Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

A Lasting Peace

by Anonymous
(author of "Differences." Comments for the author may be sent to
the website manager for forwarding to the author).

1: Silences-----

The silence was a peaceful one. Kira Nerys stretched one leg out along the floor, the other tucked up to her chest, datapadd balanced against her knee. She was sitting in something that looked a lot like an oversized pillow carved out of ironwood; it was clearly not meant to be a chair, but Kira had found that it was comfortable. The only proper chair in the room was occupied.

Odo savoured the silence as he worked at his console. It was one of his rare times of ease, of smooth flow, these moments of quiet when they were together. Kira loved him, he knew: he was her closest friend. Occasionally, at times like this, he allowed himself to forget his pain and bask in that limited love.

It was not her fault, he thought, that she could see him as nothing more than her friend.

He did not put the blame on himself, either, not directly. He did not let himself wallow in self hate. Odo knew that there was no better detective on either side of the wormhole, and that he was a good and loyal friend. He even secretly thought himself sensual, though he knew no one else considered him this way. There was nothing wrong with him, he thought.

Odo merely counted unattractiveness as another of his attributes. Not that his customary form was totally unaesthetic: Keiko O'Brien had once shown him a series of paintings by an earth artist-- Chagall --with an odd likeness to his own smooth profile. Besides, he could change that part of himself at will: he had long been able to fashion a proper nose and mouth, even eyebrows, if he wished. He was stopped only by the knowledge that nothing would really change that way. He was unattractive simply in that he attracted no one; it was not the fault of any one of his properties, but a property in itself.

He thought of Lwaxana Troi and dismissed her. She would try anything once, he told himself shortly.

He stretched his fingers to work the keys of the console, relaxed in his form. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kira reclining in the ironwood pillow, and he knew that he would have to sleep there tonight, caressing in his loneliness a place where she had been. For now, though, the silence was peaceful.

Kira watched her friend over the top of her datapadd, her heart a dry thing within her. She cursed herself quickly and returned to her work, hoping that the tight feeling in her chest would not return.

She must have imagined it. It was impossible for her not to have imagined it. The look she had seen in her friend's face could not have been there; biologically, she told herself, it was unlikely in the extreme. Odo's amoeboid race was nothing like her own. They made love communally in the Link, they had no need for intimacy. There was no basis for the expression that she thought, for a second, she had seen.

Besides, Odo's face didn't do well with expression. She was used to that.

"Odo," she said.

The silence was broken. Odo turned in his chair to look down at her, his face blank, his body loose.

"Is `odo' a Cardassian word? I've been working with a translation of some documents, and I keep seeing it as a prefix in the originals."

There was a very slight pause, but Kira caught it and wondered. "Yes, actually, Major," Odo said. "My name was originally part of a Cardassian word, `odo'ital'."

"So what does that mean?" she smiled, intrigued. "`Shapeshifter'? `Fluid'?"

"It means, `Nothing'," he said heavily, and turned back to his console.

Kira stared at his back for a moment. So that was what the hesitation had meant. An old, unhealed pain. Finally she said in a softer tone, "The Cardassians use a beautiful word for `nothing'."

Odo turned to her sharply. "I never thought so, Major."

"I'm sorry."

There was a pause. "It's the generic Cardassian term for -- unknown substances. After the first ten or twenty years I stopped thinking about what it meant every time someone called my name."

They looked at each other in silence for a moment, she wondering how to respond, he wondering if he had said too much, remembering the last telling of this particular story. Kira lifted her hand and reached out, as if not noticing the movement. The peace Odo had been feeling left him abruptly, to be replaced with familiar longing, resignation, and pain.

Kira finally dropped her eyes, and her hand, stunned. She had been right. She had seen it. In silence each of them returned to their work, but the silence was uneasy now.

After a long while Kira said, "So you do have a second name."

"Hmmm?" Odo looked up.

"Odo Ital. Ital's like a second name for you, a given name."

"I'd....never thought of it quite like that, Kira." His voice was level, barely.

"Ital." She said it smoothly, almost tenderly, the first syllable a small sound caught in her chest, the second slipping down into her throat. "May I --" she lifted her eyes to him for the first time, tentative and a little embarrassed. "May I call you that? Sometimes?"

"Maybe," he said brusquely, and turned away. Kira watched him for a reaction, but he was inscrutable. She closed up her work on her padd, feeling even more uneasy and sad. It was already late.

