haven," Quark said unnecessarily, "is in the Gamma Quadrant."

Kovel looked at him. "So is your fugitive."

-oOo-

"We're coming with you," Ezri Dax said firmly, the next day. "At least that way, if you're stopped by a Jem'Hadar patrol, you have a chance of passing yourself off as being on a routine survey mission."

"You don't have to do this," Kira said, looking from Ezri to Bashir and back. "If we run into trouble, it could cost you your careers at the very least."

Bashir's expression remained bland. "What's a career compared to fighting for galactic freedom?"

"That's hardly what we're doing," Ezri admonished quietly. "But I agree with Julian - some things are more important."

"It could be a trap. A set-up by the Dominion to compromise the peace treaty."

"Or it could be genuine," Bashir said. He leaned forwards in his chair and continued, "Odo's out there somewhere. By all accounts, half the Gamma Quadrant is hunting him. How long do you think it's going to be before his luck runs out and they catch him? This could be our last chance to find him."

"All right," Kira agreed suddenly. "Meet me on the Rio Grande at twenty hundred hours."

"That's more like it," Bashir said. He raised his glass. "To Odo. Hero of the revolution."

"That's not," Ezri said, "funny."

-oOo-

"Sooner or later," Leevan said, never taking his eyes off the phasers aimed squarely at him, "someone will betray him, or his luck will run out and they'll run him to ground. The clock is ticking, Colonel. Make up your mind."

"You still haven't given us any reason to trust you," Kira pointed out coldly. "The Vorta are loyal to the Founders."

"And Odo," Leevan said, "is a Founder. Or, he was."

"Was?" Ezri questioned sharply.

The Vorta looked at her strangely for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Of course. It was foolish of me to think that every detail of what has happened here would have reached the Alpha Quadrant. The Great Link didn't let such defiance from an upstart child go unpunished. Did you imagine for one moment that one man could have had such an influence on an entire Quadrant if he hadn't already been martyred? It was his punishment that caused the first schism in the Great Link."

Without being aware of it, Kira tightened her grip on her phaser. Knuckles white, she said, "Explain, Leevan."

"To understand, you would have to know much, much more about the history and evolution of the Founders than you do," Leevan said quietly. "Odo was... is... the progeny of dozens of others. The first time he was punished by the Link, there was unease, but his castigation was justified by his crime. Killing another changeling - even by accident - warranted punishment. Returning to the Link to bring healing and enlightenment... There were those who didn't believe that merited any castigation. Progenitors, siblings... they objected to the judgement of the vengeful majority. There was dissent in the Link - and from dissent came rebellion. The Vorta - and the Jem'Hadar - were not engineered to divide their loyalties between factions. We serve the Founders. All of the Founders."

"You're saying," Bashir said slowly, "that some of the Vorta and some of the Jem'Hadar remained loyal to those Founders who objected to Odo's punishment?"

"We serve the Founders," Leevan repeated enigmatically. Then he added, "We are not automatons. We cannot rebel against our gods - but we can choose to obey those in whose beliefs we trust."

"How was he punished?" Kira asked bluntly. She feared she already knew the answer.

"The only way the Great Link knows."

"They made him human again," Bashir said, looking into the Vorta's serene face. "Didn't they? But this time..."

"This time," Leevan said quietly, "his entire genetic code was resequenced to prevent any return to grace. Any attempt to regain any kind of metamorphic ability will certainly kill him. A punishment that had the power to fragment the Link. I believe you humans have a name for it, Doctor Bashir? Poetic justice?"

-oOo-

"It doesn't change anything," Ezri Dax said a little while later, when the three of them were safely back on the Rio Grande. "Does it?"

"No," Kira said. She didn't look at either of her companions. "It doesn't change a thing. If we leave him here in the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion will take him. Sooner or later. I don't see that we have a choice."

Bashir said, "So we take him back to the Alpha Quadrant? Then what? He can hardly announce his presence, can he? If the Dominion realise what's happened, they'll demand extradition. What does Odo do once he's safely back in the Alpha Quadrant?"

"Odo disappears," Ezri said perceptively. "And in the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion continues to chase shadows and rumours until the legend is so strong that the rebellion can't be stopped. That's the plan, isn't it, Kira?"

Kira looked at them both. Slowly, she nodded. "More or less."

"As a plan," Bashir said, "it lacks a certain elegance... but the theory's a good one."

"Thank you," Kira said dryly.

-oOo-

"You have to go," Leevan said, staring at the back of Odo's head. "Captured, you're no use to us. Captured, you can be manipulated and indicted, used to undermine what remains of the rebellion. As long as you remain free, the legend will grow and grow."

"I never wanted to be a legend, Leevan," Odo said, staring at the panorama of stars on the ship's viewscreen.

"It no longer matters what you want," the Vorta said, but not unkindly. "Odo, whether you like it or not, as far as those still fighting and hoping are concerned, you are the Avakar. Who's to say whether you're fulfilling an ancient prophecy or not? The point is, your existence gives people hope, and hope is what will eventually bring the Dominion down, planet by planet. You're a figurehead, and figureheads are valuable."

"Then I should stay."

"No. Listen to me, Odo. I'm not a Founder - not a god - but I'm a good strategist, and I understand the game better than you do. Your part in this is done. The Great Link made a terrible mistake - they made a martyr of you. Don't give them the chance to put that mistake right."

"It seems I'm destined to be manipulated - either by the rebellion, or by the Dominion."

"Nothing can change that now. Go, Odo. Go back to the Alpha Quadrant. Find somewhere safe and disappear. Your name and your freedom are the most important things now." Leevan's voice softened persuasively. "We don't need any more sacrifices from you. You've done more than anyone could ever have asked of you. Go back to the Alpha Quadrant, back to your woman. Build a new life for yourself."

Bleakly, Odo asked, "How can I? You said it yourself - they think I am the Avakar."

"That's all we need from you. Don't throw everything away because you think you should stay here and see it finished - it won't happen Odo. They'll find you, and when they do, the rebellion will be finished."

Odo said nothing. He looked at the stars, lost in his own thoughts. Eventually, he said, "And if I die before it's finished?"

"It won't matter. Not if you're in the Alpha Quadrant. Besides, their doctors may be able to treat you."

Odo snorted. "I hardly think that's likely, Leevan, do you?"

"Who knows?" The Vorta tilted his head onto one side. "Well?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Oh, there's always a choice." Leevan smiled. "But I don't believe you'll throw away the Gamma Quadrant's last chance for liberation just to keep on running away from the Jem'Hadar for a little while longer."

Odo turned round to regard the Vorta. He said nothing, because there didn't seem to be anything left to say.

-oOo-

The Yafaga was something of a disappointment. It was not a sleek, heavily armoured cruiser, not yet a belligerent little gunship. It was a battered, unappealing freighter that had already been through too much, and yet, to Kira, at least, it seemed to possess a certain heroic spirit, as if it perfectly symbolised how a small, determined resistance could dare to hope to topple a mighty empire. Aboard the Yafaga, they all saw, for the first time, the haunted, hungry faces of the rebellion. A handful of Gamma Quadrant races mixed with a smattering of Jem'Hadar. Determined, but condemned. Kira could see it in the tired, closed expressions. The Yafaga's crew knew that the Dominion were snapping at their heels, and yet there was no panic, nor yet any real fright. Just a heavy melancholy that pervaded the air.

"Some of these people," Leevan told them quietly, "have been fighting since the very beginning. When Odo escaped from the Jem'Hadar who were escorting him to Pavit Four, he ended up on Rekalth. There are still a few Rekalthians on the Yafaga who were among those who first gave him sanctuary."

"That must have been a tremendously brave thing to do," Ezri commented. "Offer sanctuary to a fugitive from the Great Link."

Leevan smiled without humour. "You obviously don't know the prophecy of the Avakar."

"The what?"

"History records that when the Dominion was first founded, there was great opposition to its expansion from some of the more powerful, civilised worlds. Rekalth, Ochar and Koplos amongst them. The Rekalthians are an exceedingly religious race, and when they were absorbed by the Dominion, Tar'vath, one of their great religious leaders prophesied that they would eventually be delivered from oppression by the coming of the Avakar. The legend of the Avakar spread through a great many of the newly conquered worlds until it was indelibly ingrained in folklore. Tar'vath said that the Avakar would be a so'sharai... a fallen angel. A changeling." Leevan's lips twitched. "When we realised the Rekalthians had started calling Odo the Avakar, we did nothing to discourage it."

"They think he's some mystical saviour?" Bashir asked, sounding simultaneously amused and amazed.

Leevan shrugged. "You can read the prophecy for yourself, if you wish, Doctor. It could be considered uncannily accurate. Whatever, it was expedient for us to encourage the belief. Most of the people here on the Yafaga are here because they believe in the Avakar."

"Hmm," Bashir said. Almost conversationally, he asked, "So how does it end? The prophecy? Does the Avakar deliver the Gamma Quadrant from the Dominion?"

Leevan glanced round, his face unreadable. "It could be read that way."

"But...?" Ezri prompted.

The Vorta met her look. "According to the prophecy, the Avakar will die before the day of liberation."

-oOo-

"First Otali'klan," Leevan said, nodding towards the big Jem'Hadar who stood before the door cradling a heavy rifle. "The Avakar's bodyguard. Otali'klan was one of the first Jem'Hadar fighting with us to successfully break the addiction to ketracel white. No-one has ever questioned his loyalty to Odo, but he lacks any sense of social grace."

"Probably inherent to his species," Bashir said.

"Almost certainly," Leevan agreed, leading the way towards the door. "Otali'klan, we're here to see the Avakar."

The Jem'Hadar didn't move, just growled, "You will wait."

"No," Leevan said, "we will see the Avakar now. He is expecting us."

"You will wait. The Vetarlon is in there."

Kira, standing closest to Leevan, was certain she saw the Vorta's pale face grow even paler.

Leevan demanded, "Ishlar? Did he call her?"

"I called her," Otali'klan said gruffly. "You will wait."

"This man," Leevan said urgently, gesturing at Bashir, "is a Starfleet doctor. He may be able to help. Let us past."

"No," The Jem'Hadar said, not moving. "You will wait."

Impatiently, Kira snapped at Leevan, "What's going on? Why would Odo need a doctor?"

Leevan turned to her, saying quietly, "The genetic resequencing the Founders subjected him to was comprehensive - and deliberately flawed. We haven't been able to determine whether or not his condition can be stabilised - but if it can't... Well, perhaps Tar'vath's prophecy will fulfil itself."

-oOo-

Frustrated by the wait, and pushed far beyond any limits she thought she had, Kira paced the room angrily. Over her shoulder, she snapped, "Why didn't he tell us?"

"Nerys," Ezri tried in a reasonable tone, "you can't blame Leevan. He seems to have been acting in Odo's best interests all along."

"So much so," Kira said bitterly, "that he neglected to mention that he was dying!"

"That may not actually be the case," Bashir put in. "I'll need time to run some tests, but there may be a simple way to correct the genetic destabilisation."

"You really think the Founders would make it that easy for us? Prophets, Julian, there are times when I wish we'd never signed that damned peace treaty. If we hadn't, we could be on the Defiant right now, ready to -"

-oOo-

"Victory is life," Otali'klan said solemnly.

Odo shook his head, too tired to mock or to object. Instead, he said gravely, "First Otali'klan, I charge you with the care of Leevan. Your life is his life. You will defend him and obey him from now on."

"I obey the Avakar in all things," Otali'klan said. He lowered his rifle, adopting a slightly less martial pose. "Wherever you go, so goes my loyalty."

"You're a good soldier," Odo said frankly, surveying the grey, horned face of his erstwhile bodyguard, "and a good servant. Die with honour, First Otali'klan."

"Avakar," Otali'klan said, then turned and stumped away, heading after Leevan.

The last obligation discharged, Odo steeled himself for an altogether different duty. Carefully, deliberately, he straightened up to his full height and squared his slim shoulders. Aching muscles protested, but he ignored them. A distant part of his mind ached again for the fluid ease of his heritage, but he ignored that, too. His birthright had been taken from him, and he knew he would never reclaim it. Still, it was hard to think like a human. A solid. He started to walk.

-oOo-

"I don't care," Kira said fiercely. "Don't you understand? Finally, I don't care about duty or obligation. The Dominion is evil, and I've spent my entire life trying to fight against evil. I don't want to go back to the Alpha Quadrant and wait patiently for the Dominion to fall - I want to stay here and fight!"

"And if you do," a deep, gruff voice said from the doorway, "you will certainly die."

They turned in unison, all staring at the tall, slim figure who stood before them. Odo. Odo looking both so alike and unlike himself that none of them could think of a thing to say or do. Something locked around Kira's chest like a vise, threatening to suffocate her. Hope and pain all rolled into one. Odo looked back at her, his expression infuriatingly calm, and all she could think was how thin he looked, how haunted and how completely exhausted.

"Odo." Ezri's voice, almost strident in the silence.

"Lieutenant," he said, nodding to her. "Doctor. Colonel."

"Hello, Constable," Bashir said, his voice sounding falsely bright. For want of anything else to say, he added flippantly, "It rather looks as if we're here to take you home."

-oOo-

Perhaps, over the last few weeks, she had become so focused on the goal of finding him and delivering him safely from the clutches of the Dominion, she simply hadn't allowed herself any lengthy time to think about what she might think and say when the moment arrived, and he was there. Initially, she busied herself with the transfer between the Yafaga and the Rio Grande, but when that was done, and the course for the wormhole was set, there was nothing else to think or do. There was an odd hush in the runabout, Kira realised. As if no-one knew what words could possibly be adequate for the occasion. She bore the strained silence stoically, but although she didn't glance at him, she could feel Odo looking at her. As well he might, given their shared history.

Kira clenched her jaw even more tightly, and eventually got to her feet, announcing, "I need to get a drink. Julian, keep an eye on the long-range sensors."

"No problem," Bashir said, sounding uncharacteristically subdued.

Kira made her escape. Of course, it wasn't easy to get far away, not on a small, cramped runabout, but at least the silence by the replicator was a solitary one. Perhaps the footsteps behind her were inevitable. She didn't turn, just said, "We'll go straight to Bajor. It would be stupid to risk taking you to DS Nine."

"Nerys," he said, and his tone was gentle, wise and infinitely understanding.

Studiously, Kira kept her back to him. "It's not a long-term solution, but you should be safe there for a week or two."

"Nerys."

Reluctantly, she looked over her shoulder. Honesty made her say, "I just don't know what to say, Odo."

"Then don't say anything."

He didn't move, and Kira wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. His face, she realised, was unnaturally pale, and although his high-planed changeling features hadn't fundamentally changed, she could see how tightly the skin was drawn across the underlying bone structure. Skin. Bone. Human. Mortal. Dying. She wanted to scream, to curse, to cry. She wanted to turn the clock back and be happy lying in simulated humanoid arms, listening for a heartbeat that wasn't there.

"Thank you," Odo said. "I know what a risk you're taking by doing this."

"What else could I do?" Kira asked dully. "Let the Dominion capture you?"

He inclined his head slightly. "Even so."

There had to be something she could say. Awkward words formed and forced themselves free. "I would never have let you go back if I had thought it would end like this..."

He watched her for a moment longer, then took a decisive step forwards, his gaze perfectly level. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to emulate him, to step forwards herself and meet the embrace. The embrace of friends, she wondered, or of lovers? It didn't seem important, not at that moment. Painfully thin, she realised. Not just lean, but impossibly gaunt. She could feel his ribs, even through the dark tunic he was wearing. Against his shoulder, she muttered, "I'm so sorry, Odo... I'm so, so sorry..."

-oOo-

Bashir walked back into the tiny, rustic kitchen that seemed to have become a temporary wardroom and sat himself at the table before saying, "My preliminary readings seem to confirm my original hypothesis. In addition to other genetic anomalies, he's missing at least one important enzyme, and the deficiency is causing metabolic dysfunction. Very subtle, very nasty. The Founders didn't intend him to have a long life as a human."

Ezri looked up, her expression hopeful. "Enzymatic deficiency? That doesn't sound too difficult to treat."

"It wouldn't be on its own," Bashir agreed, "but my readings show the presence of at least one artificial inhibitor in his system. All enzymes are notoriously unstable and easily deactivated - and I suspect that's exactly what's going to happen if I try any artificial replacement."

"You're saying there's nothing you can do?" Kira asked him.

"No. I'm saying I need access to some proper diagnostic equipment so I can start running some further tests. The moment I get back to the station, I'll make a start. In the meantime, I've given him just about every vitamin and mineral supplement I can think of to try and stabilise his current physical condition, at least temporarily. I've also given him something to stimulate his appetite. He needs to eat, and given his inability to metabolise nutrients properly, he needs to eat a lot more than we do."

"What will happen to him without treatment?" Kira asked bluntly, drumming her fingers on the table.

Bashir didn't spare her feelings. "Without treatment, there can be only one conclusion. He'll die. We could be talking months, even a year, but he will die. In layman's terms, even if he escapes a nastier fate, he'll simply starve to death, no matter how much he's eating. His organs will begin to fail, one after the other, and then he'll die."

"Justice," Kira said bitterly. "What sort of a race are the Founders?"

"Don't ask yourself that," Ezri told her quietly. "Let's just concentrate on what we do now. Will he be safe here?"

"For the moment. You can see how deserted the place is. In the long-term, we need to think of somewhere where he'll be a long way from anyone who might recognise who or what he is."

"Right. In the short-term?"

"In the short-term, we go back to DS Nine and act as if nothing's happened. As far as everyone's concerned, we've been investigating reports of Jem'Hadar activity in the Neutral Zone." Kira stood up. "Beam back to the runabout. I need to talk to Odo, but I won't be long."

-oOo-

"I'll be back," she said, looking at the slim figure standing by the window. "Just stay still and keep your head down. No-one ever comes out here, so you should be okay. Is there anything you need?"

A tight, humourless smile. "Too many things."

Kira nodded, understanding. "I have to go back to the station before people start asking awkward questions. I'll be back in a few days."

"Nerys?" he said as she started to turn away. She glanced at him and he continued, "Kovel. The Larazoid. He should be able to find out where the Yafaga is."

"I'll see what I can do. I already owe Quark too many favours. Kovel's services don't come cheap."

"Kovel," Odo said, "has a wife and three children on Larazed, and a lot of bribes to pay to keep them safe. Don't underestimate him."

"I would never do that. I just wish he didn't find it so easy to slip through station security."

"He's had years of practice."

"Years...? You mean, even when you were...?"

"How do you think I got half my information about free traders from the Gamma Quadrant?"

"I don't want to know," Kira said briskly. "Let me keep some of my illusions intact, Odo."

-oOo-

Quark's Ferengi leer was comforting in a strange way. Trying not to appear too eager, Kira said quietly, "Can you contact Kovel for me, Quark?"

He shrugged. "For the usual consideration. Why? I thought the deal had been struck?"

"Don't think anything, Quark, that's my advice. Just contact Kovel for me."

"All right," Quark said, dropping the pretence of wily artifice. He picked up a glass and started to polish it slowly. "So how is our mutual friend?"

Kira looked at him sharply, then relaxed slightly and said, "Alive."

"You know," Quark said, his attention apparently all on the glass, "it seems to me that you've been on this station too long without a break, Colonel. Perhaps it's time for a sabbatical? Somewhere quiet, off the beaten track."

"You might be right," Kira said guardedly. "But the sort of place I'd be interested in going would have to be very quiet indeed."

"A neutral planet. Somewhere where you could relax without being bothered. Somewhere where the people are friendly, but not in the least bit curious."

"Somewhere just like that, yes."

"I'll ask around," Quark said, polishing diligently. "See if any of my contacts could recommend anywhere."

-oOo-

In the privacy of her own quarters, Kira allowed all the questions she knew she had to face. That it was Ezri Dax who presented them, and not her own mind, didn't bother her. Spring wine, just enough to loosen the tongue a little, helped ease the conversation. Head back, Kira studied the curved Cardassian ceiling and said, "And that's the fundamental question, isn't it?"

"And," Ezri said, from the chair opposite the couch, "the fundamental answer. Well?"

"I think I'm afraid to say it aloud," Kira admitted. "If I hear myself say it, I won't be able to pretend any more."

"Do you want to pretend?"

"I don't know. It might be easier. For everyone."

"When did you start being so concerned about making everyone's life easier?"

Kira moved her head to cast a look at Ezri. "Thank you, Jadzia Dax."

"Sorry." Ezri shrugged slightly. "You don't have to answer, but until you do, there's no way you can decide what to do next."

"You're right."

"So?" Ezri prompted.

Kira sighed, then closed her eyes. Without opening them, she said, "A week ago, I would have said none of this had anything to do with how I felt about him. I just knew I couldn't leave him at the mercy of the Dominion. I even told myself that I was just doing my moral duty; looking after the interests of an old comrade-in-arms. Then Leevan told us he was sick... and all I could think about was Odo. Not the Dominion or the rebellion, not the Alpha Quadrant or my duty - just Odo. I remembered how I felt when he had Section 31's disease... I was so scared of losing him then... and when Leevan said he was ill, I felt exactly the same way."

"And...?"

"It's been two years, Ezri."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"I just... Oh, nothing, I suppose." Kira rubbed her eyes for a moment, then opened them, looking at the ceiling again. "You don't need me to say it. You already know."

"Maybe you need to say it."

Kira was silent for several minutes. Her thoughts tumbled and tangled, then cleared quite abruptly. She blinked at the ceiling. "I never stopped loving him. Not for a single moment. Never stopped loving him, and never stopped hoping that someday, somehow, we'd be together again. I told myself over and over again that I was being foolish, that I should forget about him and get on with my life, but every day when I woke up, I used to pray that that would be the day when a ship came through the wormhole bringing him back to me. Trite."

"I don't think it's trite. Think about it, Nerys. Odo was your best friend for years. He was your friend, your confidant, your advisor. The one man you knew you could depend on, whatever happened. You fell in love with him bit by bit, year by year without even knowing it. Didn't you tell Jadzia that when you saw the truth, it felt as if your whole life had been leading up to that moment?" Ezri paused, looking across the space between them. "Odo wasn't some reckless fling, some rash impulse. He was part of you."