"I'd better go. First shift tomorrow," she yawned, reaching for her boots where she'd laid them at her side and pulling them on. Odo looked round at her.

"Goodnight, Major," he said a little more gently.

"Goodnight."

She paused by the door. "Odo?"

He turned to face her. "Major?"

"Odo --" she hesitated. "I'll see you in Ops."

He nodded once, and she left.-----------

When she was gone, Odo closed the work on his console and stood, swaying almost imperceptibly on his feet. His body twisted beneath the surface in loneliness, turbulence and eddies swirling inside him. He shuddered. If anyone had been watching him they would have been reminded of how nonhumanoid he really was with that shudder: more like the rippling of a reflection that the convulsion of muscle and flesh.

He walked to where she had been sitting, bent, and ran his fingers along the ironwood. Still warm, his skin and his infrared sensors told him.

Slowly Odo walked to the center of the room, stood still for a moment, then deformed into a glistening pillar of the amberoid gel that was his true nature. He stood like that for a few minutes, tall and straight. Then a kind of pseudopod shot out from his side, coalescing slowly into a humanoid arm: bare, thinner and shorter than Odo's usual arm. The palm was as strangely unmarked as the one Odo used every day; but the hand itself was feminine.

It was a trick to keep part of his body solid while the other part remained a contained liquid, but it was not as hard to manage as a spinning top or a bird, or a man. Odo felt certain organelles rushing to his surface, while others drew inward: all of his sight sensors migrated to his center, until he was nearly blind; he could hear almost nothing. His skin had become increasingly sensitive, though; in darkness and silence now he touched the hand he had made to the surface of his body.

Her arm, he told himself, her hand on me, touching me... He shuddered again, a more natural looking action in this liquid form. Odo began to sink to the floor, his hand moving slowly over his surface, arousing his intricately tuned sensors. He surged upwards even as he sank, twisting into what looked for a moment like two bodies, then one, then formlessness.

I am not lonely, he thought fiercely, as his other senses dimmed and sheer sensuality began to overtake him. I am loved.

The illusion faded as his control slipped and the hand he had formed began to melt into him, but the pleasure was upon him, and he was shaking. At the end, he thought dully, At least I tell myself so. Nothing...-----

2: Dawn-----

"Bloody freak of a policeman they got. Cost me a full day's take in bail."

Sitting at the bar, Kira glanced behind her to see who had spoken. The rough, nasal voice was a Bajoran's and Kira immediately recognized the look: that of the lost children of the Occupation, Bajorans who had never recovered from the devastation of their homeworld. There were many such, human debris; they drifted, drowning themselves in hatred and in drink.

Much as she herself was doing, she thought sardonically. By this hour the crowd in Quark's bar had thinned out to the diehard cases; Kira recognized not a few of them from Odo's criminal files. It was rare for her to drink like this, alone and late; yet tonight after leaving Odo's quarters she'd ordered a bottle of synthail and paid Quark an extra few slips of latinum to leave her alone. She was a slow but determined drinker, and almost half the bottle was gone now.

It was a rare mood for her overall: one she could not control, which could not be folded neatly into one of the various pockets of her subconscious. She had felt unsteady since she'd left Odo; it wasn't just the synthail. She had hoped the drink would deaden her nerves, numb her, but so far she'd had no luck.

Behind her the drunk Bajoran's voice grew louder. "Damn freak. Some kin' a inhuman machine, no pity at all, none. Worse'n a damn Cardie, way you can feel him watching you. Sneaks into your own quarters at night to watch you, the bastard."

His drinking buddy, a down-and-out Andorian, joined in. "Sneaks into your quarters, Oluk? Hah. Sneaks into Lt. Dax's more like. Hell, I would, if I could fit in a vent shaft."

"Ah, he's got nothing at the crotch. You look at him, you can tell. Hardly tell if he's a he or a she."

"Mebbe both."

"Mebbe an it." They laughed.

"Not human, anyway, the freak. 'S for sure."

Kira felt her face grow cold. She gripped her drink tighter and took another fiery sip.

"Yah, imagine it. `Oh Constable, think you could take this form?'"

The laughs grew louder. "You never know, if he can look like anything..."

"Ah, no woman would have him."

Kira turned around slowly, her face white, her mind in a bloody synthailic whirlwind. She stalked over to the drunk Bajoran's table.

"Excuse me."

Oluk looked up blearily. Any sober man would have instantly recognized that his death was staring him in the face, but this one was too far gone. Kira smiled, a smile that looked like it would be lethal at just a slightly higher frequency.

"I wonder if you'd like to repeat what you just said."

The Andorian, who was not quite that drunk, got up and moved away. But Oluk stood, swayed, and faced her unfazed.

"What the hell's wrong with what I said? Hell -- you're not fuckin him, are you?"

Kira's fist fit snugly into the curve of the Bajoran's jaw. He reeled, bleeding, stumbled, and fell, hitting his head on the table with a satisfying clump. Kira looked from him to her tightly wadded, bloody fist. The bar had gotten suddenly, utterly silent. In disbelief she hit her commbadge.

"Kira to Bashir."

"I'm in bed, Major," his voice mumbled. "This had better--"

"Medical emergency in Quark's."

"Right. Sorry. On my way."-----------

To his credit, he asked her nothing until they were safely in the infirmary, and Kira's victim's condition had been stabilized. Finally, as Kira sat shakily sponging off her hand, Bashir came up behind her.

"Major. Would you mind telling me what the hell happened?" His voice was quiet and level, professional. Kira sighed.

"I don't know. I haven't behaved like that since -- in a very long time."

"You hit him?"

She nodded, eyes closed.

"Why?"

Kira shook her head. "He -- he was talking about a friend. Constable Odo."

"What on earth was he saying?"

There was a long pause.

"He was...insulting his manhood."

Bashir looked at the ceiling for a moment. "So you hit him."

"I hit him."

He heaved out a weary, worried sigh. "Look-- there's nothing wrong with you physically, so I'm just going to give you a mild sedative for tonight. You should get some sleep, Nerys, you're probably overtired."

She nodded. "Okay."

"If there's anything...anything at all...that you'd like to talk about, I'm here. And Major?"

She looked at him.

"Constable Odo can take care of himself."

"Goodnight, Julian."-----

3: Accommodations-----

The ceiling this time. Reach, clasp, use the energy to spin away. Spread thin to glide. Statue coming up fast, latch onto it, swing full circle reaching out ahead. Wings. Unfold. Reach out --

Kira entered without calling, unusual for her; she knew the value her friend placed on privacy, even if Odo had given her his lockcode. She stopped inside the doorway and stared. She'd never interrupted him like this before.

-- Fold wings, curl, coil, let the impact go right through. Missed it, damn, lean upwards again instead, tense now--

He was a bird, a meteor, a phaser blast. He was made of flame. Kira couldn't take her eyes off him. Odo ricocheted around his quarters, drilling in a way he'd told her about but that she had never seen. His form didn't seem liquid so much as light -- it came to her that he looked much like the changelings she'd glimpsed on his homeworld. As she watched, astonished and feeling somehow faintly proud of him, she became aware that beneath it all was a beat. An audible beat. Music.

He wasn't just drilling. He was dancing.

It lasted only a moment. Almost as soon as she stepped through the door Odo slowed down, landed in the middle of the floor, and reformed into his humanoid shape. He looked once more as he always did, but a bit winded -- and his face was alight. Kira realized her heart was pounding. He was beautiful, and it startled her more than it should have.

"Audio off," Odo said. The music shut off, and there was a moment of silence as they looked at each other. "Can I help you, Major?" he asked.

She started, just slightly. "Good morning, Odo. I'm sorry. Did I disturb you?"

"No. Not at all," he rumbled, suddenly self-conscious. He turned away briefly to right a tipped sculpture.

"You've -- really improved your shapeshifting, Constable," Kira said from his back. After a pause she added, "You're very graceful."

He looked up at her in a swift movement. "Thank you, Major," he said stiffly, but she could tell he was pleased. Kira moved towards him.

"I brought you the reports you asked me to initial..." She reached forward to hand them to him; as he took them he noticed the white cell-regeneration strip across her knuckles.

"What happened?"

Kira set her jaw. "Accident in Quark's," she said thinly.

"Ah. I heard." Odo took the report padds and walked over to his desk. "Bashir told me."

"Oh." Kira braced herself. Her back hurt, and her feet were killing her; it was these new regulation heels. She stood still, wishing she could kick them off.