"The better part of me," Kira said mirthlessly.

"So why is it hard to believe that you could still be in love with him? Two years is nothing."

"Maybe..." Kira offered slowly, "it's harder to believe that he could still be in love with me. He's seen and done so much since he left..."

Ezri made a scornful noise. "Which means what? Sooner or later, Nerys, he was always going to spread his wings. He outgrew DS Nine a long time before he returned to the Great Link. He stayed here because you were here, that's all. He was never going to remain just a Security Chief on a deep space outpost. Oh, I'm not saying he wasn't good at his job - just that he was always going to amount to much, much more. It doesn't matter. He knew that when he left - he knew he would always love you, wherever he went, whatever he did."

Kira considered the young Trill's words, then asked, "Do you believe that? Honestly?"

"Yes, I do. So what now, Nerys?"

"Find somewhere safe for him to stay on a more permanent basis, I suppose. Maybe contact Starfleet -"

"No," Ezri interrupted impatiently. "I didn't mean that. What do you do? Cling to Bajor and Deep Space Nine, or step into the unknown? You've reached the cross-roads. You can't stay running on the spot. Not any more. You have to decide what to do with your life."

-oOo-

"I can replace the missing enzyme with a synthetic substitute," Bashir said, "and I can give him drugs to halt the action of the inhibitors in his system, but I can't undo what the Founders did. That kind of genetic engineering is well beyond my abilities - or the abilities of just about anyone else in the Quadrant. Not to mention being completely illegal on hundreds of worlds. The Founders created a complete genetic code for him, and then altered it to make sure there was no chance of him regaining any metamorphic capability, or of him living a long and happy life as a human."

Valiantly, Kira held onto her hard-won calm and asked, "What are you saying, Julian? In simple terms?"

"I'm saying that I can improve his quality of life substantially - but although I can correct the metabolic dysfunction, the seizures the Vetarlon was treating him for will probably continue indefinitely as a result of ongoing genetic destabilisation. His DNA is more stable than his RNA, but both could ultimately collapse. If they do..."

"I get the picture," Kira said, and added softly, "They made him out of glass, didn't they?"

"That's a good analogy, I'm afraid. But remember, glass has considerable tensile strength."

"I understand. Is this the case you want me to take?"

"That's it. There's a dataPADD in there giving him full instructions for the various drug combinations."

Kira picked up the Starfleet medical case, testing its weight absently. "Is there anything else?"

"No. Just... don't try and defend him from the entire universe. Odo's a lot tougher than you think, and he's had a grimmer prognosis from the Vetarlon than I've given him. Don't leap to any conclusions about what's going to happen."

"I'll try to bear that in mind, Julian. Thanks."

-oOo-

"Nerys," Odo said patiently, interrupting her lengthy discourse on DS Nine, the Yafaga and Julian Bashir's latest discoveries, "if you're here, then we need to talk."

"We are talking," Kira told him, deliberately obtuse, "Julian says -"

"Nerys."

She recognised the tone. Quiet, deceptively mild, but underscored with steel. The tone Odo had routinely used when he had been trying hard to be civil, but had fully intended to make his point. The sort of tone that had often met her tirades of bad temper and her rash judgements. A tone that meant he expected to be listened to. Reluctantly, she fell silent, watching him from the safety of the far side of the room.

"I'm not," Odo said quietly, "an obligation. I'm very grateful to you for everything you've done, you and Bashir and Dax, but I stopped being a part of your lives when I returned to the Great Link. You don't owe me this."

Kira blinked. His words, so carefully delivered, stabbed at her gnawing insecurities. "Is that what you think? That I'm here because I feel obligated?"

"Aren't you?"

There was no doubt that he had changed, but she saw the old Odo in him then. The Odo who had struggled hard to believe, to honestly believe that she could possibly have fallen in love with him. The Odo who had looked for dark shadows in the brightest of moments. Recognising him quelled her mounting anger. Getting angry with Odo had always been counter-productive. Determinedly calm, she said, "I don't feel any obligation towards you, Odo. You left me, remember? Not the other way around. I was the one who was left watching the wormhole day in, day out, just in case you decided to come home. I'm not here because I think I owe you anything."

"Good," Odo said simply.

It was disarming. Then, Kira thought dryly, Odo had always had a habit of being unexpectedly disarming. She took a deep breath, wondering if it would help. It did. "I knew this would be difficult."

"I'm sorry." He hunched an angular shoulder. "I don't know how to make it easier for you. Somehow, I always thought that if we ever met again, it would be under happier circumstances."

"Well," Kira said, not unkindly, "you always were a little naive."

"Yes," Odo said soberly, apparently not offended, "I was. Certainly naive enough to believe that I could influence the Great Link. But naiveté and innocence are both easily lost."

The resulting silence was uncomfortable. Without thinking about it, Kira sat herself down on the old, hard couch. "The Great Link doesn't deserve you, Odo. It never did. Prophets know, we solids are no saints, but compared to the Founders..."

"I believed," he said softly, staring out of the window at the sun setting behind the mountains, "that my people were merely misguided and misinformed. I thought that if they knew what I knew about humanoids, they would learn to trust you. I was wrong. The thoughts and ideas I took back to the Great Link were considered heretical, a danger to my fellow changelings. What was I? Just an abandoned, upstart child who had somehow managed to find his way home. As much a freak to them as I ever was here... A changeling who dared to think that solids were equals."

Kira shook her head. "Fear, hatred, xenophobia - none of it excuses what they've done to you, Odo."

"I wasn't suggesting it did." Odo turned to look at her, his face cast in shadows. "So here I am, back on Bajor, and I can't help wondering whether my life would have been better if I had stayed in Doctor Mora's laboratory, all those years ago."

"Don't say that," Kira said fiercely. "Don't ever say that. You're a good man, Odo, and you've made a huge difference - that's more than most people can say."

"Look at me," Odo said, very much as he had once said to her over two years before. "Now I'm truly a freak. A changeling in human skin, caught between two worlds, belonging to neither. And this time there's no possible hope of reversion to what I was. What is there left for me now, Kira Nerys?"

And Kira said the only thing she could. The only thing she wanted to say. "Me."

-oOo-

"'Omnia vincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori.'"

"What?"

"Virgil," he said. "A writer from ancient Earth, two thousand years ago."

They were sitting on a rocky outcrop, looking back towards the ramshackle cottage that had once belonged to Kira's uncle. The night had cooled, but not uncomfortably, and the heavy scent of lysha blossom still hung in the air. Kira shook her head, honestly bewildered, and said, "You always were too erudite for me, Odo."

"Erudite? I've never been inside an educational establishment in my life. Except as a specimen to be studied by students."

Kira winced. She changed the subject with, "Will you do a deal with them? With Starfleet?"

"Information in exchange for protection and anonymity? Perhaps."

Kira knew him well enough to know that the answer was a tacit negative. She sighed, but didn't press him. Instead, she offered, "I could speak to Shakaar. You're still technically a Bajoran citizen with a commission in the Security Force. Officially, his hands are tied, but unofficially..."

"I somehow doubt the First Minister would go out of his way to help me," Odo said with a touch of irony.

"I think you judge him too harshly. Edon never bore you any malice. It's you who has the problem, not him."

Odo turned his head to gaze at her placidly. Even in the moonlight, she could see how very blue his eyes were. He said, "You'll forgive me if I find myself incapable of warming to him."

"I can't believe we're having this conversation again, after all this time," Kira said, not sure whether to be amused or irritated. "I suppose I should be flattered."

Odo didn't reply. After a moment, Kira reached out a hesitant hand to touch his face. When he didn't flinch, she let her fingertips trace slowly down to his jaw. His skin, she realised, was still smooth, but it was a little coarser than his simulated changeling skin had been. Warmer, too, and slightly moist. A humanoid's skin. The slight prickle of stubble surprised her. Humanoid. Human. Belatedly, she realised he was studying her acutely, as if looking for her reaction. A touch embarrassed, she said, "Sorry."

A hand caught her wrist, preventing her from breaking the light contact with his skin. His voice was soft. "Just a man. Nothing more, nothing less. A man who loves you - a man who has always loved you."

Kira hesitated for just a moment, then capitulated to the sudden desire to kiss him. The flash of memory the action engendered was stark, but not unpleasant. Different, a detached part of her mind acknowledged. Warmer, not quite as mobile. Saliva. Sweat. Stubble. Just a man. A man who loved her. Who had always loved her. The kiss deepened, became more urgent. Arms moved around her, drew her in closer. Instinctively, she returned the embrace, aware once again of the sharpness of his ribs.

When they drew apart, Kira recognised the look in his eyes. Human or changeling, the look was the same. Desire. Passion. Need. There was a rough edge to his voice as he said, "Just a man."

Kira met his look squarely. "Not just a man. My man."

-oOo-

"Prophets, Odo," she said in genuine shock, when she unfastened his plain tunic, "you're half starved. I saw people with more flesh on their bones in the Cardassian labour camps."

He looked down at his exposed torso, a distinct frown on his changeling features. "I'm sorry. Perhaps this wasn't such a -"

"Quiet," Kira told him gently, pressing her fingers to his lips; then she added with more humour, "It took us twenty minutes to get back here in the dark, and I'm not wasting time now."

Odo was obediently silent for a moment, then said uneasily, "I'm not sure that -"

"Odo," Kira said, neatly interrupting him a second time, "what's the matter? We've done this a thousand times."

"That's just the problem. This body isn't... I haven't... I'm not a changeling any more."

Kira waited, then said quietly, "The first time we made love, I had no idea what to expect. We were so different. I was terrified, and terrified that you'd know I was terrified. But you knew, and no-one could have been more gentle or more considerate. You cared, Odo, cared enough to be patient and kind, and that's what mattered. Do you really think I'm so selfish I wouldn't return the favour?"

"No," Odo said simply. A muscle in his cheek twitched, momentarily fascinating her, then he said enigmatically, "They say that you should be careful what you wish for."

Kira looked at him sideways, but decided not to inquire. Odo had always had the capacity to be as abstruse as she had the capacity to be obtuse. Both had provided them with some interesting and highly involved misunderstandings in the past. Better just to act. She took his hand without a word and walked across the room, leading him towards the only bedroom. The inevitability of what was going to happen actually managed to soothe her. Odo didn't see it, but a faint, sardonic smile quirked her lips as she recognised the length of time that had passed since she had done anything similar. The last time she had -

She attempted to stifle the thought when she remembered with a twinge of guilt that the last time had not been with Odo, two years before, but with a charming, rather too good-looking Bajoran national attached to an independent science team that had been studying the wormhole. Trylar Pel. An encounter notable for the regrets that had come later. Given the circumstances of Odo's departure, and the fact that he had never sworn to return to her, there was absolutely no reason for Kira to feel guilty about Trylar, but she did.

"What's wrong?" Odo asked her.

Kira suppressed her thoughts instantly, ruefully reminding herself of exactly how perceptive Odo could be. She squeezed his hand gently, still a little startled by the feel of real bone and sinew, and then released him to move to the bed. She sat down. "Nothing. Nothing that matters."

He seemed to accept her words, followed her to the bed with its faded patchwork cover. Stood before her, looking down, expression strangely calm. Kira smiled at him, a genuinely affectionate smile, weighted by memory, and wasn't surprised when he reached to stroke her hair with a gentle hand. Everything seemed to distil down to that one room, that one moment. Nothing else mattered to Kira. Just that she was where she should be, with the man who had eventually proved to be so very important to her.

Not remotely embarrassed, she let her gaze travel over him, from his face to the dusty, scuffed boots he had been wearing on the Yafaga. Odo said gravely, "We've been here before."

Startled, Kira realised he was right. The very first time, she had sat on the edge of her bed on Deep Space Nine, with Odo standing patiently before her. Only on that occasion she hadn't been quite as convinced that what she was doing was so completely right. Not until he had touched her and her pulse had jumped in response. Artlessly, she leaned forwards, put her arms around his narrow hips and rested her cheek against his unnaturally concave stomach. His skin was warm, astonishingly alive.

"Hot-blooded," Kira murmured. It had been a joke between them. Not a particularly funny joke, but a joke nonetheless. Odo hadn't possessed blood. Not blood, bone or real flesh. But in the privacy of the bedroom, hidden from prying eyes, he had always been surprisingly hot-blooded, whatever his physiology. Always fiercely passionate, surprisingly straightforward and unreserved, as if his inhibitions simply melted away with his simulated uniform. Kira turned her head, pressed a warm kiss to his stomach. His scent was different. As a changeling, the only scent he had carried had been of the station on which they had lived, that and a faint trace of something mineral, almost metallic. Now his scent was humanoid; a trace of soap and clean sweat, a hint of warm musk.

Kira didn't consciously move her hand, but somehow her fingers seemed to encounter the smooth metal of a belt buckle, warmed by his flesh. For a moment she hesitated, but above her, his voice said softly, "Go ahead."

The reality of the metal was almost disconcerting. Real clothes, not just a simulation, part of his living substance. Caught by the simple erotic thrill, Kira unbuckled the heavy belt, absently noting the worn places that showed how it had been drawn tighter, notch by notch, as time had passed and his weight had dropped. Not glancing up, she admitted, "This is a little strange."

"For both of us."

She heard the dry, faintly self-mocking note in his voice and looked up at him. "But you do... want me?"

Something lit in his eyes, something feral and wildly amused. "If you have to ask that, you're overlooking the evidence before you."

Aware of the covered, but palpable male hardness very close to the hand on his belt, Kira almost - almost - blushed at the naiveté of her own question. Slightly piqued, she stood up, finding herself in very close proximity to him. Not interested in arguing, she settled for kissing him, pleased by the immediate and ardent response. There seemed to be no immediate reason to break the kiss, but her hands didn't seem to want to remain still, so she let them roam where they wanted. It appeared that she wasn't the only one who wanted to explore. Nothing would have persuaded her to complain about the questing hands that sought her breasts, her buttocks, the curve of her hip.

When Odo finally pulled his head back, he was looking faintly flushed, and his blue eyes were still blazing. There was a distinct note of impatience in his voice as he said, "I have to finally tell you just how much I hate that uniform of yours. It always was too damned difficult to get off you in a hurry, and now I can't just slide myself under it..."

Surprised and amused, Kira said, "I thought you said it looked good on me?"

"Oh, it looks good," Odo said gravely, "no doubt about that, but the erotic appeal is limited by the amount of effort required to get you out of it."

Despite herself, Kira smirked. "Is that a subtle way of telling me to get my clothes off?"

"Nothing subtle about it."

What surprised her, more than anything else, was the way he simply dropped onto the bed to watch her comply. Obviously the transformation from changeling to humanoid hadn't diluted his innate appreciation of her shape and form. Faintly unnerved by the intense blue gaze, Kira barely resisted the impulse to strip quickly and methodically, almost clinically. It seemed inappropriate to be embarrassed, given how well he knew her naked form, so she ignored the sensation and did her best not to look as if she was disrobing for a routine medical examination.

Spotting the look in his eyes, she suddenly understood. The dislocation had been deliberate, an attempt to slow the pace, to prevent the precipitate conclusion he evidently feared. The knowledge gave her a new power. Not the power to torment, but the power to be generous and unselfish. There was a new boldness in the way she settled onto the bed, kneeling next to him. "One of us is still overdressed, Odo."

He sat up, shrugging out of the open tunic, and despite the gauntness of a frame that had always been spare, she saw, quite distinctly, the flex of muscle and sinew under his pale skin. The tunic, then his boots, joined her own clothing on the floor. Doubtless the untidiness would offend him later. Determined to be reckless, Kira didn't wait for the rest, simply let him raise his hips enough to ease the trousers down onto his thighs, then sat astride him, trying hard not to be distracted by the newly-revealed proof of humanoid masculinity. Watching his eyes, she closed a hand around his erection, and forestalled the protest with, "It's all right... We've got all night."

She knew she was already moist enough to take him, but her own arousal had ceased to be important. Guiding him with a practised hand, Kira eased over him, onto him, letting her flesh claim him. She heard Odo's soft, guttural moan, saw his eyes close, and it was more satisfying, more gratifying than she could ever have imagined. For a moment she remained still, appreciating the size and shape of him inside her, then she started to move, encouraging him to find his own rhythm. Palms now on his chest, she splayed her fingers, gently teasing his nipples with her thumbs until they were hard points against his smooth skin. Odo's hands were on her hips, guiding their motion, drawing her further onto him. With his head strained back, Kira could see the quick pulse beating in his taut throat.

As a changeling, there had never been any question of whether he could outlast her. As a changeling he had been able to hold his size and shape for as long as she had needed to reach her own peak. As a human, he was bound by the frailties of flesh and blood, but Kira didn't care. She watched him, enjoying each hard, swift thrust, but without anticipation of her own release. Later, a quiet voice in her mind said. For now, she concentrated on the man beneath her, letting herself respond to his movements, knowing he wouldn't be able to control the demands of his fractious human body.

Kira felt his movements change, become sharper and less co-ordinated, felt the tension locking over him. Even though she had been expecting it, the staccato finish was a surprise. A taut, choked cry, a hard, repeated spasm against her, a flood of liquid heat, delivered in several harsh surges and an almost instant relaxation. Something very fundamental occurred to her. As a changeling, Odo had been incapable of ejaculation, had possessed no semen, no sperm. Orgasm had been a maelstrom of roiling substance, not the sharp, potent release she had just felt. Semen. Was it possible that the Founders had...?

It was too late to worry about it. If he was fertile, if he was capable of fathering a child, then fate would have to decide. Carefully, not wanting to dislodge the fading hardness within her, Kira leaned forwards to kiss him. The warm, gentle kiss of a satisfied lover. Odo opened his eyes, clearly relaxed, dazed and a little penitent. Despite its softness, his voice sounded huskier than normal as he said, "I'm sorry... I wanted..."

Kira kissed him again. "Next time."

It seemed to be the right thing to say. He sighed, made an effort to gather her against him. "You're still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

-oOo-

"There just didn't seem to be much point," Kira said simply, late the next morning, "not when you were a changeling. No part of you was actually differentiated, so..."

"Hmm."

At the sceptical sound, Kira smiled to herself and curled more comfortably against him. It was impossible to decide whether the musk clinging to his skin was his scent or hers. Idly, she traced the long lines of muscle and sinew in his forearm, deciding arbitrarily that the lean, whipcord strength of Odo was infinitely more attractive than that of a more bulky, overtly muscular man. Slender as he was, she had discovered for herself that he was still far stronger than she was. Maybe not as strong as he had been as a changeling, but still more than capable of winning any light-hearted tussle she cared to initiate.

Returning to her earlier thoughts, she asked curiously, "Didn't you like it?"

"Oh, I liked it."

"Thought so." She grinned and rolled herself over. "Welcome to solidity, Odo."

"I have to admit, there seem to be advantages."

"Ones you didn't discover last time?"

"That's dangerously close to being an indelicate question. And, besides, you already know the answer."

Reluctantly, Kira made an effort to look at the glowing digits of the chronometer. She sighed. "We should get up. I'm supposed to be back on DS Nine by tonight."

Odo didn't move, just asked quietly, "When will you be back?"

"Not until the weekend, I'm afraid. I simply can't risk another trip to Bajor before then, not without raising a few eyebrows. I'm sorry. Will you be all right here on your own?"

"Of course. I don't see this as a satisfactory long-term situation, however."

"Odo, won't you let me talk to Shakaar? Bajor is your home."

"Let me think about it." Gentle, but obstinate. A good description of Odo himself, Kira realised.

-oOo-

Caben, the Dominion's representative unofficially charged with liaison with Deep Space Nine, insisted on seeing Kira within an hour of her arrival back on the station. Not wanting to do anything to raise suspicion, Kira agreed to the meeting with customary impatience. When he stalked into her office, it was easy to present an impression of haughty disdain as she said, "Caben. What can I do for you?"

"I'm here to discuss the matter of the fugitive we discussed before," Caben told her.

Kira kept her expression bland. "Go ahead."

"We believe," Caben said, "that he is currently in the Neutral Zone, not far from a planet known as Koplos. If our information is correct, it seems likely that he will attempt to reach the wormhole within the next few days. Since the Jem'Hadar have no authority to detain a ship in the Neutral Zone, I must stress the importance of your responsibility to arrest any criminal wanted by the Dominion who boards this station."

Without any trace of irony, Kira said, "Caben, you have my word that if Odo steps foot on DS Nine, I'll arrest him myself."

Caben's violet eyes narrowed a fraction. "That's most co-operative of you, Colonel."

"The Dominion," Kira said brazenly, "is no longer our enemy. As a Bajoran officer, I will obey the terms of the peace treaty."

"Thank you, Colonel," Caben said, sounding faintly bewildered.

-oOo-

"The future," Ezri Dax prompted over breakfast in the replimat the next morning.

Kira sighed, wished she had been able to sleep an hour or two longer and said, "I've thought about resigning my commission, but if I did, I have no idea what I'd do instead. I'm a soldier, Ezri, always have been."

"Then you have to decide whether being a soldier is compatible with... with whatever else is in your life."

"There are complicating factors," Kira admitted.

"Did you talk to our mutual friend? I mean, really talk?"

"Yes. I just... Oh, I don't know. My career has always defined me. Do you understand what I mean? Everything else has always revolved around it. Even him. Especially him. He was very good at fitting himself around who and what we both were. He never lost sight of the line between our private and public lives." Kira shrugged slightly. "To be honest, I feel as if I'm standing in the eye of a storm. As if I can't move in any direction without being swept away by something."

"I think I can understand that."

"I've got to go," Kira said, a moment later. "I've got a staff meeting in twenty minutes, then a delegation from Bajor to meet."

"Maybe we can talk properly later," Ezri said mildly, then, as Kira stood to leave, "Nerys?"

"What?"

"You, er, might want to turn your collar up before you meet those delegates. We don't want them to think that there's something on the station that goes around biting people."

Kira tried to glare, but couldn't quite restrain a slight, self-satisfied smile.

-oOo-

The weekend was hoving into sight when a further complication arrived via the wormhole. A Koplon freighter carrying a cargo of sitha grain docked at upper pylon three and immediately requested the attendance of both station security and the station commander. Irritated, but sensing trouble, Kira accompanied Security Chief Tarab Ray to the airlock. They were met by a harried and very nervous Koplon who said, "We were asked to deliver this... gentleman... into your custody, Colonel. Maychek, bring him through."