"I'm well aware of my -- popularity -- among certain elements on the station, Major," Odo continued. "Your actions were -- unnecessary." He sat down, waking up his console. "I'll have to fine you; I really ought to put you in a holding cell, though I think that would be a bit excessive. However --"

He turned to face her. "Thank you. I don't think I've ever had anyone defend my honor before." There was less than the customary amount of irony in his tone.

Her mouth twisted, somewhere between a smile and a grimace. "Don't get used to it."

Odo looked her over carefully, his dark blue eyes taking in more than she felt comfortable with, until she had to fight not to fidget. "Are you all right?" he asked finally, his voice softer than before. "Is there anything...going on...that you'd like to tell me about?" He tilted his head away, still watching her. "You're not in the habit of starting brawls in Quark's at oh-two-hundred hours, Kira."

His meaning was unmistakable: I'm worried about you. I'm here for you. Kira broke her gaze. "It wasn't a brawl," she muttered.

"What was it then?" he asked.

"I don't know. I can't explain it, Odo, you wouldn't understand," she snapped, and instantly regretted it. His expression didn't change, but his face closed like a door.

"Perhaps I wouldn't," he said.

"Maybe I don't understand it myself," Kira said, trying to repair. "This Bajoran --"

"Ajur Oluk."

"-- Ajur Oluk, I've never seen him before in my life; he was drunk. But that doesn't give him the right to abuse my friends."

"Kira," Odo said, "I wasn't within earshot. I would hardly call it abuse."

"I would."

"You're my commanding officer, Major. That doesn't give you the right to strike a civilian in my defense. -- You had been drinking, too."

"That has nothing to do with it, Odo!" she exploded. "You've taken that kind of insult for fifty years. I don't know why you should take it now."

"I see," he said coldly. "You felt sorry for me."

Kira felt like he'd slapped her. "Odo --"

"It -- doesn't bother me, Major. I know what my position is here. I've made accommodations." The words shot across the room with the same force as his body had. "I know how you humanoids see me."

"`You humanoids'??"

"I've learned...not to mind it." He slumped, suddenly exhausted. She stared at him, wondering what he was really talking about. Surely not the opinions of Deep Space Nine's criminal class.

"Since when am I `you humanoids'?"

"I'm sorry, Major. I --"

"Save it, Odo," she said, not unkindly. He looked terribly unhappy, and without thinking she went to him and put her hand on his shoulder. He didn't flinch. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head and sighed. "It's all right, Major. I overreacted. We're -- a little alike that way, perhaps."

She tried a smile. Her hand was burning him, but she couldn't know that, he thought. He continued, "Sometimes, it's easier to...get by -- if I don't think about it."

"And I made you think about it."

He flashed her that tight, painful-looking expression he used for a smile.

"Well, I guess I've done enough damage," she said, dropping her hand and looking at the white strip across it. She leaned over to his console, paused, looked back at him. "How much?"

"Four hundred and fifty credits for assault, fifty more for -- drunk and disorderly."

She smiled ruefully as she punched in the credit transfer. "I'll see you tomorrow, Ital," she said, her voice soft, and headed for the exit.

"Kira."

She stopped, turned, her back against the door.

"What was it he said to you?" he asked. She looked at him blankly. "That made you hit him?" he amended.

There was a silence. Odo was astonished to watch Major Kira Nerys blush, a dark pink invading her face. She dropped her eyes to the floor.

"He asked me if I was sleeping with you," she said. The door slid open and she fled through it, without looking at him, leaving him alone.-----

4: Storm-----

Kira's hand rested lightly on the runabout's controls. The metal felt sensual against her hand, smooth and cool. It was like a new perception she had; it had been a long time since she had looked at the world in terms of pleasure, instead of threat.

If he took the shape of this console face, then when I adjusted for freefall, my hands would be moving over him. What would it feel like for him, I wonder...She circled one finger lingeringly over the smooth surface.

In the seat next to her, the changeling turned in his chair; the silence had grown a little thick lately. Odo had been watching her carefully in the past few weeks, with the same gentle scrutiny that she sometimes applied to him. He knew something was different; he'd noticed her increasing mental absence in his presence, and it frightened him. Now, to bring her attention back, Odo inquired formally, "Did you have a good visit?"

Kira shook herself and glanced across at him, smiling but hoping that he couldn't see any of her true thoughts in her face. She'd taken shoreleave a few weeks after the unfortunate incident at Quark's, intending her visit to Dahkur Province to calm her, clear her head. Apparently it hadn't worked, she thought.