Another Koplon, bigger and more muscular, appeared from the freighter, prodding a prisoner ahead of him with a heavy rifle. Kira heard Tarab's breath hiss out as he recognised the manacled figure as a Jem'Hadar soldier. Not just any Jem'Hadar, Kira realised, but the hulking, brooding form of First Otali'klan. Assessing the situation quickly, she asked, "Who handed him over to you, Captain Vell?"

"Bunch of Rekalthians who lost their ship in an ion storm," Vell said, eyeing Otali'klan warily. "They said they were transporting him to the Alpha Quadrant to be put on trial for war crimes. Since I was coming to DS Nine, I - reluctantly - agreed to take him. You are Colonel Kira Nerys of the Bajoran Militia?"

"Yes," Kira agreed. "All right. Thank you, Captain Vell, we'll take the matter from here. Tarab, escort this gentleman to the habitat ring. Section thirty-two alpha."

"Colonel?" Tarab said, looking perplexed.

"Just do it. Stay with him until I get there."

"Yes, sir. Move along, then."

Kira watched them depart, then turned back to Vell. "I hope you understand the sensitive nature of this business. The Dominion have agreed to hand over those accused of crimes during the war, but the arrangement is a covert one. It would be in everyone's interests if you and your crew simply forgot about this. I'll see that you are adequately compensated for your trouble."

Vell shrugged scaly shoulders. "Whatever you say. Now, can I unload the rest of my cargo...?"

-oOo-

"Listen to me, Tarab," Kira said with what she hoped was just the right amount of urgency. "He's not just another Jem'Hadar. He's one of a number who were captured and conditioned by Starfleet Intelligence during the war. Obviously he was trying to return to the Alpha Quadrant to deliver information. I don't want any record of his arrival, and I don't want anyone knowing he's here. Understood?"

Tarab looked unconvinced, but nodded slowly. "Of course, Colonel."

"I mean it, Tarab. No-one is to know he's on the station. Not Commander Atkin, not your deputies... no-one. I'll contact Starfleet Intelligence immediately to arrange for his departure."

"Sir."

"All right. On your way."

With a last look at Otali'klan, Taban removed himself from the small guest quarters Kira had selected. With her fellow Bajoran gone, she finally turned to face the Jem'Hadar. Bluntly, she asked, "What happened to the Yafaga?"

"Destroyed," Otali'klan said simply. "Half the crew died in the initial decompression. The rest of us reached Koplos in escape pods."

"Leevan?"

"Dead." He blinked small dark eyes at her. "I have to find the Avakar."

"I'll take you to him," Kira said. "But you'll have to wait. I can't leave the station until tomorrow."

"Now."

"No," Kira said curtly. "Tomorrow. If we go before, we risk putting Od... the Avakar... in danger. Where are the rest of the Yafaga's crew now?"

"Up in the mountains, waiting for the Avakar."

Kira ignored the cold chill that ran up and down her spine. She said, "First Otali'klan, these are dangerous times - for everyone. If you don't do exactly as I say, you may cause the Avakar to be captured. Do you understand?"

"Of course I understand," the Jem'Hadar said, sounding scornful. "You think I'm an idiot?"

"No," Kira said, shaking her head, "I don't think that. Stay in this room, Otali'klan. Don't contact anyone, don't try to access anything. Tomorrow, I'll take you to the Avakar."

He raised his hands pointedly. Kira looked at the manacles, then tapped her commbadge, "Kira to Bashir."

"Bashir here."

"Doctor, I want you to transport to my location with a laser scalpel. And don't ask any stupid questions."

There was a short silence, then, "Be with you in just a moment, Colonel."

Kira shook her head and wondered how much worse - or how much more farcical - the situation could get.

-oOo-

"God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man."
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant Of Venice

PART TWO
Comrades In Arms

Otali'klan was standing like a statue in the rain, eight feet from the cottage's only door, a purloined Starfleet phaser rifle held against his chest. Kira glared out of the window at him, and said in tone that more than adequately conveyed her irritation. "Is he going to stay out there all night?"

Odo ignored the question and said quietly, "You're angry."

"Why should I be angry?" Kira asked bitterly, looking at his reflection in the glass. "What reason could I possibly have for being angry?"

Silence, heavy and brooding. He said, "I didn't ask to become a figurehead."

"No," Kira said, "you didn't. But you don't have to go back. The rebellion will continue without you."

"And what about those people up in the mountains on Koplos? Am I supposed to just forget about them? What do you want me to do - send Otali'klan back to tell them that the Avakar has abandoned them?"

Kira turned round, arms folded across her chest. "Don't tell me you honestly believe Tar'vath's prophecy about the Avakar? Not you - the man who used to say that the Vedeks were wasting their time praying?"

"I didn't say I believed in the prophecy. But there are a lot of people who do."

"So?"

Odo shook his head. "Nerys..."

Kira stared at him for a moment, then said, "All right. Say you go back. What happens then? How on Bajor's green earth do you intend to fight the Dominion with a handful of exhausted civilians and a couple of disaffected Jem'Hadar? Or do you think Otali'klan and his stolen rifle will be enough?"

Quietly, he said, "I would have thought that you were the last person to deride the efforts of a few determined freedom fighters."

"Odo, my resistance cell had more ordinance to throw at a single platoon of bored Cardassians than you've got to take on an entire empire," Kira told him, exasperated. "Fine, you go back. Commit suicide if you want to. Why the hell should I care?"

For a moment he didn't react, and Kira wondered if she had gone too far. When he turned on his heel and marched silently from the room, she knew she had. Turning towards the window, she saw him walking out into the rain. Saw him join Otali'klan and exchange a few words. She saw the big Jem'Hadar nod solemnly and glance back towards the cottage. A minute later, Odo was walking away, off into the dark night, leaving Otali'klan behind.

"Great," Kira muttered. "Just great, Nerys."

Ten minutes later, when she was determinedly studying one of the dataPADDs she had brought with her from the station, a large, bulky figure loomed in the doorway. Otali'klan, his grey, horny face wet, his black ponytail dripping onto his hulking shoulders. When he failed to speak, Kira asked him pointedly, "Yes?"

"My duty is to protect you." A grim, succinct statement.

Kira raised her eyebrows. "From what?"

"From whatever threatens you."

Jem'Hadar logic, Kira thought dryly. Almost on a whim, she suddenly asked, "Did you fight in the war, Otali'klan? The war with the Alpha Quadrant?"

Dark eyes watched her shrewdly from within the impassive, lumpy face. "From beginning to end."

"Then we have something in common." Kira shrugged, surveying the face of the old enemy. "Same war, different sides. Why did you choose to rebel against the Dominion?"

"I'm not rebelling. I serve the Founder. The Avakar."

"And if another Founder gave you orders? Then what?"

Otali'klan blinked slowly. "My loyalty is to the Avakar. From now until death."

"Why?"

The Jem'Hadar studied her for a moment, then said, "My people were created by the Founders. Our purpose is to serve, to fight and to die. Nothing more. I am the First. I obeyed the Vorta without question. When my ship was damaged, the Vorta ordered me to kill the Founder. I knew then where my loyalties lay."

Kira's dark brows drew together in a frown. Slowly, she said, "You were the leader of the Jem'Hadar escort taking him into exile on Pavit Four...? That's how he escaped. You let him go."

Otali'klan's expression didn't change. "I serve the Founders."

"Odo," Kira pressed, "isn't a Founder. When you were ordered to kill him, he wasn't even a changeling. Yet you defied the orders of your Vorta. Why, Otali'klan?"

"The Vorta have no strength, no honour. Who are the Vorta to order the execution of a god?"

Grimly, Kira smiled. "You're not going to tell me, are you? Are you ashamed, Otali'klan? Do you suspect that you may be defective?"

Flatly, he said, "I serve the Avakar. Wherever he goes, so goes my loyalty."

Kira nodded. "All right. Have it your way."

Silence. Otali'klan stood by the doorway, a still, silent and brooding figure. Eventually, Kira was forced to say, "Otali'klan."

A grudging, "Yes?"

"Fulfil your duty to protect me from the other room, will you?"

"As you wish," Otali'klan said, and stamped away.

Kira sighed.

-oOo-

"Just one happy family," Kira said, much later, "A terrorist-turned-soldier who's in imminent danger of facing a court martial for disobeying the peace treaty with the Dominion, a renegade former changeling turned mystic saviour, and a schizophrenic Jem'Hadar with a severe attitude problem. Wonderful. Don't you think that's funny?"

Ignoring the creeping pains in his chest, Odo shook his head. "Not particularly."

Wearing very little more than what appeared to be a Starfleet singlet and drab, unbecoming Bajoran military-issue shorts, Kira still managed to look intensely beautiful. Odo wasn't sure how she managed it. Perhaps the old saying was true - perhaps beauty really was simply in the eye of the beholder. In which case, why did so many other men find her equally as desirable? Not a question Odo wanted to ponder, with his head aching and lancing pains shooting through his chest. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, toying idly with a small wood carving she had picked up from the shelf by the door. Odo watched her supple, clever fingers and tried not to let his mind wander into dangerous territory.

"Fighting," she said, studying the carving, "is what I do best. Perhaps it's time I found another cause."

"No," Odo told her, not for the first time. "The Dominion won't be overthrown with phasers and photon torpedoes. Besides, it isn't your war."

"It is now. What's yours is mine. That's an old Earth saying, apparently. One of Julian's." Kira sneezed, rubbed her face for a moment and said with a sniff, "I'd almost forgotten how miserable Bajor can be in the rain. Damp and dreary. I'm resigning my commission."

"You can't do that."

"Why not?"

Which was, Odo supposed, a fair enough question. He turned over onto his side, wishing it didn't hurt quite so much to breathe. "I can't let you do it."

"Since when did you decide what I could and couldn't do?" Kira asked him mildly, but with a palpable edge.

Odo wasn't foolish enough to argue with that tone. He knew exactly what it meant, had seen more than one junior officer reduced to abject misery by the storm that often followed. Kira's reputation for quick-tempered ferocity had been very well earned, and he had no wish to bring her wrath down upon himself without very good reason. Arguing about her future was not very good reason. He wouldn't win the battle anyway. Winning against Kira took strategy and guile, not belligerence. Tactics. Odo had won as many battles against Kira as he had lost, possibly more, but he had won them by carefully out-manoeuvring her. He wondered if cunning was an innate changeling trait. Probably.

"Well?" she asked him impatiently.

Odo was about to placate her when the first spasm hit him. Unprepared for its violence, he vaguely heard himself cry out, a choked sound that came from a long, long way away. Every nerve in his body caught fire. Needles drove into his skin, and the room wheeled around him, tilted onto one side and lost all definition. Sight, sound and smell blended into one agonised sense. He wasn't aware of biting through his lip, or of his body bucking so hard that he plummeted from the bed. He wasn't aware of Kira screaming for Otali'klan, or of the hypospray that forced the muscle-relaxant through his skin and into his bloodstream. He was only aware of the pain, and after a little while, that went away, too.

-oOo-

"You asked me why," Otali'klan said flatly, looking down at the limp, unmoving form on the bed. "That's why."

Kira stared at the Jem'Hadar, feeling stark and empty. "Because of what they did to him?"

Otali'klan's face and eyes were unfathomable. "Such a thing cannot be the will of heaven."

Kira said nothing. Moving slowly, like an old woman, she crossed the room and activated the medical tricorder Bashir had thoughtfully included in his original medical supplies. Tiredly, she said, "Pulse and respiration seem to be back in the usual range for a human. Brain activity has returned to normal."

"The seizures are getting worse," Otali'klan said bluntly. "Leevan said that only the Great Link could possibly heal him."

"I don't believe even they could heal him. Not this time," Kira said, staring at Odo's tranquil, pale features. "I don't think he could survive the necessary genetic manipulation."

Otali'klan didn't respond. He simply stood, watching her. Less unnerved by his presence than she had been, Kira said, "Do you believe in Tar'vath's prophecy, Otali'klan?"

"I believe," the Jem'Hadar said slowly, "that the Avakar is a good man. A man who could give justice and compassion back to the gods."

"You," Kira said, "are a very odd being, First Otali'klan."

He grunted and swung away from her. "I will return to my post."

"You do that. I'm going to contact DS Nine and tell Bashir to get down here."

-oOo-

"Wherever he goes, so goes my loyalty," Kira said, and at Bashir's bewildered expression, explained, "Something someone once said to me. 'Wherever he goes, so goes my loyalty'. And my heart. We're leaving, Julian. I'm going back to the Gamma Quadrant with him."

Startled, Bashir looked up from his unconscious patient again. "You are joking? Kira, they'll court-martial you at the very least."

"They won't. I'm resigning my commission. I'll send a message to the Militia just before we go through the wormhole. They won't court martial me, and they won't stop me."

"Back to the Gamma Quadrant? That's got to be suicide."

"We'll see. I can't run on the spot any longer. Something Ezri said to me."

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Kira shrugged slightly. "A long, long time ago, I met a man on Terok Nor who stood head and shoulders above every Cardassian and every Bajoran on the whole damned station. A man who believed in justice. A hard man. An incorruptible man. A man who couldn't be bought or sold, a man who wasn't afraid of anyone. I didn't think a man like that could possibly exist, but he did. He existed, and he shone a light into the darkest shadows. I watched that man, Julian, watched him grow, watched him find himself." She grimaced slightly. "And I watched him stumble, watched him fall into the dark - and when he fell, he fell a long, long way because he had so much further to fall than the rest of us. But you know what? I watched him claw his way back up into the light, and eventually I watched him give up everything he loved to do what he thought was right. I'm a soldier. Not a doctor or a politician. Tell me I'm wrong to take up arms and stand with a man like that?"

Bashir had been watching her intently throughout her speech, and when she finished, he only said, "They say that the Bajorans fight hardest for lost causes. I hope they're right."

"Get him back on his feet, Julian," Kira instructed. "Otali'klan will stay with you."

"Where are you going?"

"There are some questions you really don't need to know the answers to. I'll be back."

-oOo-

In a vague, abstract sort of way, Odo supposed that Julian Bashir was not an unattractive young man. He was not, however, the person that Odo had either wanted or expected to see when he opened his eyes. Nor did he then endear himself to Odo by embarking on a long and largely tedious medical evaluation of the erstwhile changeling's condition. Beyond Bashir, Otali'klan stood in the corner of the little, old-fashioned bedroom glowering silently to himself. Of Kira Nerys, there was no sign. That fact, more than any other, was disturbing.

Eventually, when his patience and civility had been tested to their limits, Odo broke into the doctor's lecture with, "Where's Kira?"

"Actually, I have no idea, but she said she was coming back," Bashir told him, then continued, "I want to try a combination of -"

"Doctor," Odo cut in wearily, "you've given me drugs to make me eat, drugs to put me to sleep, drugs to wake me up, and who knows what else. I find it hard to believe that there's anything left you can possibly force me to inject, ingest or otherwise absorb. I'm sure you've done more than anyone else could have done, but will you please leave me alone now?"

"Have you ever heard of the Hippocratic Oath?"

"No. Is Quark trying to sell it?"

Bashir looked suspicious. "Was that a joke, Constable?"

"Extremely unlikely," Odo said, and made the effort to sit up. His arms shook with the effort of levering himself up, and the room seemed to spin unpleasantly, but there were no further unfortunate consequences. Otali'klan was watching him impassively.

"Odo," Bashir said, "you know what's happening to you. You know what these seizures mean. If you don't let me at least attempt to treat you -"

Odo swung his feet to the floor and stood up shakily. "Have you ever read Tar'vath's prophecy, Doctor? Otali'klan can recite it for you, if you'd like. I'm especially fond of the last morbid stanza that says that the Avakar will fall before the last battle for liberation."

"I wouldn't put your faith in ancient prophesies, Odo."

"I don't. Nor in the gloomy predictions of healers."

Frustrated, Bashir said, "You'll die, Odo. Without treatment, your condition will continue to worsen, and eventually, you'll die. That's a medical fact, not a prediction or a prophecy."

"You have an unsurpassed bedside manner, Doctor."

"How can you be so -"

"It's easy," Odo said grimly, "all you have to do is practice. Otali'klan, where has Kira gone?"

-oOo-

"The Vorch'iad," Shakaar Edon said, his tone as expressionless as his face. "'And Ilium took up his lance and rode into the sun.' - is that what you're going to do, Nerys? Ride into the sun?"

"Something like that."

"As I remember, Ilium died in the resulting apocalypse."

"He did, but his sacrifice helped the Prophets win their battle against the Pah Wraiths. Or didn't you read to the end?"

Shakaar smiled faintly. "Actually, I never got past Ilium seducing the virgin huntress, but that's beside the point. I'm not arguing with you, Nerys, Odo is a good man, and perhaps he really can cause enough dissent to bring the Dominion down - but Bajor can't be seen to have any part in it. You know that."

Kira met his gaze squarely. "I'm not here because you're the First Minister. I'm not even here because you shared my bed for a while. I'm here because we used to fight shoulder-to-shoulder against the Cardassians. Because we nearly froze to death together in the Blue Winter. One ship, Edon. That's all I'm asking you for. Not your blessing or your official sanction. Just one ship."

Shakaar leaned back in his chair, apparently contemplating her expression. "I can't let you take a Bajoran ship into battle against the Dominion, Nerys."

"Then give me the Gul Revak. We both know it's been sitting rusting in the Yoreth shipyard since the end of the Occupation."

"The Gul Revak is a battered old Cardassian gunship," Shakaar said gravely. "The only reason they left it behind was that it wouldn't have made it out of Bajoran space."

"So have the Corps of Engineers fix it."

He smiled thinly. "You don't want much, do you?"

Kira eyed him serenely. "Odo thoroughly detests you, you know that, don't you? You owe him, Edon."

"How do you make that out?"

"For stealing me away right under his nose."

Shakaar laughed, a sardonic, barking noise. "That isn't remotely fair."

"All's fair in love and war, Edon. That's what the humans say."

Shakaar considered her for a moment longer, then nodded slowly. "All right, Nerys. The Gul Revak it is. Ride into the sun if you must. I just hope that changeling... man... whatever he is... of yours appreciates you."

Kira smiled and said sweetly. "He does. Far more than you ever did."

-oOo-

Standing in the kitchen, Otali'klan was looking both uncomfortable and undecided. Bashir suspected that he was trying to decide whether he should march into the next room or not. Certainly, the sound of raised and angry voices - mostly Kira's - seemed to be unsettling him. Not sure whether the Jem'Hadar were blessed with enough sensitivity to make an informed decision about such a thing, Bashir said, "It doesn't mean anything." At Otali'klan's blank look, he added, "The shouting. When those two learned to shout at each other, everyone else soon learned that it didn't mean anything."

"My duty is to protect the Avakar," Otali'klan said, sounding dubious.

"Trust me, the Avakar's quite capable of giving as good as he gets. Somehow, though, I don't think he's going to win this battle."

"Then I should -"

"Figure of speech," Bashir said rapidly. "Perhaps I should explain. Those two are profoundly in love with each other, but when they lock horns - er, no offence intended - you don't want to be anywhere near them. Irresistible force meets immovable object. That's a -"

"- human saying? I have heard it."

"There aren't any female Jem'Hadar, are there? Your people don't mate, don't breed. You're entirely genetically engineered."

"Correct."

"Then I don't think you'll ever understand those two, Otali'klan, my friend. Just remember one thing - Kira's life is more important to Odo than his own. Far, far more important. The best service you can perform for him is to protect her. Because where you're going, she'll need it, whether she'll ever admit it or not," Bashir said, rather pleased with himself for what he considered to be an inspired idea.

Otali'klan said, "It's gone quiet."

"It has, hasn't it?"

"I should check -"

Instinctively, Bashir put a hand on the Jem'Hadar's powerful arm. "Not just now. Trust me. Not unless you want to experience the most colourful and comprehensive reprimand you've ever had in your entire life."

"I don't -"

"- understand. Yes, I know. You don't need to. Just leave them alone until the morning."

-oOo-

Outside, it had turned cold and it was still raining. Inside, at least in the bedroom, and certainly in the vicinity of the bed, the temperature was several degrees higher, but beginning to cool. Too warm for comfort, but unwilling to disentangle herself from her lover's body, Kira closed her eyes, tightened her grip possessively and sighed. Somewhere nearby, she could hear the low mumble of voices. Bashir and Otali'klan, she assumed. Probably debating whether it was safe to venture out of the kitchen.

"You're not coming with us," Odo said.

"I don't go, you don't go. Simple," Kira told him without opening her eyes. "Fine by me. We can just stay here and watch the grass grow. Otali'klan can live in the woodshed."

Odo's tone was faintly sardonic as he asked, "Are you sure you're not descended from Opir Ren?"

"The mad Vedek? Not as far as I know. But then, I gather my ancestors were pretty wild."

"I guessed that."

Kira considered for a moment, then offered, "My great-great-grandfather once rode a wild topek through Temple Square. Allegedly."

"I wish I'd known all this years ago," Odo said dryly.

"Wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference. Face it, Odo, you fell in love with me the moment you first set eyes on me."

A muscle in his jaw twitched and he said placidly, "Believe that if you want to."

"'Pretty girl like you shouldn't be eating alone'? Sounds like a come on to me."

"You're still not coming with us."

Kira smiled against his chest. "We'll see, shall we?"

The silence that followed was oddly companionable, given the fierce argument that had precipitated more recent events. Mulling the conversation over for several long minutes, Kira finally asked, "When did you fall in love with me? You've never answered that."

"Oh, I expect it was a Friday. Probably halfway through a staff meeting, somewhere between pylon maintenance and staff shortages."

"You don't know, do you?" Kira accused.

"No idea," Odo said mildly.

Her mood changing, Kira turned her head so she could look at him, and asked soberly, "You do realise how serious your condition is, don't you?"

"Do you?"

Kira didn't dare allow any emotion into her voice. Steadily, she said, "I think so. Julian's explained it to me. You might not see the end."

Fatalistically, he said, "So goes the prophecy."