"Thanks for giving me a ride, Constable," she said aloud. "There are some people it's important not to lose contact with. It felt good just being around Furel."

"I understand," he said, and her glance became curious, but she let it go.

"What about you?" she asked wryly instead.

"I survived," he grunted. "Though if I could lose contact with anyone, I would hope it would be the Bajoran Security Union."

"Was it that bad?"

"No, it was horrible," he affirmed. "I'm afraid I was not particularly well-received. I was practically the only non-Bajoran there." He did not say, I was the only changeling, but they both heard it. "Some of the ranking members have begun talk of Dominion infiltration, blood tests. I'd hoped I'd left that on Earth."

"I can imagine," she said with grim sympathy. She turned and stretched in her chair. "I suppose that means more drills on the station?"

"It was -- suggested."

"We can barely keep up with you as it is," she smiled. Her tone was normal, and Odo had begun to relax again. Perhaps he had been mistaken before.

"That doesn't bode well, should we encounter more of my people. I'm not a -- particularly adept shapeshifter. I'm still very young."

It seemed an incongruous epithet to apply to him, and she narrowed her eyes at him in disagreement, about to speak.

The runabout shuddered and dipped, the vibrations of the engines changing pitch.

"What was that?" Odo said, immediately alert, his hands flying over the console.

"I don't know, Ital," Kira said sharply, her eyes on her own control panel, as completely focused as the Resistance had taught her to be -- so much so that she didn't notice the change in her form of address. "We're losing altitude...Let me try to stabilize."

"It's not working, Major," Odo said, his voice rising.

"Can you find the problem?" she asked, still struggling with the controls.

"There's no problem with the navigational array. It must be a technical breakdown. Can you stabilize?"

"I --" The cabin shook. The starfield before them began to revolve, then filled with planet. "Our orbit's decaying. Velocity: four thousand over fifty...over twenty -- I don't think I can."

"Try," Odo snapped. The air in the cabin was suddenly very warm.

"We're hitting atmosphere -- we're going to have to get out of here, now."

"Hold on, Major..." Odo punched in coordinates and grabbed her arm. "Computer! Two to beam out."-----------

Darkness. As they materialized Kira was startled that her vision didn't come back, then realized they were planetside, and that it was night. "Nice work, Constable," she said as her heartrate slowed, having to raise her voice a little above the sudden wind. "Let's contact the station and get someone to pick us up. Sisko's going to have our heads for that runabout."

Odo's heat vision showed Kira as a bright gold-and-rose figure against the sudden cold of the Bajoran night. He kept his eyes on her as he hit his commbadge. "Odo to Deep Space Nine."

Silence.

"Deep Space Nine, this is Major Kira," Kira tried. "Please come in -- this is an emergency call."

"Why aren't they responding?" Odo murmured.

"Bajor's curve is blocking the signal; Deep Space Nine must be on the day side now. We'll have to wait until the station clears the horizon. Meantime, where are we?"

"I beamed us to the nearest point on the surface."

"What were the coordinates you entered?"

"I'm not sure exactly. Two hundred degrees by thirty, more or less."

Kira did some brief mental calculation. "That's about right," she said slowly in realization. Over the wind he couldn't hear the new strain in her voice.

Odo turned to her, watching the heat swirl off her body into the wind. "Where are we then?"

"The Moq Anaar Steppe," she said.

There was an uneasy pause. "Moq Anaar," Odo said. "That means, Walking Storm, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"Why would it be named that?"

"From the way the wind's picking up, we'll find out soon enough," Kira said grimly. "This weather system has been playing itself out for a few thousand years here. Can you see anything?"

"A little," he said. "I can see you."

"I can't see you, Ital. It's pitch dark for me. Try to stay close."

"Right."

"We should try to find shelter," she said as his hand closed over hers. She squeezed it in the dark, glad of his presence. "Can you see anything like a ditch, or a depression?"

Odo scanned quickly, striving to see the dark ground through the cold violets and indigos of the wind. "It looks flat all around," he said finally. "It is a steppe." He thought of suggesting something, but thought better of it.

She sighed; the wind whipped her breath away. "We huddle, then. And wait. Deep Space Nine should rise in about three hours. If we survive till then --" he could see her grin, but not hear it in her tone "-- we'll be all right."

Odo arranged himself with his back against hers, between her and the wind. They were silent for a long time, Kira staring into the dark, Odo watching the darkening patterns of wind as it grew colder.

Then Kira saw it out of the corner of her eye: dim light on the horizon, flashing like a signal. She turned her face into the wind, peering around Odo's shoulder, and saw it again: thin stalks of lightening. "O no," she breathed.

"Is it the storm?"

"The Moq Anaar."

"How long before it reaches us?" The wind had risen until she could barely hear his voice, could only feel it thrumming through his chest.

"Maybe an hour, maybe less. It travels fast." She paused. "There's still a chance it won't pass over us."

"How long now until the station rises?" Odo asked, panic running through his body.

She reached for her tricorder with numb hands, opened it, and passed it to him. "I can't read it."

He took it, stared at it. "Too long."

"Dammit. Odo --"

She was surprised when she felt him close one arm around her, although she felt no heat from his form. Dimly she remembered that his normal skin temperature was lower than her own. "Don't talk. We wait, Major," he said tightly. She kept her eyes on the flashes on the horizon.

Odo held her, feeling the warmth of her body seep into his. The first time and the last, he told himself. He was still staring at the tricorder in his other hand, terror rising in his form as he read what it told him: that while his changeling body might withstand the winds of the Moq Anaar, her solid one would not. He looked into the wind and wondered how he would possibly manage to keep her from dying.-----------

The edge of the storm hit. Nerys felt her breath rip from her as the pressure changed. By the nearing lightening she could see the bare ground stretching away before her for the first time, could see Odo's arm clasped tightly across her chest. Then a flash exploded in her face, and she could see nothing but blurry afterimage imprinted on her retinas. She didn't realize in the noise of the storm that she had screamed.

"Kira," rasped Odo in her ear.

"It's getting worse, Odo," she shouted. She was convulsing with cold.

"Kira," he repeated. "I might be able-- "

"Odo," she said, ignoring him. "You've been my best friend."

He shook his head, but she didn't feel it and continued.

"We're not -- getting back to the station. At least I'm on Bajor -- home." He was catching every third word. "Ital," he heard. "I wanted you to know --"

The sky above them broke open.

Odo heard nothing of her last words. She would never look at him the same way, he knew: he would be alien to her by the time they were safe on the station. But it would save her life: he would pay that price.

Kira felt each raindrop like a phaser blast. She clenched her eyes shut. Then it all stopped.

For a second Kira thought she had died, and another part of her mind commented that death was surprisingly warm. She shuddered with the sudden heat.

Slowly she unclamped one of her hands and reached out, in confusion missing the pressure of Odo's arm around her. Her hand moved through the warm air, gradually un-numbing, until it met a wall. The wall was solid, and felt like glass. She spread her hands against it. Where was she? She moved her hand along the wall, feeling the smooth surface extend in a rough half-globe around her. Against her touch the wall contracted, shifting closer.

It finally came to her. She was in Odo.

Odo felt the full force of the storm slam into his surface. It reminded him, a little, of the first moments of the Link, the barrage of ideas and sensations -- and emotions -- that had at first overwhelmed him.

Now that he had shed his humanoid shape, he could see properly in the manner of his people: in all directions simultaneously. Deep violet winds coiled around him, so cold they were almost black. The spindly lightening legs of the Walking Storm danced around him, the only real danger: if a bolt struck him, he'd be dead. Odo dug into the frozen ground as best he could, bracing himself. From within, he felt Kira's hand against his skin.

Kira curled inside him like an infant in a womb, her eyes shut in the dark of his body. She wondered if he'd be able to withstand what was to come. Through his form she felt the vibrations of the storm: the thin knives of rain, the air left shaking after thunder. He was a shield around her, a fortress, strong armour. Despite the circumstances she began to relax, brushing her hand back and forth against him, hoping he could feel it as she'd felt his hand before in the dark. When he had a hand.

She wondered why she did not feel more surprise at his sudden alienness. No matter what shape he takes, he's Odo, she realized: -- Still taking care of me. It occurred to Kira that she had always had to make her own armour before; it was the first time in her life that someone had been able to protect her from the storm.

She settled in to wait for it to pass. Eventually she felt her conciousness fade.-----------

Kira realized that she'd been sleeping when the cold air hit her face again. She opened her eyes and sat up swiftly. The wind had stilled, and apparently it was almost dawn; there was a little light, and her eyes had adjusted to the dimness. She could see Odo before her, reverting slowly to humanoid form, arms closed around himself, hunched over against the ground. She was on her knees next to him immediately.