Kira glowered. "Forget the prophecy. This is real. Unless Julian can find a way to stabilise your condition, you're going to die. And it's not fair. None of it is fair. I try not thinking about it, and then I look at you and all I can think about is having to watch you die."

"And you wonder why I don't want you to come with us," Odo said.

"I know why. I just refuse to accept it. Odo, there is another alternative. You could go into stasis. It would give Julian more time to -"

"No."

Kira met his look without flinching. "Fine. Then we'll just both go and die a glorious death in the Gamma Quadrant, shall we?"

-oOo-

He didn't know when he had fallen in love with her. Sometimes he wasn't altogether sure why he had fallen in love with her, but if Odo knew one thing, it was that the whole matter had been a fait accompli from the moment he had realised exactly why he spent so much of his time thinking about her. Odo was not a demonstrative creature. Falling in love with Kira had been unexpected and often exceedingly inconvenient, and he had kept the revelation to himself for a long, long time. The idea of telling her how he felt had been completely alien to him, and so he had carefully guarded his secret and waited. He hadn't known exactly what he had been waiting for, but still, he had waited.

Contrary to popular belief, Odo's patience was almost infinite. True, he had never had much patience with those who irked him, broke the law or simply spent altogether too much time looking at him with bewildered expressions on their faces, but otherwise he possessed the wily patience of a hungry cat at a mousehole. It had made him a good security officer, but it hadn't actually gained him the object of his desire. Or perhaps it had, ultimately.

Had she but known it, Kira had innocently come closer to breaking Odo's self-control than anyone or anything else he had yet to encounter. But somehow, despite the tortures she had unwittingly put him through, he had found the reserves to keep on living, day in, day out, with temptation all too often in his reach. Another man would surely have given up and turned to other pastures, but not Odo. Odo, who had grown up mistaking curiosity for affection, hadn't wavered. In the end, it had been his intense dislike for Shakaar Edon, and his fear that Kira was about to pick up the threads of her relationship with him that had finally driven Odo to action.

Like a thorn deeply embedded in Odo's side, Shakaar had never gone away. The thought that he might end up in debt to the First Minister didn't do much for Odo's equilibrium. But without a ship, even the most intricate of his plans were useless.

Kira sighed in her sleep and tightened her arm around his waist. He couldn't leave her behind. Not again. Odo knew it, and she knew it. Once again, he danced to her tune.

He didn't resent it. He had trouble resenting anything Kira did. With the possible exception of visiting Shakaar. Or speaking to him via subspace. Or mentioning his name. Or thinking about him. Ever.

The Gamma Quadrant lacked Shakaar. Odo knew the thought was frivolous, but it pleased him nonetheless. Idly, he scratched at an itch on his chest, still vaguely surprised by the strange sensation. In some ways, his humanoid skin was even more sensitive than his changeling surface had been. The movement disturbed Kira. She raised her head and looked at him blearily, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

She was never very obedient. It was one of the things he liked about her. He found it challenging. She sat up a little. "What are you thinking about?"

"Shakaar."

Kira groaned and collapsed back against the mattress. "I don't want to go through this again. Not tonight."

"I was thinking about how uncommonly generous it is of him to give us a ship."

"No point in having feminine wiles if you don't use them."

With remarkable restraint, Odo merely said, "That's not funny, Nerys."

She met his look. "Damned right it isn't. What do you think I did? Sleep with him?"

Time to retreat. "Of course not."

"Hmm," Kira said grudgingly.

Odo wished she could look a little less attractive when he was trying to convince himself that taking her to the Gamma Quadrant was out of the question. He also wished she wasn't as naked as the day she had been born. If presumably far more well-endowed. Familiarity did not breed contempt, as far as Odo could discern. She was looking at him oddly, apparently still irritated. "What?"

"Nothing." Which remained an inordinately idiotic and insensitive name to give anyone, as far as Odo was concerned.

Apparently, Kira's thoughts were running along the same lines. Her lips quirked. "'Odo'ital'. Stupid Cardassians."

He loved her. It was that simple. Odo sighed and capitulated grudgingly. "All right. You win."

At least she had the good grace not to smirk. "Of course I do."

-oOo-

Walking along DS Nine's Promenade, just a day later, Kira found herself wondering whether she would ever return to the battered old outpost that had been her home for so long. If she did, it would certainly not be as its commanding officer. She wondered whether Shakaar and his Council of Ministers would press for another Bajoran commander, or whether the grim, efficient and ever-aloof Commander John Atkin, a Starfleet parody from his shiny boots to his close-cropped dark hair, would be granted the position. It wasn't, she knew, her concern, but part of her mind wondered if the station would lose part of its eccentric soul under the command of such a man.

So many memories. So many new faces. The old and the new jostled uneasily for ascendance. A little way ahead of her, Tarab Ray walked out of the Security office, deep in conversation with a young female deputy. A pleasant man, Tarab. Solid, reliable, but not blessed with a great amount of initiative. Nor possessed of an innate ability to intimidate malefactors without saying a single word. Kira was very well aware that as a department, Security had never quite recovered from the loss of its former chief. Perhaps it never would, not until the last survivor of Odo's tough, idiosyncratic regime finally left the station. Probably, Taban did the best he could from the restrictive confines of Odo's lingering shadow.

Beyond the Security office, the Bajoran temple, and beyond that, her intended destination, the Infirmary. Bashir's domain, where his brilliance shone without danger of tarnish. Quickening her pace to avoid a confrontation with Vedek Roache, who had appeared on an interception course, Kira mentally said her goodbyes to the Promenade and all its memories, good and bad.

Bashir was waiting for her, as promised. There was still something disapproving behind his urbane expression, but all he said by way of greeting was, "I've just sent the last case of supplies down to the Rio Grande."

"Thanks, Julian," Kira said, knowing it was inadequate, but unable to think of anything better.

"I've tried to anticipate the things you may need as... as time goes by. You have to understand, though, there will come a point when medication alone will be useless."

"I know."

A look of compassion settled into Bashir's dark eyes. "I wish there was more I could do. Something else I could suggest. I'll keep going on the research, keep running the simulations, but..."

"I know," Kira said again. "I know, Julian."

"Are you sure you don't want me to come with you on the Rio Grande?"

"I'd rather you stayed here. Ezri will bring the runabout back from Bajor."

"I won't say goodbye. It sounds too final. I'll just wish you good luck."

"Thank you."

Bashir looked faintly embarrassed for a moment, then said, "Walk with the Prophets, Kira Nerys."

It didn't occur to her to be offended at hearing the words from an infidel.

-oOo-

The hard, utilitarian lines of the Gul Revak loomed large in the twilight. An archaic Cardassian dinosaur crouching morosely on Bajoran soil, a remnant of darker days. It dwarfed the runabout, but there was no doubt about which ship looked sleeker and more spaceworthy. A Bajoran handling crew, paid just enough not to be interested in asking questions, set about transferring the cased, anonymous supplies from DS Nine. Kira wondered what they had been told, if anything.

At her side, Ezri Dax cast a critical eye over the old Cardassian gunship and said, "I just hope you don't ever get into a straight firefight with the Jem'Hadar."

"So do I," Kira said, with some feeling. She shrugged. "Beggars can't be choosers."

"Do you think it will actually make it through the wormhole?"

Trivial conversation, insulation from all the things that were important. Things like friendship, loyalty and compassion. Once again, Kira was struck by a sense of destiny. Not looking at Ezri, she said, "Who could ever have predicted this?"

"I'm counting on you to come back," Ezri said. "Both of you. You still owe me dinner at the Bolian restaurant, and Odo always said he'd show me how to cheat Quark's Dabo wheel."

For a moment, Kira thought of Quark. Thought of his enigmatic, guarded words to her, just the night before. Quark had known she was going. Somehow, Quark had known. Strange to think that she could actually feel any affection for a wily, conniving Ferengi. At least some things never changed. Whatever else happened in the galaxy, while DS Nine endured, there would always be Quark's Bar.

It was growing darker, minute by minute. The Gul Revak's running lights came on, harsh points of light on each elevation. No-one had ever satisfactorily explained to Kira why interstellar craft needed running lights.

"You've been a good friend to me, Dax," Kira said, choosing the name deliberately. "Right from the start. To us both. Be happy. Look after Julian."

Ezri nodded solemnly. "I will. We'll be watching the wormhole."

And so, the last goodbye was said. Only a few hours later, just before the Gul Revak left the Alpha Quadrant, Kira sent a subspace message to Deep Space Nine, informing Commander Atkin and the Bajoran authorities of her resignation.

-oOo-

In the end, it was an anti-climax. The Gul Revak passed smoothly through the wormhole and into the Neutral Zone without a single problem. No Jem'Hadar ships lay in wait for them on the other side. With the course to Koplos laid in, there was nothing more to do. Leaving Otali'klan on the bridge with whatever private thoughts lurked behind his cold dark eyes, Kira and Odo went to survey the rest of their new domain. Neither was particularly impressed by what they found.

"Cardassians," Kira said, glaring around the most habitable set of quarters on the ship. "The military mind at work. This is worse than the Defiant."

"I thought you said we should be grateful to the First Minister?"

"Don't start," Kira warned him, meaning it. The day had already been too stressful. "I used to imagine what I'd do when I left the Militia. Cardassian bunks and purloined Starfleet field rations didn't feature prominently."

"I think I should point out that things can only get worse."

"Thank you for that, Odo. Prophets, I must love you a lot."

Inevitably, the conversation finally turned to the Dominion. It was Odo who eventually said impatiently, "We're not going to fight a guerrilla war. How could we? To attack the number of strategic targets we'd need to cripple to have any effect, we'd need a full-scale invasion force. This is a war of hearts and minds."

"I understand that, but sometimes it's necessary to use force just to get the enemy's attention."

"We already have their attention," he argued reasonably. "It's the attention of the people we need to attract. Ordinary, decent people who want to live ordinary, decent lives. The Dominion isn't a conventional empire. There's no central command to attack, no public figure to assassinate. The Dominion is more subtle than that, more insidious. It's a concept rather than a physical being."

"But, ultimately, its power still comes from the Jem'Hadar," Kira said. "Thousands of worlds serve the Dominion out of fear of the Jem'Hadar. Your people... the Founders... are powerful, Odo, but they rely on the Jem'Hadar to enforce their will. And the Vorta to control them. Take them away, and the Great Link is powerless."

"Not as powerless as you seem to think. How do you think the Dominion was founded? It was the changelings - the changelings on their own - who over-ran those first planets."

"That may very well be true, but the Founders aren't natural warriors."

Odo shook his head and said stubbornly, "We can't fight the Jem'Hadar. Nerys, we're not talking about hiding in canyons sniping at Cardassian ground patrols. We're talking about fighting a highly disciplined army of tens of thousands of genetically engineered soldiers."

"You're forgetting something," Kira told him. "The Jem'Hadar have two weaknesses. Their reliance on ketracel white, and their blind loyalty to the Founders. Look at Otali'klan. He obeys you without thought or reason - because he's programmed to. That's a weakness we can exploit."

Impatiently, Odo shook his head. "You think we didn't try that in the very beginning? Nerys, this all started because the Great Link was in uproar - because suddenly the one unified voice was a thousand separate voices. The schism in the Link caused the Dominion to falter. Changelings left the Link of their own volition - dozens of them. Some of them even joined the movement against the Dominion. I've seen Founders ordering Jem'Hadar battalions to lay down their weapons, but in the end, it wasn't enough. The Great Link's voice was louder."

"You say we can't fight the Jem'Hadar," Kira said. "Well, fine. You're probably right. But if we can't fight them, we have to turn them. Otali'klan and his men joined you. That proves it can be done."

"Otali'klan was ordered to join me," Odo said quietly.

Kira frowned. "Ordered? By who?"

"When Otali'klan was ordered to kill me, he disobeyed. He couldn't kill a Founder. So he set me free. Then he and his men returned to their garrison to face the consequences of what they had done. But the Founder responsible for Otali'klan and his men was already well on the way to becoming a renegade. She sent them back to Rekalth under oath to protect me."

"Otali'klan told me... Well, he told me a different story."

"No," Odo said quietly, "he didn't. Otali'klan is incapable of lying. He told you his loyalty was to me because of what the Great Link did to me. He told you the truth. That was exactly why the Founder charged him with my care."

"Why?"

"Why," Odo said calmly, "do you think? Infant changelings don't just spontaneously appear from nowhere."

Genuinely dazed by what she was hearing, Kira stuttered, "She was your... mother?"

He frowned, as if carefully analysing the idea. "No. Yes. In a way. It depends on how you look at it. I learned a lot about my people while I was in the Link. All changelings have multiple progenitors, but that number is finite. A new changeling isn't produced by the entire Link. It's... complicated. Think of it as a number of individuals donating parts of their substance and genetic code to create one new whole. Fusion, if you like. A unique amalgamation that creates a separate individual."

It was an alien concept, but Kira suddenly remembered what Leevan had told them when they had first gone to Haven's moon in search of Odo. The renegade Vorta's explanation had been almost exactly the same as the one Odo had just given her. She said, "Leevan told us that was what caused the original schism in the Link. Your... family... objected to the way you were treated."

"I suppose that would be a reasonable approximation, yes. Family isn't quite the right word. Those who claim closer genetic ties."

"That's what I said. Family." Following the idea, Kira asked, "Odo, how many members of your family are still in the Link?"

"I have no idea. Define family. I share... shared... similar genetic characteristics with a great many others. All of the Hundred were genetically associated, for a start."

"Then Laas and the baby that died..."

"Were kin to me?" Odo shrugged. "Apparently so."

"And if all those changelings spoke out once more? If the Link became discordant again?"

"Exactly as before. Chaos. The Dominion would be vulnerable - incapable of dealing with full-scale rebellion."

"Then you're an even more valuable property than I realised," Kira said. She raised her eyebrows. "I sense a plan."

-oOo-

His skin was burning. The sensation was so acute, it woke him from a deep, dreamless sleep. The bunk was very narrow, and Kira was curled very close. Everywhere she touched him, his skin objected violently. Not a natural reaction. Despite the blazing fire, Odo realised he was cold; shivering. He closed his eyes, tried to be stoical. It hurt. It hurt and it was distressing. Fears about his own mortality suddenly tormented him. It was getting harder, day by day, to ignore the crushing truth of what the Great Link had done to him.

Carefully, trying not to disturb Kira, Odo freed himself from the bunk. The air in the room seemed very stale, the atmosphere oppressive. He sat himself in the only chair, a blanket from the top bunk around his shoulders. It didn't help. Genetic destabilisation. He wondered what the words really meant. He wondered how much more of it he could tolerate. He wondered what it would be like to die.

Odo had never been a deeply philosophical creature. Abstract concepts didn't mean much to him. He supposed he was inherently designed to care more about tangible things. Shapes that could be emulated, sensations that could be shared. He had never bothered to consider the nature of death. A devout agnostic, if he had ever thought about death, he had thought about it in pragmatic terms. Odo didn't believe in the Bajoran Prophets or their Celestial Temple. He didn't believe his own people were gods.

Death was nothing more than the end of life. The end of life, however, no longer seemed like a distant inevitability to be ignored. The end of life would bring... nothing. No more pain, no more pleasure. No more Kira.

And what would she do? Odo wondered. She was too strong to be broken by his death. Far, far too strong. She would mourn him, she would weep bitter tears for him, but, eventually, she would get on with her life. With whatever life she could possibly hope to go back to. It was possible - even likely - that Bajor would disown her for her actions. Odo suspected she would find that harder to bear than anything else. In her own way, Kira had always been as lonely as he himself had; and she had always clung to Bajor in the same way he had clung to Deep Space Nine. His thoughts turned to the Dominion, to the Great Link. Odo knew what it was to be disowned, to be cast adrift in a hostile galaxy with no home, no people. Yet, he recognised that he had been lucky. Not everything had deserted him. The proof of that was sleeping peacefully less than ten feet away.

Odo shivered, drew the blanket more closely around himself, and eventually, somewhere in the empty hours, he finally returned to the bunk and managed to fall into a fitful sleep. When he dreamed, he dreamed not of the Great Link or the Dominion, but of Bajor.

-oOo-

Ezri Dax had been counselling a depressed Bolian Lieutenant when Bashir had unexpectedly contacted her on a secure channel. Though they were friends and lovers as well as colleagues, their working relationship had always been thoroughly professional, and she had been surprised by his lapse in etiquette. Realising that whatever he wanted to discuss had to be important, she had immediately cancelled her next appointment and headed straight for the Promenade and the Infirmary.

When she got there, Bashir immediately took her through to one of the small laboratories beyond the treatment rooms. His expression told her that he had something serious to say. She had no idea what it might be until she saw the scans being displayed on the monitors above the main test bench. Then she said, "Odo?"

"Look at these readings - the last ones I took," Bashir said, handing her a dataPADD. "Compare them to the previous ones."

Ezri did so. After a moment of study, she said, "They're definitely different. So?"

"So, I worked out the progression and all the variables and set up a simulation on the computer." Bashir tapped a few buttons, and a different set of scans appeared on the main monitors. "Look at the difference in the DNA pattern."

"I'm sorry, Julian, but what, exactly, am I looking for?"

"Here," he said impatiently, pointing. "And here. See how regular the pattern is? How well-defined?"

"Which means...?"

"Which means, I made a fundamental mistake. What's happening to him was so typical of a genetic destabilisation, I didn't bother to look any further for an answer. Ezri, Odo's genetic code isn't destabilising - it's mutating."

"Mutating?"

"He's changing," Bashir said, his voice suddenly taut. "Somehow, his genetic code is spontaneously rewriting itself. That's why everything pointed to a destabilisation - why all his symptoms indicated genetic deterioration."

Doubtfully, Ezri said, "Well, that's good news, isn't it?"

"It would be," Bashir said grimly, "if I hadn't prescribed all the wrong treatment. Ezri, we've got to find a way to contact them before it's too late. He's got to stop taking all the drugs I gave him - and fast."

Ezri looked at the monitors, then at Bashir. "What about the Larazoid? Quark's associate. What was his name? Kovel?"

Bashir tapped his commbadge. "Bashir to Security."

"Security here," Tarab Ray's voice said immediately.

"Chief," Bashir said, his voice studiously light, "is there a Larazoid called Kovel currently on the station...?"

-oOo-

"What do you dream about?" Kira asked the sleeping man softly. It was impossible to guess. When he dreamed, did he dream as a changeling, or as a humanoid? In sleep, did he forget the ties of flesh and blood and embrace the freedom the Great Link had stripped away from him?

The enormity of what she had done - and what she had demanded to be a part of - was beginning to hit home.

The Bajorans called it lyth'tar - the inevitable path. Destiny. Fate. The road the Prophets laid out for their children.

Kira wondered whether she was walking that road, or whether she had strayed a long, long way from it. Surely if her destiny hadn't been intended to be bound up with his, their paths would never have crossed? Surely if the Prophets hadn't planned for her to walk the same road, they would never have...

Too many confusing questions.

She studied Odo's sleeping face. No-one, not even Kira, could have called him a conventionally handsome man. Not by Bajoran standards, or human standards. Or Klingon, Ferengi, Romulan or any other Alpha Quadrant race's standards. Yet somehow his features possessed a certain ineffable, alien sort of beauty. Perhaps because of their clean, simple symmetry. Whatever the reason, there was something attractive about the striking angles and planes that swept together into a starkly sculpted mask. It pleased Kira to know that she was not the only woman in the galaxy to ever have thought so. It was less pleasing to remember that she was not the only woman to ever have found her way into his affections.

Odo stirred slightly, as if consciousness was beginning to filter back, but there was something uneasy about his sigh, something that told her he was in pain. The ache in her heart flared again. Kira didn't want to think about the future, didn't want to look squarely at the truth. Later, perhaps, but not then. She kissed him gently, perhaps hoping to distract him, and it was enough to wake him properly. Improbably blue eyes opened to regard the world with characteristic bemusement. "It's still early," Kira told him gently, anticipating his question, "How do you feel?"

"Fine." Flat, automatic and doubtless a lie.

Kira went along with it, knowing that to question him further would only succeed in irritating him. She nodded solemnly. "Good."

A hesitation, a sigh, and, "I'd better go and speak to Otali'klan."

"Leave him," Kira said. "He's happy, brooding on his own. Stay here for a while longer."

To her surprise, the look Odo cast her was faintly speculative, but he didn't comment. The look, though, was enough to spark Kira's interest. Almost hesitantly, she drew her fingers across his chest. "I could make it worth your while."

Faint speculation became definite curiosity. "Oh...?"

Kira knew a lot about the ways of war. She knew all about the hush that fell before battle, and the need to make the most of every second that ticked relentlessly by. No experienced soldier ignored any opportunities that were unexpectedly presented. Without even a pretence of artlessness, she pressed herself closer to him. "Definitely worth your while."

"You have my undivided attention."

- which was all the encouragement Kira needed.

-oOo-

"Jem'Hadar defence grid," Otali'klan said in response to Kira's question. "Koplos wasn't always a neutral world."

"I know that," Kira said patiently, "I just find it surprising that we can sneak in undetected."

"We're matching their frequencies," Odo told her, "that's all. But it's an effective camouflage."

Kira fancied she could still feel him against her. A slight tenderness between her thighs reminded her all too vividly of his earlier, unexpected enthusiasm. If Otali'klan hadn't been present, she might have been tempted to simply march over to her lover and initiate a rematch. However inappropriate the moment. As it was, she settled for staring at the back of his head. His sandy hair needed cutting, she realised. Strange what thoughts always went through her head at such times.

Otali'klan reported, "Sensors have detected the beacon my men were ordered to activate."

"Can you lock down its signal?" Kira asked him professionally.

"Attempting to do so now."

Several moments passed, then Otali'klan said, "I have the co-ordinates. We will be in transporter range within three minutes."

And so, Kira thought, it begins...

-oOo-

"The Vetarlon," Otali'klan said abnormally quietly, and Kira heard the not-quite-hidden note of awe in his voice.

The woman was tall and sleek, very definitely attractive and standing rather too close to Odo for Kira's liking. Unlike the rest of the survivors from the Yafaga, she did not look as if she had been scratching to survive in the dusty desert mountains near the Kolpon equator. Neither her exposed skin, nor he light, intricately embroidered robes she was wearing showed any sign of dirt or sweat. When she spoke, her voice had a melodic quality that was almost too perfect, and it held a distinct touch of something Kira couldn't quite identify. She said, "I am Ishlar."

"Kira," Kira said. Then added pointedly, "Colonel Kira."

The other woman didn't smile, just nodded and turned to speak to Odo. "You look tired, Avakar. Can I assist you?"

Kira's hackles rose immediately, but she bit her tongue and remained silent. Otali'klan distracted her with, "The Second reports that everyone is now aboard."

"Good," Kira said, not quite able to turn her attention away from Ishlar, who was talking quickly and intently to Odo, her long-fingered hands making rapid gestures in the cold air. "Have your men set a course for the Healoran Nebula. From what you've told me, I doubt the Dominion will search it again so soon."

"As you command," Otali'klan said tersely, and walked away. Realising that Ishlar had drawn Odo even further aside, Kira suppressed a flash of irritation and followed the big Jem'Hadar back to the flight deck.

-oOo-

"Rekalthian?" Kira said, slightly confused. "I thought you said she was a Vetarlon?"

"So she is," Otali'klan agreed. He looked away from the instruments he was studying for a moment. "On your world you might call her a Vedek. She is keplari."

"Holy woman," a small, sharp-faced man in a torn jump-suit translated from Kira's left. He looked vaguely reptilian, but not in the hard way of the Cardassians. His scales were small and faintly green. Seeing Kira's look, he abandoned the console he had been studying and introduced himself. "Pakler. Lau Pakler. I'm a Daskian. That is, I'm from Daski Four. Ever heard of it?"

"No," Kira admitted.

"You're lucky. Most boring planet this side of the wormhole. Our entire economy is built on sand. Literally." He smiled, as if he had made a particularly witty remark. "You're Bajoran, aren't you? I went to New Bajor once. Lots of temples, lots of drinking houses."

Lau Pakler, Kira decided, talked too much. But then, after Otali'klan, anyone would probably seem as if they talked too much. Seeing that the Jem'Hadar had returned to whatever self-imposed task he had in hand, she focused her attention on the Daskian. "Free-trader?"

Again, he smiled, showing dual rows of tiny reptile teeth. "That obvious is it?"

Dryly, Kira said, "I've met too many not to recognise one."

"Fair enough. So, tell me, what's a Child of the Prophets doing following Ishlar's messiah...?"

-oOo-

A little while later, in a storage area that had become an impromptu mess hall, Pakler explained, "Tar'vath was the thirty-first Dochan of Rekalth. Some people say he was quite, quite mad. According to the ancient texts, he had quite a reputation for seeing visions and making prophecies. The Rekalthians worship a huge array of gods, you know. Little gods, big gods, local gods, cosmic gods. Baktu. Aslayas. Even Tildaar, the Morkelleth god of vengeance. I think they like to make sure they've got all the options covered, myself."

With a considerable effort, Kira hid her impatience and prompted, "Tar'vath's prophecy of the Avakar...?"

"The fallen angel," Pakler said. He sipped his drink then shrugged. "Baktu is the god of change. The Rekalthians depict him as a shapechanger. I suppose that's why they didn't resist the changelings when they arrived. Probably didn't dare fight them, just in case they were Baktu's children. Tar'vath was a Baktun priest before he became Dochan. Anyway... after half the planet's leaders had been executed, and most of the temples burned to the ground, Tar'vath prophesied the coming of the Avakar. A saviour sent by Baktu to save the faithful from oppression. The prophecy has been interpreted and reinterpreted a thousand times - but all the scholars agree that by so'sharai - fallen angel - Tar'vath meant a renegade changeling."

"And Ishlar," Kira said, "decided that Odo fitted the prophecy."

"Wasn't Ishlar who started it. Ishlar sought him out because she'd heard what the people were saying." Pakler blinked yellow snake eyes at Kira. "Have you read the prophecy?"

"No."

"Maybe you should. 'And twice damned shall he be'. Something like that, anyway. Doesn't translate well." A long pause, then, "Your turn, Kira Nerys. What's a Bajoran ex-terrorist doing with a genetically mutilated changeling?"

"That's a very, very long story."

"And one you don't want to tell." A wily, perceptive smile. "Bondmate?"

"If you like."

"Had to be. Want some advice?"

Kira eyed him guardedly. "What?"

"Don't turn your back on Ishlar. Vetarlons are trained to kill. And I'd say she has more than a spiritual interest in seeing Tar'vath's prophecy fulfilled." Again, he blinked. "She's used to standing at the Avakar's right shoulder, and I doubt she'll be happy to give up her place."

-oOo-

"We're stationary in the nebula," Kira reported to Odo when she stepped into their quarters, "Otali'klan and his men are still on the flight deck, that Koplon lieutenant has managed to get everyone fed, clothed and bedded down for the night, and your friend Ishlar wants to see you first thing in the morning to discuss some minor point about Tar'vath's prophecy. Congratulations, Odo - you're a religious icon. There's a terrific irony in that, somewhere."

Bluntly, Odo said, "You don't like her, do you? Ishlar?"

For a moment Kira nearly lied, but Pakler's words and her own infuriation made her say, "Perceptive of you."

"She's been a good friend to me."

"Why doesn't that surprise me."

Odo's blue eyes narrowed a fraction. "Meaning?"

"She's interested in more than some ancient prophecy. Anyone can see that."

He looked genuinely astonished. "You think Ishlar's interested in me? Nerys, I'm sorry, but you're way off the mark. She's a priestess - a healer."

"Wake up, Odo," Kira said impatiently. "When she looks at you, she isn't thinking about religion, or about healing."

"I think," Odo said, a deliberate note of calm in his deep voice, "it's time you got some sleep."

"Don't patronise me," Kira snapped back.

"Then don't leap to such ridiculous conclusions."

She glared at Odo. Apparently the expression was enough to draw him slowly to his feet. The undercurrent of tension between them strengthened, became a tangible thing. Kira raised her eyebrows at him. "You're in no position to lecture me about jumping to ridiculous conclusions. Not after all the things you've insinuated about Shakaar."

"I wondered how long it would be before the First Minister cropped up in conversation."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You really don't need me to spell it out for you, I'm sure."

Kira's temper began to rise. Coldly, she said, "I asked you a question."

"I just find it curious that even here in the Gamma Quadrant, you find it necessary to mention him," Odo said with equal frost.

"Well, why the hell shouldn't I? He's one of my oldest friends - one of my dearest comrades in arms."

Blue eyes glittered at her, and he said sardonically, "Oh, I think he's rather more than that, don't you?"

It was too much. Without even thinking about it, Kira lashed out. Too many years as a fighter made her ball her fist instead of slapping him open-handed in conventional female fashion. It wasn't a tempered blow, and it caught him squarely on the point of the jaw, snapping his head back on his shoulders. The punch unbalanced him momentarily, but failed to really stagger him. Kira found herself instantly more stunned than he appeared to be.

Realisation came as a cold shock. Abrasive as he could be, Odo was a very gentle man, a man who disliked violence of any kind, and he was also, Kira thought in stark contrition, a man suffering from a degenerative and potentially fatal medical condition. Hitting out at him suddenly seemed the most despicable thing she could possibly have done - whatever the provocation. Before he could really react, she grabbed both his hands. "Prophets... Odo, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

The storm hit. Not in harsh, shouted recriminations or in clenched fists, but in sudden, explosive passion. Instead of striking her, he kissed her. Kissed her with a ferocity she hadn't thought him capable of. The instinct to force herself away from him in outrage died in the same split-second in which it was born. Angry and needy, she met the assault, fought him for ascendancy. Forgetting about Ishlar and Shakaar, she tried to tear into him, but found herself met by a raw strength she thought had waned. Kira tasted blood, had no idea whether it was his or hers, and simply didn't care.

Something hard and cold met her back, and Kira dimly realised that she was pressed against the dark, Cardassian bulkhead with no chance of escape. She didn't want to escape. Hating him and loving him with equal vehemence, she tightened her hands on his shoulders, deliberately drove her fingers into the muscle she could feel there, wanting to bruise him. Odo's mouth left hers, found her neck. Kira felt him bite her and knew it was in retaliation for her hard, unforgiving grip. For as long as she had known him, there had been a feral edge to Odo that had lurked beneath his tight self-control and studied calm. A touch of something that had never quite been subjugated by the Bajorans and Cardassians who had raised him. Mostly, it had remained hidden behind a hard-won wall of propriety and dignity, but Kira had seen it in him from the start. One half-tamed creature recognising the scent of another, perhaps. Sometimes it had been momentarily revealed in a flash of temper, but Kira had never been its target. Until then.

It was exciting. Frightening. Exhilarating.

Caught in the moment, Kira snatched at his tunic, more than willing to wrest it from him. The anger was gone, replaced by a primal desire that had nothing to do with love, affection or mutual respect. She wasn't the only one caught by the insanity. There seemed to be a considerable amount of reckless, impatient fumbling with clothes and fasteners going on, none of it co-ordinated. However indiscriminate the effort, the end result was sufficient enough to enable the coveted press of naked flesh in several crucial places.

Dimly, through the wild roar of her blood, through the intoxicated delirium, Kira realised that Odo's skin was far too dry and far, far too hot. Where his skin touched hers, she could feel it burning. Not enough of her mind remained rational enough to process the information properly. Not with his hands and his mouth hunting over her so rapidly and so fiercely. Not with her pulse racing and her breathing so fast and shallow. Kira grabbed at him harshly, one hand on his arm, one hand searching lower, seeking the arrogant hardness caught between them. She could hear Odo's voice, rough-edged and urgent, but the words were lost somewhere in the tumult.

It had never been destined to be a gentle, leisurely encounter, but there was a tiny portion of Kira's mind that was clear enough to be surprised. Not by the passion itself, but by the savage intensity with which it burned. In her own way, Kira was as ruthlessly honest as Odo himself, and she would not have maintained an intimate relationship with him if there had been anything lacking in her feelings for him - but that sane, isolated part of her mind questioned whether there had ever been a time when her desire had been quite so imperative, quite so frenzied. And Odo? Odo who had loved her so deeply for so long. Had he ever been quite so impetuous, quite so aggressive? There was something... different. In him, or in them both?

Kira didn't care. She was too far gone to care. Their bodies were locked together into one straining, struggling creature, and the only thing that mattered was the acute physical pleasure accompanying the madness. She wasn't afraid to fight for what she wanted, wasn't afraid to bite and kiss, to demand and clutch and cry out. She wasn't afraid of Odo, and she wasn't afraid of herself. She wondered if he was trying to hurt her with each hard stroke, each deep thrust. She wondered if something had shattered the tight core of self-discipline that had always held him just in check, protecting her from the full force of his changeling strength...

...But he wasn't a changeling. He was human. Flesh and blood, just like Kira herself.

He shouldn't have been so strong. According to the instruments Bashir had given her to monitor Odo's condition, he was weakening daily. He shouldn't have been capable of -

She broke. He broke.

Through the shuddering confusion, through the welter of sensation, Kira saw unreality. Flickering across his pale skin, barely visible, but no less real for it, the characteristic shimmer of changeling gold.

Odo's face bore a look of stunned incomprehension. For a moment he remained frozen, still part of her. He seemed to be struggling to speak. Kira helped him ease away, asking in a breathless voice, "Odo...?"

"Get..." he managed to gasp, "the... Vetarlon..."

And then he collapsed.

-oOo-

"He should be dead," Kira said, staring in disbelief at what the medical tricorder was telling her. "According to these readings, he should be dead."

Ishlar's strange silver eyes surveyed her without a glimmer of emotion. "He is the Avakar."

"No human can have a body temperature this high and still be alive - and according to this, he is still perfectly human," Kira said. She looked towards the silent figure of Otali'klan, as if for support. "But I know what I saw."

"You were mistaken," Otali'klan said, as if it could be the only explanation. "The Great Link made sure that if he ever tried to regain any metamorphic ability, he would die."

Kira glared at him. Ground out again, "I know what I saw."

The Vetarlon was making strange gestures over Odo's inert body with her hands. She said serenely, "The prophecy will come true."

Kira's eyes narrowed. Curbing the impulse to push the other woman away, she snapped, "I don't give a damn about your prophecy. Find another Avakar."

Ishlar looked up. "He is the so'sharai. Baktu's fallen angel."

"I don't care what the hell you think he is. I'm warning you, leave him alone."

"Your part in this is done, Bajoran," Ishlar said, with something that definitely sounded like contempt. "How can you possibly understand the destiny that awaits the Avakar? Your people are primitive idol-worshippers who know nothing of the great mysteries of the universe. Petty, squabbling children who have yet to learn to look beyond your own wants."

Out of the corner of her eye, Kira was aware of Otali'klan stirring uncomfortably. To Ishlar, she said coldly, "I may be a primitive, but I understand you better than you think. Guess what, Ishlar? Odo's not a god or a fallen angel, he's a man. A man who was a changeling until he dared to defy the Great Link. A man who once had a life, a good life, a long, long way from here. A life he would never have left if he hadn't been so honourable. A life he would go back to tomorrow, if he hadn't been dragged into all this by your stupid prophecy."

"Surely, you cannot have the temerity to believe," Ishlar said, "that the Avakar has any remaining interest in you and your kind?"

"Enough," Otali'klan said abruptly before Kira could react. "Our purpose is to serve the Avakar, not bicker amongst ourselves."

For that curt interruption, if for nothing else, Kira admired him. She looked back at the tricorder again, studied the readings, then said in a perfectly controlled tone, "Otali'klan, fetch me the medical kit and a hypospray. I'm going to give him something to bring his temperature down."

"No." Ishlar said, stepping forward. "The prophecy -"

"You can take your prophecy and -"

"Silence!" Otali'klan thundered. "The Colonel is right. We will treat him."

Absently, Kira realised it was the first time she had heard him use her rank. Her former rank.

Ishlar spread her arms wide, "First Otali'klan, you have a duty -"

"My duty," the Jem'Hadar said flatly, "is to the Founder. And to his chosen mate. You will not interfere."

Silence. Kira said, "Get me that hypospray."

Still watching Ishlar, Otali'klan obeyed. He returned to Kira's side with the medical kit and hypospray, and remained there, as if to make sure that the Vetarlon did nothing to intervene. Ignoring the way her fingers shook slightly, Kira found the drug helpfully suggested by the tricorder and loaded the hypospray. She had already administered it when someone - or something - rapped heavily on the door.

"Enter," Otali'klan barked angrily.

The door slid open to reveal a Jem'Hadar soldier. If such a thing were possible for his species, he looked agitated and uncomfortable. Otali'klan said sharply, "Report, Fourth Botara."

"First," the Jem'Hadar said, "we have received a transmission from the Larazoid, Kovel. He has sent us a message from the space station."

"From DS Nine?" Kira said, surprised.

Otali'klan asked sharply, "Who was the message from?"

"A Starfleet officer. A Lieutenant Bashir," Botara said. "The message was for the Avakar, First. I have it here."

Before Otali'klan got a chance, Kira took the small communications rod from Botara's hand and marched across the room to the small terminal built into the bulkhead. Inserting the rod into the terminal, she punched in her own security code, guessing that Bashir would have naturally encoded it for her as well. She was right. A moment later, Bashir's voice spoke from the comm-link. His tone was taut and obviously apprehensive, emphasising the risk he had taken in recording and sending the message. Only the barest of greetings preceded a fast and carefully worded analysis of Odo's condition.

"...mutation," Bashir's disembodied voice said, pausing before beginning again, "The DNA chains appear to be -"

Kira didn't hear the rest, not over Ishlar's sudden, eerie wail. A wail that turned rapidly into a low, sibilant chant. Her hands her raised high above her head, as if lifted to a deity in supplication.

Somehow, Otali'klan was at Odo's side before Kira. Big, powerful hands grabbed shoulders that were twisting violently, tried to force stillness into the writhing form. Over Ishlar's chant, Bashir's voice continued, "...actually be worsening the symptoms. You must -"

"Hold him!" Kira shouted at Otali'klan, fumbling once again at the hypospray. "Keep him still!"

The muscle relaxant should have worked almost instantly. It didn't. It didn't work at all. Odo's body continued to thrash and contort, despite Otali'klan's efforts. His eyes were open, but they were staring glassily, the pupils massively dilated. Terrified by the violence of the fit, Kira rummaged through the medical kit, seeking something - anything - that might help.

Odo's body spasmed again, went abruptly rigid, then relaxed. His pupils remained dilated, his eyes staring blankly upwards.

Ishlar's chant reached a peak, drowning out Bashir's last few words, and above it, Otali'klan roared, "Quickly, Colonel!"

Through her panic, Kira already knew, with cold certainty, that Odo's heart was no longer beating.

-oOo-

"His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, 'This was a man!'"
- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

PART THREE
Destiny's Child

The Gul Revak was unnaturally quiet. When people spoke, they did so in hushed tones, with their heads held low. Even the Jem'Hadar moved like ghosts, barely making a sound. It was the silence of the dead, and the only place it didn't penetrate was the biggest and most habitable of the long-abandoned crew quarters. Behind a door guarded by a brace of Jem'Hadar, the silence was held at bay by the sound of a lone voice, cracked with emotion, but both strong and courageous. Behind the door, protected from stares and pity by Otali'klan, Kira Nerys performed the Bajoran Death Chant for her lover.

Elsewhere on the Gul Revak, away from the shock and the grief, the Vetarlon prayed to Baktu. Even further away, deep in the shadows of a rusting cargo hold, Lau Pakler said grimly, "It's over. He's as dead as it's possible to be."

"No," Pakler's companion said. "It's not over. It's barely started."

"Look," the Daskian said, in the sort of patient tone more usually reserved for children and slow-witted adults, "I understand how you feel. Everyone feels the same. Avakar or not, he just might have been able to cause enough trouble to make them vulnerable, but not any more."

"You don't understand the nature of prophecy," the other man said. "Nor do you have any comprehension of what has happened here."

"Maybe not," Pakler said. "Maybe I'm just another ignorant solid. But I know one thing, your child is dead. I saw his body myself. His woman is up there now, singing his deathsong."

"Pakler," the man said gently, "you underestimate me. You underestimate him."

"I would never underestimate a Founder," Pakler said grimly, "but I stopped believing in miracles the day my wife and children were slaughtered by the Jem'Hadar."

-oOo-

Without raising her head, Kira finally said, "It's done."

Otali'klan took a step forward. In a gruff, formal voice, he said, "Wherever you go, so goes my loyalty. I am the First and I pledge my life to you, from now until death."

Kira didn't dare look round at him. She said, "I accept your pledge, First Otali'klan."

"Your orders, Colonel?"

Cold as the Bajoran mountains, "Locate the nearest Dominion-controlled planet and set a course for it. We have a war to fight."

"By your command," Otali'klan said, and left the room smartly, as if he could no longer bear the sight of the unmoving form lying on the makeshift bier.

Kira stayed on her knees. She closed her eyes and silently sent her own prayers to the Prophets, hard on the heels of the Death Chant. The tears that threatened were viciously checked. She was terrified that if she started to cry again, she would never be able to stop. More than anything, Kira wanted the shock, the blessed numbness, to last forever.

Frightened that if she didn't speak, her fragile composure would begin to tear itself apart, Kira said to the empty air, "I loved you. There was a time when it would never have crossed my mind to think of you as anything but a friend, but you were such a good man... How could I not have fallen in love with you?"

Nothing in the room offered her an answer. Slowly, very slowly, Kira got to her feet. She didn't need to touch Odo's cheek to know that it was cold. He didn't look ethereal or exceptionally peaceful. He looked very pale, very gaunt and simultaneously devastatingly ordinary. Otali'klan had gently closed his eyes, hours before, ending his glassy, empty stare. Kira said quietly, "You told me once how much you loved to fly. I hope you're flying now, Odo. I hope all the pain is gone."

Several minutes later, she left the room. The Jem'Hadar waiting at the door followed her without a word.

-oOo-

"Wake up," a gentle voice said in the darkness.

In the empty place where no dreams survived, the words caused acute disorientation. Where there had been nothing, awareness began to dawn, isolated from that which remained corporeal. Synapses fired. Dislocated images flickered. Parts of memories spiralled hazily through the burgeoning landscape of thoughts, ideas and sensations.

"Wake up," the voice said again, and this time the words were more than simply sounds.

The frightened mind asked, "What am I?"

"All that you have ever been," the disembodied voice said, "and more."

-oOo-

At Kira's elbow, Pakler said, "I'm not afraid to die, but attacking Xehkoth with one antiquated gunship is madness, Kira Nerys."

Kira didn't twitch, didn't stir in the command chair, just kept staring at the oval viewscreen. She said, "I'm not intending this to be a suicide mission. We hit them hard and fast, and then we run."

"In this thing? Are you mad?"

Otali'klan said threateningly, "It is not your place to question the Colonel's decisions."

None of it, Kira decided abruptly, could be real. Not leaving DS Nine and resigning her commission, not flying into the Gamma Quadrant on a crusade against the Dominion. Not watching Odo die because she couldn't force his great, good heart to start beating again. Not hearing the voice of a Jem'Hadar reinforcing her authority. Soon, she would wake up alone in her quarters, with the computer's voice smugly reporting the time. Or perhaps not even that would be real. Perhaps she was still freezing to death in the mountains, and any moment Shakaar would shake her roughly and warn her not to fall asleep.

Pakler said tautly, "Kira, your revenge isn't worth the lives of everyone on this ship."

Otali'klan gestured to the nearest of his men. "Remove the Daskian from the flight deck."

It was all a dream. It had to be.

-oOo-

"What is humanoid death," the voice in Odo's mind asked quietly, "but merely a change of state? Reach out, child. Explore what you are."

Cold meat. Coagulated blood. Dead bone.

"There is more."

Chemicals. Minerals. Complex biological codes.

"Look deeper," the voice coaxed.

New enzymes. Enzymes in the structure of every individual cell. Metamorphic enzymes. Changeling? Human?

"Transform yourself," the voice ordered gently. "Reach out and claim your destiny. Rebuild the template."

Rebuild the template. That, at least, Odo understood. Beginning the process, cell by cell, he asked again, "What am I?"

"The first of your kind," the voice said enigmatically. It was the last thing it said. The presence in Odo's mind withdrew quietly, and disappeared, leaving no trace of its presence.

There was no-one to witness the moment when Odo's heart started to beat again. There was no-one in the room to see the shimmer of liquid gold that preceded the phenomenon, nor to notice when his chest started to rise and fall as he began to breathe.

-oOo-

"Pakler," a voice said from the shadows.

Irritated and irritable, the Daskian hurrying turned. He said bitterly, "She's going to kill us all. Was that part of your plan?"

The Founder almost smiled. "The attack won't happen. He won't allow it."

"'He'?" Pakler asked. Cynically, "Well, unless he's going to rise from the dead in the next six hours, I'd say he has a very limited ability to change her mind. Bajorans. They're all the same, stubborn, mystical -"

"Go and find the Vetarlon," the Founder instructed. "Take her to see the Avakar. She is the key. Her word will spread through every world in the Quadrant."

Pakler blinked his snake eyes, then drew a long breath. "Tell me."

"He will tell you. Go. Go now."

-oOo-

Otali'klan looked up from his station and said, "The Daskian is signalling for a comm-channel. He wishes to speak to you."

Wearily, Kira nodded. "All right, patch him through."

A moment later, Pakler's voice said, "Kira Nerys?"

He sounded, Kira thought, distinctly odd. Both subdued and frightened, but also somehow... elated? Frowning, she stabbed at the comm-link. "What do you want, Pakler?"

"I think you'd better get up here."

"Where are you?"

"Your quarters."

"What the -"

"Just get up here."

Kira glared. She cast a sharp look at Otali'klan. "Contact me if there's anything to report. I'm going to go and have a word with our reptilian friend."

"As you wish," Otali'klan said.

-oOo-

A big man from a species Kira couldn't identify grabbed at her arm as she marched through the Gul Revak's main corridor. His face, gnarled and pitted, bore a look she couldn't read, but there was a clear note of hope and disbelief in his voice as he demanded, "Is it true?"

Kira shook him off, asking impatiently, "Is what true?"

"The Avakar!" a second man cried.

A small, jostling knot of people had started to form. A woman in some kind of faded, threadbare uniform called out, "Is it true? Is the Avakar alive?"

That odd tone in Pakler's voice... Despite herself, despite all reason and logic, Kira started to run, her speed rapidly increasing and her heart starting to hammer in her chest. Was it possible that the Prophets had answered her prayers? Could it be...? Perhaps they had overlooked something - perhaps Odo had merely lapsed into a deep coma? She knew it wasn't true - knew there hadn't been a single sign of life, save for a few anomalous flickers of residual chemical energy.

She heard the Vetarlon's high, keening chant even before she reached the door.

Kira burst into the room not daring to hope what she might find. She saw Pakler, his green-tinted face very pale, his eyes too wide, and she saw the Vetarlon down on her knees, face lifted to the heavens. Odo's body still lay where Otali'klan had gently placed it.

Disappointment bit through her, threatening to break her. She turned on Pakler, all her anger concentrated into, "What the -"

"Look at him!" Pakler snapped back, sounding as if he was on the verge of hysteria. "Look at him, Kira Nerys!"

A hint of colour had returned to Odo's skin, but what made Kira's head spin was the irrefutable fact that his chest was rising and falling in a steady, unbroken rhythm. Wildly, Kira looked around for evidence of trickery - and found none.

Later, in an attempt to cover her acute embarrassment, she would strenuously deny it, but Kira's involuntary reaction wasn't one that merited commemoration in legend. The shock of everything that had happened hit her like a physical force, and she fainted without warning, keeling over with no kind of grace. Pakler was not fast enough to catch her.

-oOo-

"You are beyond all of us," the Founder said. His expression was placid, almost supernatural. "There is no name for what you have become."

Odo's attention was torn between Kira's unmoving figure on the bunk, and the tall, enigmatic creature that had previously only spoken to him in his dreams. Assuring himself that Kira was still peaceful, still sleeping through the sedative she had been given, he stood up - distantly surprised at how strong, how well he felt. No longer afraid, he said, "You defied the Great Link."

"Yes," the Founder agreed. "It was the only thing we could do for you."

"Genetic mutation," Odo said, wondering why the thought didn't disturb him. "You added your own modifications to the Great Link's design."

"We knew it would be dangerous, but we gambled that you could survive the transformation. You are still very young. It wasn't beyond hope that you would be able to adapt to the changes as they occurred. Unfortunately, we didn't foresee the intervention of humanoid healers."

"And," Odo asked him quietly, "if I had died before the mutation was anywhere near complete...?"

The Founder's expression didn't change. "Then there would have been no way back for you. It was a risk we were prepared to take to save you."

Odo wasn't sure whether he should be sarcastic or humbly grateful. He settled for, "You brought me back - you linked with me. If you hadn't...?"

"But I did."

"Was I dead?" Odo asked, feeling more than ever like a ingenuous child.

"You were in a different state."

Not yet composed enough to deal with such abstract concepts, Odo clung to the things he knew, the things he understood. "I'm not a changeling."

"No. You have solid form in your natural state. You will live longer than any other humanoid - but not as long as a changeling. You have already seen how you can repair cellular damage, but your abilities are finite." The Founder paused, then said gravely, "Do not make the mistake of believing you are invulnerable."

Odo raised his hand and concentrated hard, reaching into himself for a new, yet instinctive ability. The hand liquefied, became virtually indistinguishable from changeling substance. The Founder watched, expressionless.

"Why?" Odo asked finally.

"For you," the Founder said. "For the Great Link. For the solids."

"I am," Odo said, with sudden, perfect clarity, "the link."

"You are the link," the Founder agreed calmly. "Neither monoform nor changeling. The first of a new breed. Do you understand your destiny?"

Odo frowned, looked inside himself for the answer. "I think so."

"Then my task here is done." The Founder began to shift, solid form beginning to melt away.

"Wait," Odo said, but it was too late. The changeling was already liquid, was already pouring upwards through a grille in the curved ceiling. Whatever questions Odo still had would only be answered by time and experience.

-oOo-

"Tar'vath's prophecy," Odo said, watching Ishlar carefully. "You knew, didn't you?"

The Vetarlon's strange smile didn't waver. "The Avakar was prophesied to fall before the day of liberation. You knew that."

"Odd, however, that you somehow always neglected to mention Tar'vath's second prophecy about the Avakar to me."

"Avakar," she said, "do we fulfil prophecy, or does prophecy fulfil itself?"

"I'm not in the mood for philosophical debate," Odo told her curtly. "We will take you to Quvaar, as you have requested, but after that, it's up to you. I am not going to live my life pretending to be some legendary, prophetic figure. There were no gods waiting in the darkness, Ishlar. You would do well to remember that."

"Would you recognise the face of a god, Avakar?"

"And don't," he said sharply, "call me that. My people knew the prophecy of the Avakar, and they designed everything to fit Tar'vath's texts. That's all. There is no divine force at work here. Just the scientific knowledge of a race that excels in genetic engineering."

Ishlar's smile returned. "Believe whatever you wish to believe."

Realising the futility of arguing with her, Odo turned his head to say, "Otali'klan, change course. Take us to Quvaar by the quickest course avoiding Jem'Hadar patrol routes."

"Yes, Avakar," Otali'klan said, still sounding as if he would never recover from the sense of awe that had plainly engulfed him

"And don't call me that."

-oOo-

Kira sneezed, cursed the ever-present dust of years of neglect that seemed to be everywhere on the Gul Revak, then pushed away her empty plate, leaned heavily on her elbows and said, "Promise me that I'll never have to go through anything like that again."

"I can promise you that there won't be any more unexpected resurrections," Odo said, carefully avoiding the assurance she wanted. On the other side of the table, he unconsciously emulated her posture, leaning forwards a little. "I think we should take you home. There isn't going to be any rebellion, any war with the Dominion. The road ahead has changed."

"I'm not," she said predictably, "leaving you."

"You know where I'm going."

"I don't care where you're going. I'm still not leaving you." She was silent for a moment, then said, "You were my best friend, Odo. Do you remember that day on the Promenade? The day you kissed me for the first time?"

With no irony, Odo said, "It's indelibly etched on my memory."

"Do you know what I was thinking then?"

Not at all sure he wanted to know the answer, Odo shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

Kira ignored him. "I was thinking 'why not?' That's all. 'Why not?' You were a good man, a kind and decent man, and I knew you'd loved me for a long, long time. Something in me said I should give it a try. I didn't have any expectations, Odo. I didn't know where it would lead, or what I would end up feeling. I just let it happen with no idea of what I really wanted."

"I think," Odo said quietly, "I always knew that."

"You did," Kira confirmed. "I could see it in the way you looked at me. You were a good lover and a good companion. I liked going off duty with the knowledge that there was someone to go home to. I liked being part of a couple. I knew you so well that you were very easy to love. Then one day, I looked at you, and I realised that somewhere along the line things had changed - I didn't just love you, I was in love with you. That was the day I knew I would never walk away from you. And I won't. So don't even bother trying to talk me into going back to Bajor to wait patiently for you to come back."

Odo looked at her for a moment, taking time to admire the stubborn set of her mouth, the defiant elevation of her chin. He had never met a more difficult or obstinate woman. Never met another woman with so much determination, so much fire. Quite deliberately, he sighed. "I just couldn't be lucky enough to love a woman who was willing to do what she was asked without a fight."

Kira's mouth twitched. "That sort of woman isn't your type, Odo."

"Oh, I don't know," Odo said, but he didn't mean it. There had been one or two women who had caught his attention for a fleeting moment, but he knew with absolute certainty that his type was... Kira. He wondered whether age would mellow her. It seemed doubtful. Deliberately changing the subject, he said solicitously, "How do you feel now?"

"Sick to the stomach from the sedative, but otherwise remarkably good - considering the last twenty-six hours." A searching look. "What about you?"

Odo thought about it. Dryly, "Remarkably good - considering the last twenty-six hours."

"Walking with the Prophets would do that to a person."

"I didn't walk with..." Odo said, then sighed. "Bajorans. Never mind."

-oOo-

Given that Quvaar was not in the Neutral Zone, nor in the narrow band of planets hanging onto a tenuous sort of independence, but was firmly in Dominion space, it wasn't a great surprise to anyone on the Gul Revak that their swift retreat was spotted by a prowling trio of Jem'Hadar ships. It wasn't a surprise, but it was hardly a welcome development. On the flight deck, tension mounted as it became patently obvious that the old Cardassian gunship had little chance of out-running or of out-manoeuvring the looming Jem'Hadar.

Odo could fly a runabout, but he was neither a combat pilot nor a natural tactician. More than happy to leave command of the ship to Kira and Otali'klan, he settled for watching the closing vessels in tense silence while practising the distinctly humanoid vice of grinding his teeth. The flight crew, mainly Jem'Hadar, but including Pakler and one or two others, kept casting him sideways glances, as if waiting for him to perform some kind of miracle. Evidently they thought a creature that could rise from the dead should have no trouble willing the Gul Revak to safety. Odo didn't find their faith in him touching. Rather, it was a burden he was becoming increasingly unhappy to bear.

"Coming round to six-eight-three mark four," Otali'klan announced.

Kira's fingers were drumming quickly on the arms of the command chair. She said, "How's the auxiliary shield generator looking?"

"Still non-operational," Fourth Botara reported.

"Then give up on it. Channel the power into the weapons array."

"Is that a good idea?" Odo asked her.

"Can't do any harm." She glanced at him. "If we lose main shields, we're done for anyway. Might as well go down fighting."

Odo had never understood the strange bravado of those more used to combat operations than himself. Security hadn't require the same kind of blind, audacious courage, and he had never felt at home in the midst of battle. Bar fights were one thing - starship dog-fights were quite another.

"Still no response to our hails," Pakler said.

"Probably been told not to talk to strangers," Kira told him grimly. "Otali'klan, target the lead ship - let's see if they're so determined with a bloody nose."

Kira, Odo decided, had probably been the kind of child that would have poked a sleeping razor cat with a short stick, just to see what it would do. Warningly, he reminded her, "We're not supposed to be fighting them."

"I'm not fighting them," Kira said, sounding faintly surprised, "I'm just making a bold retreat."

"Oh, well, as long as that's what it is..." Odo said sardonically, and wished he hadn't when she scowled at him. He subsided into nervous silence and wished fervently that everyone else in the galaxy was as determinedly non-combative as he himself was. He wasn't remotely cheered by the sight of the lead Jem'Hadar ship being momentarily rocked by a hefty explosion.

"Second ship is breaking formation," Botara said, "coming round on three-two-nine mark one."

"Target their engines," Kira instructed, "let's slow them down."

"Targeting," Otali'klan said, "preparing to fire."

The Jem'Hadar fired first. The Gul Revak lurched drunkenly, but didn't immediately disintegrate as Odo had half-feared. Several strident alarms started to sound all at once, which did not appear to be a good omen. Kira held her position grimly. "Damage report."

"Port shields are down to thirty percent. Weapons are off-line," Botara said, as calmly as if he had been telling them that there was a minor ion storm ahead.

At that moment, Odo reflected, he would definitely have welcomed the ability to perform a miracle.

-oOo-

"Break off the pursuit," the Founder ordered.

Yellis looked round in surprise. "Founder...?"

"Let them go. Pursuing a handful of renegades in a dilapidated relic like that is a waste of resources. Tell the other ships to fall back to Quvaar and make repairs there."

The Vorta looked bewildered, but he evidently wasn't stupid enough to argue with one of his gods. With a certain grim satisfaction, the Founder watched him turn away again. None of the Jem'Hadar even twitched at the exchange. They knew where their loyalties lay.

That's all I can do for you, child, the Founder thought. She hoped that it was enough.

"Course for Quvaar laid in," the Jem'Hadar at the helm reported.

-oOo-

"They let us go," Pakler said, sounding thoroughly dazed. "They could have destroyed us, but they let us go..."

The Gul Revak's flight deck was in chaos. The old-fashioned fire suppression systems had failed to work properly, and flames were still blazing furiously in several places, causing a thick pall of acrid black smoke to hang in the stale air. At least one of Otali'klan's men had fulfilled his vow to remain loyal to his death, and another looked as if he was well on his way to joining his comrade in whatever afterlife awaited the Dominion's genetically engineered warriors. Otali'klan himself seemed to be valiantly attempting to control the ailing Gul Revak on his own while two more of his men did what they could to fight the fires that tried to turn the flight deck into someone's vision of hell.

Kira, as far as Odo could tell, was unconscious but not mortally injured, and for that fact alone he blessed whoever had decided to spare the Gul Revak. He rounded on Pakler with, "Find me someone with medical training, and quickly."

"I think one of the Cascans -"

"Go," Odo snapped at him, and peered through the smoke until he located another face. "Tokata'lan!"

Otali'klan's Second loomed through the fumes and the smog. "Avakar?"

"See if you can find a medical kit. The Cardassians often store one beneath the weapons locker on the flight deck of combat vessels."

"Avakar," the Second said, and disappeared again.

"Otali'klan," Odo shouted in the general direction of the helm. "Status."

A moment, then the reply, "Shields and weapons are useless. Communications are off-line, but somehow we still have warp drive."

"Then get us out of Dominion space and into the Neutral Zone as fast as you can. Tokata'lan, where's that medical kit? Hurry, man!"

Odo might not have been a combat soldier, but he had been a senior officer on a deep space outpost for a long, long time. An officer with his own staff to command. He knew how to give orders, and he knew how to give them quickly and efficiently. He turned his attention to Kira, still lying where she had fallen. Burns, he noticed, and an obvious head wound, probably from the impact that had thrown her off her feet. Finding it difficult to locate a pulse in her wrist, he tried her neck. It was one way of satisfying himself that she wasn't in any immediate danger. Tokata'lan appeared, grunting, "Medical kit."

-oOo-

The Cascan, Ekin, looked as if he would have preferred to be anywhere in the universe but in the Avakar's quarters with the responsibility of caring for the Avakar's mate. He looked as if he would rather have been happily breaking rocks in a Jem'Hadar prison camp, or as if he would rather have been sawing his own leg off at the knee. With a very blunt saw.

Pakler couldn't find it in his cold-blooded reptilian heart to blame the man. Trying to sound reassuring, he said, "The Avakar will remember this, trust me."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Ekin muttered. "Are you sure there aren't any instructions with this damned equipment?"

"I think there are instructions on this," Pakler said, holding out a Starfleet dataPADD, "but unless you can read whatever Alpha Quadrant language they're written in, I think you're on your own."

"Translation technology," Ekin said bitterly. "I always told my father that's where the money was, but did he listen? No. Hold this."

"I think it's Bajoran," Pakler said doubtfully, one eye on the dataPADD, one eye on the instrument pressed into his hand. "Lots of squiggles, anyway. Is she still breathing?"

"Don't make jokes," Ekin said, but he checked anyway. He asked warily, "Is the Avakar as blunt as they say he is?"

Pakler showed his teeth. "No. He's far, far worse. Just fix her up, Ekin."

"I'm doing the -" a break, a breath, "Wait. Oh, no."

"What?"

"I don't like the look of this... I think I'm reading internal bleeding. Hell, I don't know what I'm reading. Take a look."

Pakler looked. He shook his head. "I'll fetch the Avakar."

-oOo-

Later, when the Gul Revak was safely in the Neutral Zone, Odo summoned Otali'klan to what was laughably described as the ship's infirmary. Expression grim, he said without preamble, "We don't have the means or the knowledge to treat her here. New Bajor would be ideal, but it's further away than the wormhole."

Otali'klan was a lot of things, but he wasn't stupid. He said, "You want to return to Deep Space Nine?"

"There would be advantages."

"And disadvantages. The peace treaty."

"The peace treaty," Odo agreed. "There is no doubt about what will happen if we dock at the station. Kira will get the treatment she needs. You will be detained by Station Security pending a decision about jurisdiction. And I..."

"You," Otali'klan said impassively, "will be handed over to the Dominion for trial."

Odo stared down at Kira's immobile body. She looked incredibly peaceful. He said softly, "It's a shorter road than I expected."

"They will kill you," Otali'klan said. "This time, they will kill you."

"Perhaps, perhaps not. It was what I had resolved to do. Only the route is different. Judgement, Otali'klan. Mine and theirs."

"You think you can judge heaven?"

"I think," Odo said quietly, "that heaven will judge itself when it sees what I have become."

-oOo-

The fog dissipated gently. It was not an unpleasant sensation. Kira let it happen without a fight until memories of the Jem'Hadar began to filter into her mind. Then she fought bitterly for awareness. Someone, she realised, was leaning over her. Was she captured? The hazy outline began to become clearer. Features that managed to be both blunt and sharp appeared. The blue eyes couldn't have belonged to anyone else. Thickly, she said, "Odo."

"Don't try to move," he said quietly. "You were hurt in the skirmish. You'll be fine, but we need to get you to a proper medical facility."

Rather inanely, she asked, "We survived?"

"Rather to everyone's surprise. There were casualties, and I think the Gul Revak has fought its last battle, but we survived."

"Where...?"

He took her hand, squeezed it gently, obviously trying to be reassuring. "In the Neutral Zone. Relax, Nerys. Everything will be fine very soon."

She tried to move, then muttered, "Hurts, Odo."

"I know. I'm sorry."

Gritting her teeth against the pain, she asked, "Did we ride into the sun yet, Ilium?"

He looked perplexed, then seemed to understand. "The Vorch'iad? I didn't realise you were so well-read."

Kira knew he was gently needling her, but she didn't resent it. Every child on Bajor read the Vorch'iad as soon as they could steal it away from under adult eyes. The unexpurgated version was doubtless responsible for much innocent - and not so innocent - adolescent experimentation. Most Bajorans chose to maintain the polite fiction that the Vorch'iad was a great work of literature, and was therefore exempt from their planet's strict morality laws. It was vaguely amusing to picture Odo reading Jocar Ens' epic work of Prophets, Pah Wraiths and damsels in distress. Closing her eyes, Kira said, "Ilium died."

Odo's voice sounded as if it was a long, long way away. It held a note of distant, dry amusement. "Of course he did. Every mythical Bajoran hero there ever was died. As bloodily as possible."

"Where are we going?" she asked him drowsily.

"Somewhere safe," Odo said. If he said anything more, Kira didn't hear it.

-oOo-

Like a rat out of a hole, Quark shot out of his bar and onto the Promenade where the rumours were flying even faster. Catching sight of Tarab Ray, Quark went in determined pursuit. He wasn't fond of Tarab, who lacked both Odo's strange, malicious sense of humour and his ability to know when it was not just appropriate, but advisable, to look the other way - but Tarab represented authority, and was therefore in a position to tell Quark exactly what was happening. Perhaps.

"Not now, Quark," the Bajoran snapped when Quark caught up with him, "Get back to your bar. Poln, Torlai, you're with me!"

Too much shouting, not enough action, that, as far as Quark was concerned, was Tarab Ray. Very good at glaring at small children who dared to loiter too long on the Promenade, not so good at sorting out half-a-dozen inebriated Klingons who decided to settle their differences amid Quark's precious bar furniture. Sullenly, Quark left him to it. He was halfway back to the bar when he met Ezri Dax heading the other way at considerable speed. Quark stepped neatly into her path. He grabbed her arm. "Dax. For Profit's sake, what's going on?"

Ezri looked distinctly harried, but she spared enough time to say, "It's the Gul Revak - Kira's ship. They're requesting permission to dock. Apparently, they have a medical emergency aboard."

Quark felt his heart sink. He didn't bother to wonder why. The best of enemies could be the best of friends. "Odo."

"No," Ezri told him, as she started away. "Not Odo - Kira."

-oOo-

"Let me transport across," Bashir said impatiently. "They don't have to dock. Commander, you don't understand -"

"I understand perfectly, Doctor," Commander John Atkin said curtly. "The captain of that ship is a fugitive wanted by the Dominion. I don't care what else he might once have been. Now, he is a fugitive, and our duty is to obey the terms of the peace treaty and apprehend him."

"Listen to me; if we hand Odo over to the Dominion, we'll be -"

"Enough, Doctor," Atkin said. He gestured at Tarab. "Get your men in place, Chief. Make sure all weapons are set to heavy stun."

Julian Bashir was not used to feeling helpless, but at that moment he felt as if the entire might of Starfleet - of the whole Alpha Quadrant - was bearing down on him, preventing him from doing anything to stop the great injustice that was about to be committed.

"Docking clamps secure," a young Ensign reported.

Bashir stared at the old Cardassian airlock, willing the great cogwheel not to turn, not to roll back. It was useless. The door rolled open on its ageing servos, revealing a solid phalanx of unarmed Jem'Hadar. Bashir recognised Otali'klan immediately. The big First said, "We request political asylum in the Alpha Quadrant."

Well rehearsed and very clever, Bashir thought. Definitely very clever. Such a move guaranteed months of red tape while the Federation decided what to do. Otali'klan and his men wouldn't be going anywhere for a long time. Atkin blinked, as if the words were the last thing he had expected. He cleared his throat. "Your request is duly noted. Step aside."

Silently, the Jem'Hadar did so, forming two ranks. Bashir fancied they were creating some kind of honour guard. Perhaps they were. Beyond the Jem'Hadar stood a forlorn looking bunch of mismatched species, most of whom looked exhausted, hungry and in urgent need of fresh clothing and extended ablutions. It took Bashir a moment to realise that they were tightly clustered around the tall figure in their midst. A figure carrying a very precious burden indeed. As one, the pack moved forward. It was quite obvious to Bashir that they were determinedly attempting to protect their leader from whatever threat they thought Starfleet posed.

"Commander?" Tarab Ray asked uneasily, looking at the advancing throng.

"Wait," Atkin instructed.

The crowd thinned, parted to allow Odo forward. He didn't look at Bashir, didn't look anywhere except at Atkin. When he spoke, he sounded impossibly tired. "Kira Nerys is a Bajoran national not wanted for any crime in the Gamma Quadrant. You are required to provide medical treatment."

Atkin's eyes narrowed. "I'm quite familiar with the regulations governing Bajoran citizens. Doctor Bashir."

Bashir pushed forward, already asking, "Odo, what happened?"

"There was an explosion," Odo said bluntly. "Kira was thrown into a bulkhead. We thought her injuries were superficial, but we were wrong."

"Straight to theatre," Bashir ordered, gesturing to the medics waiting with a stretcher. As they lifted Kira from Odo's arms, he took his only chance and added quickly, "What about you, Odo?"

"I'm well, Doctor. Kira will tell you everything you want to know."

"Tarab," Atkin said tersely, clearly wanting to regain control of the situation.

Tarab Ray's moment had come. He said portentously, "Odo Ital, under the terms of the peace treaty with the Dominion, it is my duty to arrest you for -"

Bashir turned away, not wanting to witness the scene. He followed the stretcher, not once looking back.

-oOo-

Kira's injuries were not as severe as Bashir had feared. Probably, to the frightened, inexpert crew of the Gul Revak, struggling without proper medical facilities, they had seemed much worse. She had, however, lost a great deal more blood than Bashir could easily account for, and he duly set about running a comprehensive series of medical scans. The results sent him out into the relative privacy of the empty main consulting room where he tapped his commbadge to summon Ezri. She must have been closer at hand than he had anticipated, because she joined him in a very few minutes. Before he could say a word, she said, "They've put him in a holding cell. Can you believe it? Kira's in here, and they've put him in a holding cell!"

"That," Bashir said soberly, "is not the worst of it."

Ezri's expression changed dramatically. "Kira? She's not...?"

"No," he said hastily, "no, she'll be fine. But..."

"But? Julian?"

"Most of her injuries were minor - a few burns, the odd fracture. But..." Bashir hesitated, already feeling the weight of his words, "But according to my readings, she's pregnant."

"Pregnant?" Ezri said, her voice holding both shock and alarm. She sounded incredulous, "Julian, are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Four, maybe five weeks," Bashir said wearily. "It was a partial placental separation causing the extra blood loss. She's been very, very lucky. If it had happened any later in the trimester, she would have lost the baby long before they could get her here."

"Pregnant," Ezri said again. "Is that even possible?"

"Oh, yes. The Founders made Odo entirely human - and humans and Bajorans are perfectly compatible, reproductively speaking. And there are drugs that can help -"

Ezri interrupted him. "Julian - do you think she actually knows?"

Bashir had already considered the question, and he said grimly, "Given the circumstances, it's possible - even likely - that she doesn't. Odo certainly wouldn't have been as compliant if he had known, and Kira wouldn't have kept something like this from him."

Ezri's reaction was savage. "And Atkin is handing him over to the Dominion. How much higher is the cost going to be, Julian? How much more are they supposed to endure?"

"I think we'll know that all too soon," Bashir said. He shook his head. "So what am I supposed to do now? Tell Kira? Keep it from her until Odo's been dragged away in chains? What are the correct ethics for this kind of situation?"

"You have to tell them," Ezri said promptly. "They need to know - both of them need to know."

-oOo-

"The prodigal son," Caben said sounding deeply satisfied. "At last. You have no idea how much I have looked forward to meeting you, Odo. I'm just sorry that the circumstances couldn't have been happier."

From the other side of the gently humming forcefield, Odo watched the Vorta. Too wily to be drawn by the mocking tone, he stayed silent and simply observed. Caben laughed softly, though what he found amusing remained a mystery. He said, "I was so interested in you, I spent a lot of time researching your antecedents. You've come a long, long way from laboratory animal and performing freak, haven't you, Odo? I have to admire you - it takes a special sort of courage to do the things you've done. But it's over now. I'm taking you home, and I doubt the Founders will show so much mercy this time."

"You presume too much," Odo said. "Who are you to say what the Founders will or will not do? Do you think your masters would be pleased to know that you had so little respect for one of their children?"

"And are you their child, Odo?" Caben asked him, raising his eyebrows.

With only a few very exceptions, Odo detested the Vorta. Unlike the Jem'Hadar, they were obsequious and devious, equally as capable of the most loathsome fawning as of driving a knife between the shoulderblades of an enemy. That they were also political animals didn't improve the way he felt about them. Caben seemed very typical of his kind.

Ignoring the question, he asked coldly, "Why am I still here?"

"There are matters of... protocol," Caben said with an insincere smile. "It seems that you're still a Bajoran citizen. The First Minister is formally protesting your extradition. It is, however, a mere technicality. Don't worry, Odo, I can afford to wait just a little while longer."

Odo was genuinely surprised to learn of Shakaar's involvement. Was it just possible that he had misjudged the man? If he had, he didn't feel like admitting it, even to himself. Deeply cynical as he was, it occurred to Odo that Shakaar had something to gain by being seen to do what he could to save him from the Dominion. Kira's gratitude.

He turned his back on Caben, making it quite clear that the interview was at an end. It took the Vorta several minutes to leave.

-oOo-

"All prisoners," Bashir snapped at Tarab Ray, "are entitled to a medical examination."

"I know that, Doctor," Tarab said patiently, "but I've had my orders. Dominion personnel only to see the prisoner."

In the corner of the office, Rychar Jye listened to the exchange as she downloaded her daily report to the main computer. Posted to DS Nine from a quiet rural jurisdiction on Bajor long before the Dominion occupation of the station, Rychar had no love of the Vorta, the Jem'Hadar, or anything else that represented the Gamma Quadrant's predominant regime. Nor, after two years of frustration obeying his petty orders, did she have any love of Tarab Ray. True, he was Bajoran to his fingertips, went to services twice a day and had a brother who was training to become a Vedek, but he was not, in Rychar's opinion, a good commander.

Odo, of course, had been abrasive and often far too brusque with his long-suffering deputies, but his unswerving loyalty to them had been inspiring. In his own way - often a very gruff and plain-spoken way - Odo had been a very good commander. He hadn't suffered fools gladly, and he hadn't had any interest in all the thousand-and-one regulations that Tarab religiously adhered to, but Security had functioned at peak efficiency round the clock, and none of his deputies would ever have questioned his orders. Odo had been sharper than Tarab, tougher, harder to understand and almost impossible to get to know socially, but he had been, without question, a far, far better Chief of Security.

"Doctors," Tarab said in a dismissive tone when the office doors closed behind Bashir. "Always worrying about every little thing."

Rychar said nothing, just kept on working.

Tarab stood up. "Right. I'm going off-duty. You all right until Poln gets here?"

"Fine," Rychar told him.

Tarab nodded, leaned over to shut down his terminal, then walked out with a final nod. Rychar's pulse quickened.

She waited five minutes. Stretched it to ten. When she couldn't bear to wait any longer, she went through the internal door that led to the holding cells. Behind the imprisoning forcefield, Odo prowled like some exotic zoological specimen. Which, Rychar realised with a tiny shock of guilt, was probably far from a new experience for him. Tentatively, she said, "Constable?"

He stopped, looked round at her. There was no hesitation, no struggle to remember her name. "Deputy Rychar."

"Doctor Bashir was here, sir," Rychar told him, "but he wasn't allowed in to see you. Is there... anything I can do for you?"

Odo seemed to consider the question solemnly. He said, "As a Bajoran officer, I can't encourage you to disobey orders."

"My orders," Rychar said, "are that only Security and Dominion personnel are allowed in here."

He could read between the lines. Of course he could. "It would be gratifying to know how something of Colonel Kira's condition."

Rychar felt for him. A long time ago, hadn't she, herself, been on the Promenade to witness the truly unbelievable sight of the Constable seizing hold of the Colonel - Major as she had been then - and kissing her with the pent-up passion of half a lifetime? Knowing him too well to do anything else, Rychar opted for formality, "I'll see if I can obtain that information for you, sir."

He straightened imperceptibly, squaring lithe shoulders against the injustices of the galaxy. "Rychar."

"Sir?"

"Never trust a Ferengi to have any regard for orders."

Rychar understood. "Sir."

-oOo-

Thoughtfully, Quark watched Deputy Rychar's departing back. She was, so she said, going to the Infirmary to speak to Bashir, where she fully intended to stay for fifteen minutes. In twenty minutes, Deputy Poln would arrive in Security to take over the night-shift. Until then, she had said flatly, she would have to trust him not to make any attempt to see the prisoner.

Quark had known Rychar for years. A pleasant, if rather plain young woman who took her duties very seriously. Odo had thought highly enough of her to recommend a promotion - a promotion she had declined to stay on DS Nine. Doubtless she had come to bitterly regret that choice in the last couple of years. Signalling to Broik to take over at the bar, Quark made his way out onto the Promenade. Given the hour, it was no longer busy, but he had to wait for a pair of Starfleet engineers to amble slowly by before he could slip across the thoroughfare and into the Security office.

He knew the office very well. Had spent a lot of time there for one reason or another. Quark headed straight for the internal door on his left; was pleased when it slid obediently open. Very remiss of Rychar not to have activated the encoded security lock. A tingle of something ran up and down Quark's knobbly spine. Not quite apprehension, not quite anticipation. Odo was in the central cell, weaving back and forth like a caged tundra cat. Back and forth, back and forth. Nervous energy.

Quark was a master of the game. In a deliberately aggravating tone, he said, "Well, well. I never thought I'd see the day."

Two years since that mocking farewell. Two years since Quark had lost his dearest adversary. Two years in which Odo had become... what? The hero of a failed revolution? The anticipated saviour of the Gamma Quadrant? It was hard to tell, hard to know which stories and rumours to give any credence to. According to Bashir, Odo wasn't even a changeling any more. The man in the holding cell didn't look like a towering champion of truth and right. He looked spare and haggard, almost frail, as if time and trouble had battered him relentlessly ever since he had first left the Alpha Quadrant. Despite himself, Quark felt a pang of something very close to pity.

"Quark," Odo said. It was almost a surprise that his voice was the same, deep and rough-edged, holding sarcasm and dignity in equal measure.

Quark shook his head. "I could have told you it would end like this."

Blue eyes glinted eerily in the gloom. "You have no idea of how it will end."

Again, Quark felt a prickle run down his spine. Innate Ferengi wariness told him that he was looking at a creature that was somehow a side-step away from everything that could possibly be considered normal. He wondered, for a fleeting second, whether too many hard, bitter experiences had finally taken their toll on the agile mind behind the blue eyes. Then he shook himself, knowing instinctively that Odo remained as sane and rational as he had ever been. Which wasn't to say that Odo had ever been the most stable character Quark had ever known, psychologically speaking.

"So what happens now?" Quark asked, dropping the needling tone.

"Enlightenment," Odo said enigmatically. He stepped towards the forcefield, stopped just before it could bite him. "Time to pay your debts, Quark."

There was no point in prevarication. Quark said simply, "What do you want?"

"The Jem'Hadar First. Otali'klan. I want him free to walk the station."

"Difficult."

"But not impossible."

"And what does Otali'klan do with his freedom?"

"His duty," Odo said.

-oOo-

"I think I half-suspected it," Kira said dully. Bashir noted that she didn't bother to look at the image on the diagnostic monitor.

Ezri didn't relax her grip of Kira's hand. "But you didn't say anything to Odo?"

"Why would I have done? I didn't even consciously acknowledge the possibility myself."

All things considered, Bashir reflected, she was taking the news rather better than he had feared she would. The again, Kira was hardly the sort of woman to become hysterical over such a thing. However unexpected. He tried a bright, "The good news is, I can't find any further problems. I've repaired the damage to the placenta, and the embryo's readings are stable."

Kira didn't react. It was almost as if she was hearing the words, but that they were utterly meaningless. Shock, Bashir decided. He didn't want to give her any more drugs, so he looked towards Ezri for support. The Trill said, "Your quarters are still available. I think you'd be better resting there than in here, right, Julian?"

"Absolutely. Far more therapeutic."

Kira looked at them both with an odd, closed expression. "That's what I'm supposed to do, is it? Go to my quarters and rest?"

Bashir recognised the dangerous undertone. "Nerys, I know the situation is far from ideal, but really, the best thing you can do right now is get some rest. Odo's not going anywhere, not yet. It would be better if we discussed things in the morning."

"And what," she asked him, "would you like to discuss, Julian? That I'm pregnant? That the father of my child has become some kind of genetically engineered human-changeling hybrid? Or that he's about to be taken back to the Gamma Quadrant to be punished for defying the Dominion? Or something else altogether? What shall we talk about in the morning, when everything's going to look so much better?"

Thoroughly chagrined, Bashir could find no answer.

-oOo-

The trouble had probably been brewing since the Gul Revak had docked, but it finally erupted when the Promenade was at its busiest, when no-one could possibly have underestimated the importance of what happened. The unrest started with a group of traders from the Gamma Quadrant, traders who had heard all the initial stories about the Avakar, and spread like wildfire through disgruntled Bajorans who still viewed Kira and Odo as their own kind. When it reached the newly arrived crew of a freighter from the Neutral Zone, a crew that had heard the wild rumours being disseminated from Quvaar, it exploded.

An angry crowd, probably largely comprised of people who simply liked to protest on principle, but certainly underpinned by genuine supporters of the Avakar, began to form outside the Security office, prompting Tarab Ray to contact Commander Atkin and every available security officer on the station. By the time Atkin himself reached the Promenade, there was a great deal of shouting and jostling going on, and a great number of the Bajoran deputies summoned to the scene were looking distinctly uncomfortable.

Pushing his way through to Tarab, Atkin demanded, "Why haven't you cleared these people away?"

"Because," Tarab said tersely, "they won't move. My deputies won't use violence against fellow Bajorans."

Out of the corner of his eye, Atkin spotted a slim, attractive and very familiar figure. His former commanding officer. He looked round at her, daring to imagine she might proffer some assistance. There was an odd smile on Kira's face. She said, "Go ahead, Commander. Tell these people that you only did your duty when you contacted the Dominion."

A chant had started beyond the random shouts and jeers. A steady chant for the Avakar. It began to rise in pitch and intensity.

Atkin licked his lips. Looked at Tarab for support and found none. The crowd was swelling even further as more and more people joined the throng, either to protest, or because they were simply curious.

"Tell them," Kira gibed, "Tell them what's going to happen to their Avakar."

"Tell your men to set their weapons to stun," Atkin said to Tarab, "and get ready to fire on my command."

Tarab shook his head slowly. "Bajorans don't fire on Bajorans."

"Tell them the truth," Kira said, "or are you afraid? Are you frightened that they might lynch you, Commander?"

"I am not going to be intimidated by a rabble," Atkin said, but he didn't sound entirely convinced. He gestured to a Starfleet security officer standing apprehensively nearby, "Reid, fire a warning shot over their heads."

"If you do," Kira told the startled man loudly and clearly, "you'll be confirming to everyone that Starfleet has sided with the Dominion."

-oOo-

Odo could hear the crowd. He could hear the chanting. As a security officer, he knew how easily a demonstration could turn into a riot. He looked through the forcefield, across the room to Deputy Poln, who was already twitching nervously. He didn't know the young man well, but he had commanded him in the last six months of the Dominion War. He said, "Drop the forcefield, Deputy."

Poln looked hunted, desperate to be somewhere else. "I can't do that, Constable."

"You can hear them," Odo said. "You know what's going to happen out there unless someone stops it. Drop the forcefield."

"Sir..."

With some force, Odo rapped at him, "When you joined my detachment, what did they tell you about me, Poln? That I was a tyrant? An impossible man to please? What else did they tell you? That I would break any young officer who crossed me? That I was a freak? An abomination? A disgrace to my uniform?"

Poln seemed on the verge of flight, but he stuttered, "N... n... no, sir."

"No," Odo said. He raised his chin a fraction. "They told you that I was a hard man, a difficult man, but an honourable man. I have no intention of running away. Now, if you want to prevent a tragedy, drop the forcefield."

-oOo-

Just as Reid was about to fire, the Security office doors parted smoothly. To Bashir, standing nervously on the upper floor, watching the seething crowd, praying that his services would not be needed, it was a moment that he knew he would never forget. It had that stark, simple clarity that burned into memory. The doors opened, Odo stepped out, and the crowd went instantly silent. Eerie. It was like staring into the heart of destiny. Chilling. Awe-inspiring.

Whatever Odo said to Atkin caused the Commander to nod curtly and wave back the tense Starfleet security men who had closed round their leader's position. Someone in the crowd started to shout, and the cry was taken up quickly, vehemently. The crowd bayed their support for the Avakar blindly, passionately. Cold chills ran down Bashir's spine as he began to understand, for the very first time, the elemental power of prophecy.

-oOo-

"I will not go back in chains as your prisoner," Odo said quietly to Caben, and there wasn't a person in the room who would have argued the point with him. "I will go back just as I did before - as an explorer voluntarily returning to impart information."

"There are charges to be answered," Caben bleated, and went abruptly silent at Kira's contemptuous glare.

"You," Odo said, "do not have the power or the right to judge me, Caben. Only the Great Link has that privilege. Only my own progenitors, and their progenitors. There will be no extradition, no ignominious incarceration. You will escort me to my people, and that is all you will do."

Bashir fidgeted, wishing that he - or Kira - could have had just a few minutes alone with Odo before he had been escorted up to the wardroom to meet with Caben. Or perhaps nothing either of them could have said would have altered Odo's resolve.

Atkin said, "This is no longer a Starfleet matter. We have done what is required by the terms of the peace treaty."

Caben shot him a look that clearly spoke of betrayal. He tried, "I could order the Jem'Hadar to confine you."

Odo's gaze remained steady. Without looking round, he said, "First Remali'klan."

The Jem'Hadar straightened even further, if such a thing were possible. "Founder?"

"Take this," Odo said, gesturing towards the Vorta, "back to your ship. I don't want to see him anywhere on this station again."

"Founder," the Jem'Hadar said, a touch of grim satisfaction in his voice. He moved towards Caben.

"We will be returning to the Gamma Quadrant within the next fifty-two hours. See that all the necessary arrangements are made."

"Yes, Founder," Remali'klan said, and began to prod Caben from the room with unnecessary force.

No-one said anything for a long time. Finally, Atkin said, "There remains the matter of the Gul Revak's crew..."

Odo's response was neutral, careful. "Some of them may wish to ask for political asylum. Some of them may wish to wait and return to the Gamma Quadrant at a later date. I trust they will all be treated appropriately."

"Of course," Atkin said. "In fact, the leader of the Jem'Hadar - Otali'klan - has already been scheduled for release. None of them will be at liberty to leave DS Nine until matters have been settled, but they may move around freely on the station."

Bashir finally chipped in with, "Commander, if you don't mind, it really is my duty as a Starfleet doctor to examine Odo before he leaves the station. Protocol, you know."

Atkin didn't look pleased, but he nodded. "Very well, Doctor. I think we can consider this meeting to be at an end."

-oOo-

"Genetic engineering," Bashir said.

Odo looked at him quizzically. "And that's the sum total of your professional analysis, Doctor?"

"That's it. I'm not going to try to explain it. Any of it. Your new genetic code defies explanation. You're not entirely human, nor are you a changeling. You're something else entirely. A transmorphic lifeform? If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say you were the missing link."

"Missing link?"

Bashir nodded. "Somewhere between monoform and metamorph. You have characteristics from both species - blood, bone and flesh, and the ability to temporarily alter your cellular structure at will. You'd make a fascinating case study."

"I'll bear that in mind," Odo said dryly. He stood up, reached for his clothes. "How is Kira?"

Something in Bashir's expression flickered. "She's fine. But... Well, you need to talk to her as soon as possible."

"I fully intend to," Odo said, and favoured Bashir with a long, shrewd look. "Is there anything I should know first?"

"Just talk to her, Odo. That's all I can tell you." A pause. "You're really going through with this?"

"Did you ever think I wouldn't?"

"No."

Odo regarded Bashir, then said quietly, "The Dominion was founded because my people were afraid. It was built in fear, and fear still sustains it today. Once upon a time, my people's xenophobia may have been justified, but not any more. Tar'vath's second prophecy, Doctor. 'The Avakar will rise and lead his own people into the light.'"

Bashir asked, "What makes you think they'll listen to you this time?"

"Instinct. Experience. Faith in my own kinfolk." Odo shrugged rangy shoulders. "The Great Link has no material wants or needs. The Dominion does not exist for economic or political reasons. It only exists to prevent the Link from harm. If the Link ceases to feel threatened by solids, the Dominion's reason for existence disappears. Perhaps destroying it is not the answer. Perhaps it simply needs to change."

"A new, kinder, more caring Dominion?" Bashir joked.

"Out of the mouths of babes," Odo said. An odd, unexpected glint of dark humour showed briefly in his level gaze. Sardonically, "That's a human saying, apparently."

-oOo-

Kira had worked hard to refine her composure, and when she faced Odo it was with an equanimity that was uncharacteristic. Her own decisions were already made. Not wanting to waste time with unnecessary chatter, she cut straight to the heart of everything with, "Will you come back?"

His answer, she knew, would define the course of the conversation. She was quite prepared to lie to him if it became necessary. She waited quietly, watching his eyes, knowing she would see the truth there.

Odo didn't seem to need time to think about it. "Yes. When it is done."

"For me?"

Either he was too wily to fall into the trap, or he had learned a lesson or two about what it meant to live life. "For me. There are reasons to belong here."

"Then I will wait for you," Kira said, marvelling at how simple it all was.

Gently, he said, "You don't have to do that. I may be gone a long, long time."

"It doesn't matter. I'll wait for you." She smiled, knowing that he still didn't understand, still didn't know. "Bashir told you to talk to me, didn't he?"

"How did you know that?"

"There are some things that don't come better from a doctor, Odo. Trust me."

-oOo-

"You are joking?" Quark said, looking from Ezri to Bashir and back. "You're not joking? Oh, for Profit's sake..."

Somehow, and Ezri didn't know how, Quark managed to look genuinely disgusted. She smiled, said lightly, "Well, what did you think they were doing together during those long Bajoran nights? Reading the collected works of Jocar Ens?"

"It's not..." Quark struggled for the right word. "It's just not natural. She's Bajoran, he's... well, who the hell knows what he is? Anyway, it's just not right."

"I don't think," Bashir said, "that the proud parents-to-be would agree with you."

"She's told him, then?" Quark asked sharply.

"Somewhere about now, I should think, wouldn't you, Ezri?"

"Just about," Ezri agreed.

"You're naturally assuming," Quark said snidely, "that he's going to be pleased, of course? Not to mention that he really is the father?"

"I wouldn't let Kira hear you say that," Bashir said mildly. "Not unless you want to be in the Infirmary indefinitely."

"Rule of Acquisition number -"

"Forget it, Quark," Ezri advised. "It's a one krepla race. Besides, Julian's already done a genetic scan."

"Then I hope and pray," Quark said grumpily, "that it takes after its better-looking parent. Physically, at least. I don't suppose it's crossed either of your minds to think about the sort of offspring that pair will produce? Bad-tempered, neurotic, suspicious, narrow-minded..."

-oOo-

"A Child of the Prophets," Kira said dreamily. Somehow it seemed easy to ignore the minutes that were ticking by.

"Bajoran mysticism," Odo said, lying on his back with his head turned towards the viewport. The starlight cast him in odd shadows, delicately picking out the long, lean lines of his body. "Nerys, I'm not going to be pleased if I return from the Gamma Quadrant to find that my child is a Vedek."

"Better make sure you don't take too long getting back, then, hadn't you?"

He sighed audibly. "If there are any gods out there, they have a strange sense of humour."

Kira started to trace an intricate pattern on his chest with her fingertips. "I don't suppose Tar'vath made a third prophecy about the Avakar, did he? Nothing about a child of destiny, fated to save the galaxy from a final apocalypse?"

"Not," Odo said serenely, "as far as I know."

"Good. One mythical saviour in the family is enough."

"Is that what we are?" Odo asked intently, turning his head to look at her. "Family?"

"You and I," Kira said, "have been family for years. This just seals the bond. You're sure you're not angry?"

He looked honestly perplexed. "Why would I be angry?"

Kira almost shrugged. "It's a responsibility. A responsibility here in the Alpha Quadrant. Part of you. Something that won't just disappear if you try hard enough to forget about it."

Odo sat up, looked down at her calmly. "You mistake me for someone else."

"No," Kira said, reaching up to stroke his cheek. "No, I would never do that."

-oOo-

"Soon," Odo said in response to her quiet, strained question. "Very soon, but not yet."

Only once, very late the night before, had Kira shed a single tear, and when she had, she had been angry, as if she had betrayed them both. Her restraint meant a lot to Odo, who would cheerfully have sold himself to anyone, body and soul, if it would have prevented her from crying. He had never been good at dealing with excesses of emotion, his own or anyone else's. Odo, after all, was the man who had occasionally been duped by petty female miscreants who had known all too well that the judicious shedding of a few tears would guarantee an immediate moderation in censure, an automatic fine and instant dismissal from his presence.

"The time is oh-seven-hundred hours," the computer announced blandly.

Odo felt Kira's arms tighten imperceptibly. When the time came, he knew she would release him without a word, but until then she seemed determined to cling to him as if he were the last stable point in the Quadrant. Strangely, he no longer felt torn. He had mapped his future with characteristic attention to detail. He knew where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there. For him, there was no longer a choice. He had failed to force the Great Link to his will before, but the failure had merely toughened his resolve. Quark, Odo knew, would have said he was a stubborn fool who didn't recognise when it was time to stop trying. Quark was probably right.

He felt Kira's lips press against his shoulder, heard her sigh. He wondered if he was insane. He knew he wasn't. If he attempted to stay in the Alpha Quadrant, it would very likely mean war, or at least a dangerous cooling in the lukewarm rapport between the Dominion and the Allied Forces. Somewhere on the other side of the wormhole, people were waiting for him. Hundreds of people. Thousands. Tens of thousands. People who believed in an ancient prophecy. People who had snatched desperately at a delicate thread of hope. Odo didn't bother to ask himself why. Didn't bother to question how he had been cast in such an extraordinary role.

Kira whispered, "You'd better go."

Odo was strong, but he wasn't that strong. He kissed the top of her head. "Soon."

She looked up, pain and amusement blended into one tight expression, but she didn't say a word. Perhaps she simply couldn't, or perhaps there was nothing left to say of any value. Her silence, the poignancy in her eyes, tore at Odo's heart. His real, humanoid, beating heart. Finding reserves of courage he didn't know he had, he kissed her gently, trying to convey everything in that one single action. When he drew away cautiously, she said, "One final hour."

"One final hour," Odo agreed solemnly, and wondered how it could possibly hurt so very much. More to drive the pain away - from them both - than for any reason, he reached for her. Slow, this time, slow and careful, lacking the desperation that had characterised their love-making the night before. Driven by something that told him he had to imprint her so thoroughly on his memory that nothing could ever make him forget a single detail of it, he made love to her, worshipped her, reinforced his claim on her. It surprised him, distantly, that Kira reacted not with her usual determined assertiveness, but with something unusually close to subservience - as if, for once, she was prepared to allow him the mastery he had never sought or required.

Afterwards, in the soft tranquillity that always followed, he dared to ask her why. Kira's smile was small and sad, but her voice held steady as she answered, "You were raised on Bajor. You know why."

Odo considered her words. He knew why. Genetically he was... whatever he was. But culturally, he had always been a hybrid. A changeling in a Bajoran skin. His philosophy had grown with him, but part of his heritage remained Bajoran. Always would. Nothing could ever erase it. Slowly, he said, "Because I am l'chyia."

The universal translator stuttered, failed to find an adequate substitute and coldly ignored the word.

"Father of my child," Kira said, and it was a concept, not a statement. An honourable state, with or without the formal sanction of a Vedek.

And the last few minutes finally slipped through their entwined fingers.

-oOo-

Bashir was astonished by the number of people that seemed to throng in every corridor and open space between the Promenade and the docking ring. He was even more astonished to realise why they were all there. Everyone on the station, it seemed, had now heard the story of Tar'vath's prophecy, and of the renegade changeling who had become the Avakar. Some of the crowd were from the Gamma Quadrant: traders, merchants, smugglers, thieves, explorers - all with a certain proprietary interest in seeing the Avakar for themselves - but there were also plenty of representatives from Alpha Quadrant races present. Bajorans, mainly, but humans, too. Starfleet uniforms, Bajoran uniforms. Even a few curious and faintly disparaging Klingons. A smattering of others. The Avakar's departure, it seemed, had become an unofficial, impromptu festival. It was a struggle to get to the airlock where Ezri Dax and Commander Atkin were already waiting.

"Quite a party," Ezri said in greeting, raising her eyebrows.

"It's not every day," Bashir told her, "that you get to see witness the genesis of a legend."

Atkin snorted and said nothing. It was already well-known amongst the senior staff that Starfleet Command and Admiral Ross had both had a number of choice things to say to Atkin about his handling of the entire affair.

The first members of Tarab's detachment came into view. Whether they were there to escort their former prisoner from DS Nine, or whether they were there to provide an honour guard for their erstwhile Chief wasn't exactly certain. Either way, they cleared a path for the Jem'Hadar following them. Bashir almost smiled when he saw Otali'klan at the front, looking characteristically grim. The Avakar's bodyguard, just as Leevan had said on the Yafaga, right at the very beginning. Flanked on either side by Jem'Hadar, Odo did not look like a man who was enjoying the attention of the crowd. In fact, he definitely looked like a man who would have far preferred to be inconspicuously transported across to the waiting ship.

Nor, Bashir had to admit, did he look as if he was an obvious choice to be cast as Tar'vath's Avakar. A tall, slender figure in very ordinary Bajoran clothes, completely unremarkable save for his face. That, evidently, would always mark him as something a little different. At least until the day that changelings became a common sight on outposts like DS Nine.

"And on that day..." Bashir muttered to himself.

Tarab's men fell back as the group reached the airlock, and the Jem'Hadar emulated them, automatically creating a precise military formation as they halted. To Bashir, they suddenly didn't seem so intimidating. They looked strangely lost, almost anachronistic. Warriors with no wars left to fight. Obsolete. He wondered what would become of them. Otali'klan, it seemed, had every intention of attempting to fulfil his duty to protect Kira, but Bashir seriously doubted that she would allow such a thing. Perhaps they would become mercenaries, soldiers of fortune. There didn't seem to be anything else left for them in either Quadrant.

Belatedly, Bashir realised that the farewells had started, that Ezri had already made all the expected promises to watch over Kira and her unborn child. He didn't know what he could possibly say, but he knew he wasn't going to be left out of the final scene of the drama. Suppressing the instinct to attempt to shake Odo's hand - a mistake at the best of times - Bashir said, "Will you come back as the Avakar, or as the new leader of the Dominion?"

Something flickered in Odo's blue eyes. Amusement? Cynicism? Understanding? Bashir wasn't sure.

"Neither," Odo said simply. "I was never destined for such momentous roles."

"Just always happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?" Bashir suggested.

"Story of my life, Doctor. Take care of Kira." With that, Odo looked at Atkin for a moment, then nodded curtly to Otali'klan, turned and stepped through the airlock. Just as Bashir had expected, he didn't look back.

-oOo-

By mutual agreement, it was Ezri who ventured forth to see Kira once Caben's ship had vanished into the wormhole. Not knowing exactly what to expect, she was surprised to find the station's erstwhile commanding officer packing things into storage crates. Kira's quarters had remained untouched in her absence, but now they were being systematically emptied by their owner. Ezri suspected it was some kind of therapy, but she still asked, "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" Kira said with only the merest trace of sarcasm.

"It looks as if you're getting ready to leave."

"Right first time." A pause, then a slight softening. "There's nothing left for me here, Ezri. Not any more."

"They say Atkin's going to be recalled," Ezri said. "You could...?"

"No. This part of my life is over and done. I'm going home, Ezri. Back to Bajor. Shakaar's managed to persuade the Militia to give me a job as a tactical advisor." Kira raised her eyebrows, a touch self-mocking. "A nice, safe job behind a desk."

"You do realise that we swore to Odo on several lives including our own that we would look after you?"

"And you're welcome to go right ahead. I'll be on Bajor if you want me."

"Julian's supposed to be your obstetrician," Ezri pointed out.

Kira nodded, "I know. And he will be. I'm not stupid enough to put my child at risk. It just means he'll have a little further to come if he wants to make a house call, that's all."

"You're sure I can't talk you out of this, Nerys?"

"Quite sure." Kira smiled slightly, a wan, but brave smile. "Weren't you the one who told me that I had to decide what to do with my life? If I stayed here, I'd be running on the spot, wouldn't I? And you said I couldn't do that, not any more."

Doubtfully, Ezri returned the smile. "You didn't have to take my advice quite so literally."

Kira shrugged a shoulder, returned to impatiently pushing things into the storage crates. Ezri watched her, then finally asked, "Are you all right?"

"No," Kira said, not looking round. "Not remotely. But I will be."

-oOo-

"Superstition," Caben said contemptuously.

Odo didn't move, stayed where he was, quite comfortable in the room's only chair. "It doesn't matter. Even a whisper on the wind can bring hope."

Scornfully, Caben said, "You're dreaming, Odo. The Dominion will endure."

"I can only hope that it does. It provides stability and order to thousands of worlds. But to endure, it must change."

"Why? Because one young, fanciful child thinks that it should?"

"No," Odo told him simply. "Because an empire without compassion is an empire that is built on fear. And fear is destructive. The Dominion must change - or eventually it will fall. Even without the threat of rebellion."

"You could have had power," Caben said coldly. "You could have been a true Founder."

Odo considered for a moment, then answered the Vorta with, "And what could I have done as a Founder? Ordered the Jem'Hadar to conquer another world? Ordered the Vorta to annex another trade route? Declared war on the Alpha Quadrant? And then what?"

Caben looked perplexed. "Whatever you wanted."

"And if I wanted couldn't be attained by force?"

"There is nothing that cannot be attained by force."

"I was afraid that you were going to say that," Odo said. He closed his eyes. "Go away, Caben. I'm tired."

"Tomorrow," Caben said darkly, as he headed towards the door, "we will see which of us is right."

-oOo-

Transported to the rocky atoll where so many things had already begun and ended for him, Odo looked out across the rippling surface of the Great Link and wondered why he suddenly felt so very alien. The living sea that roiled before him was his birthright, his family, his home. It belonged to him, and he belonged to it. Another fact that could never be changed. Monoform, metamorph or transmorph, he was still a changeling, deep in his soul. Yet, the Great Link no longer called to him as it once had. It's siren song no longer drew him helplessly to it. Liberated, he finally saw the Link for what it was - a community, just like any other. A frightened, bigoted, xenophobic community that had long ago ceased to want to understand the other creatures with which it shared the galaxy.

For the first time, Odo fully understood the Great Link's ambivalence towards him. He was more than just their recalcitrant child, a wayward scion to be disciplined or exiled at whim. He was the epitome of everything the Link feared - the living proof that their philosophy was flawed and their actions were indefensible. He was the vessel into which the Link had always refused to look - the bearer of knowledge they didn't want. A child, yes, gauche and maladroit, but a child that had not only learned to coexist with solids, but to understand, respect and value them. A child with all the compassion, wisdom and tolerance that the Great Link had lost a long time before the founding of the Dominion.

He frightened them.

The irony was exquisite. He, who had known what it was to be afraid from his first conscious moment, terrified the sophisticated, otherworldly creatures that had created him. He was too undisciplined for them, too independent, too steeped in the culture that had raised him. Too close to the solids they feared above everything else. Odo realised that they had expected to be able to control him, subjugate him, assimilate him seamlessly into the Link. They hadn't expected him to transcend all the careful genetic programming that should have guaranteed his compliance on his first return, nor had they expected him to continue to defy them after he had experienced the power of their wrath.

With typical arrogance, the Great Link had created a hundred infants to send out into the galaxy as explorers, firmly believing that it could control those infants if and when they eventually found their way home. Unused to failure, the Link had relied on guile, then force to control their feral child. Guile had failed. Force had failed, and now the Link was afraid. Mortally afraid. Odo saw the truth. When the Link had discovered that he was once again at large, the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar had been sent to deal with him, to neutralise him for once and for all by whatever means necessary. Finally, he understood. He understood perfectly. The Great Link had never intended to risk encountering him again.

The sentient, gold ocean stirred a little. Close to the atoll, a gleaming column rose from the commingled whole and began to take humanoid shape. Neither angry nor intimidated, Odo waited. The Founder parted from the Link, transformation completing as he - it - stepped up onto the rock. The bland, unrefined features that emulated his own no longer seemed designed solely to mock him. "Odo," the Founder said. A simple, infinite statement.

He was no longer a lost, lonely child poignantly dreaming of a distant, mysterious home and family. Odo said, "It is time for the Link to cede."

"We cannot," the Founder said, but it was not a statement of defiance. "It is too late. If we yield, we will be destroyed."

"If you do not," Odo said simply, "the Dominion will fall, and the resulting chaos will plunge the entire Quadrant into civil war. Millions will die. Hundreds of worlds will perish. Retribution will follow. The Link will not survive. Your culture, your heritage, everything that you ever have been, or ever could be, will be excised from history. You will be driven to extinction."

The Founder merely looked curious. "You do not include yourself in our fate?"

"I have earned exclusion from it," Odo said. "I am already vindicated."

"Then why are you here?"

"To offer a last chance of redemption. Relinquish your hold on the Dominion while there is still time."

The Founder looked thoughtful, then said, "We have never tolerated threats."

Odo shook his head. "There are no threats, only certainties."

"The Dominion is our only defence against persecution and annihilation," the Founder said stubbornly. "Without it, we are vulnerable to those who would destroy us."

"The galaxy has changed," Odo said patiently. "It's time for the Great Link to learn to trust again. Learn to trust - or accept extinction."

There was a long silence. The Founder said, "Link with us."

-oOo-

Startled, the Great Link drew back in fear. It did not understand immediately what it was that it had encountered. A strange, alien creature, neither changeling nor solid. A creature that passed through the Link like lightning, touching and being touched. A creature that could ebb and flow, could become one with the Link, and yet remain impossibly unique. A creature that brought chaos to order, but within that chaos, the tempting, gossamer promise of salvation and comprehension.

Voices started. Individual voices, each expressing something different, each shouting to be heard until the Link roiled in confusion. Thoughts and ideas tumbled over each other, and into the chaos came a new element. Resolution.

One voice, one strong, clear voice not couched in idea and metaphor; a voice the Link had heard before, but had never listened to. The voice of one of its own missing children. A voice that flooded through every soul in the Link, bringing both the threat of destruction and the notion of deliverance. The contradiction was confusing. The Link could not comprehend mercy, just as it once hadn't been able to comprehend how the gift of healing could be freely and charitably bestowed by one so irrevocably tainted by solidity.

Frightened and bewildered, the Link began to panic, tried desperately to expel the interloper from its commingled substance. It failed. Stubborn and pernicious, the intruder remained, so absorbed into the whole that it couldn't be forced into submission. Louder and louder the voice, until it roared above the tumult of fear and alarm - until it couldn't be ignored.

New ideas, new sensations. New forms and emotions. Trust. Compassion. Compromise. Love. Everything the Great Link had refused to absorb from the stranger before. And then, mercifully, after an indefinite, tortuous time, it was over. The creature withdrew, and the Link writhed and raged, and tried desperately to understand.

-oOo-

"Edon." Friendly enough, but carefully neutral.

Shakaar had grown accustomed to the intangible barrier between them. He even understood it. Their mutual past precluded anything else. The way things were, for Kira to have been any more effusive in her greeting would have been... inappropriate. He smiled at her, a genuine, but slightly restrained smile, and said, "You're looking well."

Kira shot him a look that was slightly askance, but nodded slightly in thanks and waved him towards the only other chair in her large, spartan office. "It's very late. What can I do for you?"

Efficient. Businesslike. And very, very lovely, despite - or perhaps because of - her advanced pregnancy. Shakaar made an effort not to dwell on such thoughts, but it was difficult. It didn't seem to matter how many years rolled by, or how many other lovers came and went - he still found it hard to entirely forget all the things they had once shared. Doubtless, Kira would have rebuked him for such fanciful thoughts. But she was still an exceedingly attractive woman, whether it was appropriate for him to think so, or not. Hiding his thoughts, he said, "I've just come back from DS Nine. General Arkan thought I should give you an update on Starfleet's new proposals for joint operations in Bajoran space."

She sighed heavily. "Not more bedtime reading?"

"I'm afraid so. Shall I leave all the data with your adjutant?"

"Please do," Kira said in a tone that suggested she would have preferred him to have left it somewhere - anywhere - else.

Shakaar nodded, surveyed her for a moment, then said, "Not long now, I gather?"

"You," she accused, surprisingly mildly, "have been talking to Julian."

He held up his hands in placatory fashion. "Just legitimate concern for an old friend, Nerys, that's all."

Her eyebrows raised, but all she said was, "Funny, Ezri said almost exactly the same thing. All this concern - it makes me think everyone else knows something I don't."

"You can't have friends," Shakaar said gravely, "and expect them not to worry about you."

"I know." Kira smiled, then asked, "Was there anything else...?"

"No," Shakaar said, and stood up. For a moment he debated with himself, then said, "While I was on the station, I understand a covert Starfleet surveillance ship returned from the Gamma Quadrant. I expect that a planetary leader with influence in the Bajoran sector would have been made privy to any initial reports they might have made to Starfleet Command about Jem'Hadar garrisons being withdrawn from the Rim Worlds."

The sudden intensity in Kira's posture and expression was palpable. She knew exactly what he was saying. She said, "The Rim Worlds mark the edge of Dominion space nearest the wormhole. They would never risk removing the Jem'Hadar from them."

"Never," Shakaar agreed solemnly. "Unless, of course, the Dominion ever decided to offer independence to its outlying territories."

Kira stared at him, and he could see the significance of his words impacting on her. He moved towards the door. "Just before Ilium rode into the sun, he told Supora he would come home to her. She waited for him until her heart broke. Something tells me your heart isn't going to break, Nerys."

"I thought," she said faintly, "that you had never read past Ilium seducing the virgin huntress...?"

"I lied," Shakaar said. He smiled, just a little ironic. "It's a long, long ride, but maybe Ilium is already on his way home. Walk with the Prophets, Nerys."

He didn't need to look back to know that Kira had turned towards the open window, and the distant stars that shone brightly in Bajor's night sky.

Contact author via www.joodiff.com -- and while you're exploring her website, be sure to look for her other excellent Odo/Kira fanfic (also for mature readers), "Beneath the Prophets."

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