"Ital?"

He shook his head once sharply. "I'm all right." But he had only half reformed; his features were still soft, trembling. He shook his head again and tried to straighten. "It's over, Major. Call the station," he said.

And collapsed. He spread over the frozen ground like syrup.

Kira gasped despite herself, despite the hours spent inside him. She reached out to him automatically and her hand skimmed under his liquid surface.

For a moment she didn't move, her hand still in his flesh, realizing that she was almost reluctant to call the station. "Ital, es'auroha," she whispered.

Sliding into the depths of exhaustion, he felt the intimate Bajoran endearment like an electric shock. Odo came fully awake, listening, but didn't dare move. For a minute they both stayed still.

Kira broke the peace first, hitting her commbadge. "Kira to Deep Space Nine," she said.-----------

Back at the station, neither of them spoke to each other for almost two days. Odo had not come to visit her during the day and a half she spent in the infirmary under Bashir's sedatives, her frostbitten skin regenerating. Kira had assumed he was in his quarters, doing some regeneration himself. Then she was back at Ops, and Odo entrenched in his office on the Promenade. Each of them watched with dread as life returned to normal.

Everything, it seemed, was going to be the same.

Everything but them.-----

5: Breakdown-----

She'd lived with it a long while now, and she was almost getting used to it: the rough, gnawing creature in her stomach, the tightness in her chest. She'd spent more time on Bajor, days off, weekends, walking the wild parts of her home, trying to get the air of the station out of her lungs and the feel of the decks out of her feet. She'd even succeeded, but it hadn't helped. She found herself pacing at night in her quarters more and more often now.

Kira had begun to see Odo less, and though the hurt showed in his body, she ignored it. She watched him standing in the shadowy corners of the briefing room during staff meetings, arms folded, so resignedly apart from the others the she longed to go to him, to touch him as she had so briefly on the Moq Anaar Steppe. But she stayed away from him. It was for the best. If she was right about the way she'd been feeling, if she were attracted to him, it couldn't possibly lead anywhere but to disaster. Odo wasn't even vaguely humanoid. What he found stimulating couldn't possibly be what she found stimulating --despite the fact that they'd always had similar views on everything else. What he found attractive couldn't possibly be her.

It wasn't just attraction, she knew. But she didn't want to think about that at all.

"Ital," she thought, pacing. "Ital..."

Odo Ital had been sleeping in small places. His bucket was occupied now -- the plant was flourishing in it -- but when he was troubled he still fit himself into the tightest niches of his quarters, cramming his mass into the limited space the way a child would clutch a blanket. He was aware of his response, and it disturbed him. He didn't like the thought that after all the years he might be breaking down, that the burden of his love had finally overcome him. He'd always bitterly prided himself on not letting his passions interfere with his life; he didn't know what he would do if that were no longer the case.

It wasn't anything in himself that had changed, It was her -- the way she watched him, across the table at staff briefings, sitting as far away from him as possible but not far enough that she could not hold him in her gaze like a tractor beam. The way she said his name, rarely now that they spoke less. The way she was avoiding him.

It was obvious to his unwavering investigator's mind that he had finally given himself away. He knew she wouldn't say anything about it, just avoid him until gradually their friendship was forgotten and they were merely coworkers. Odo was paralyzed. He curled himself inside the protective orderliness of his quarters and watched it all fall away.-----------

She hadn't answered the door signal; when the door slid open anyway, Kira looked up, a swift sick feeling in her stomach, because no one else had the lockcode to her quarters. He stood in the doorway, the lines of his body making the square doorframe seem graceful. For what seemed a long time he didn't speak, until he scared her with his silence. Finally,

"I brought these reports by," Odo said, as tentatively as his brusque manner allowed. "You never came to pick them up."

She smiled a little, but not with any warmth. "Sorry, Constable. I've been busy. All the diplomacy with the Klingons, not to mention the love notes from Kai Winn."

What would have been a point of collusion between them now felt hollow to them both, and Odo winced to hear the word love in her voice, used in such a professional tone. Kira cursed herself for using it, and thought that she'd better end this quickly.

"That'll be all, Constable."

The words went through him like ice. He opened his mouth to speak, and Kira involuntarily felt her shoulders tighten.

"I suppose it will, Major," he said heavily. It had come to this, then.

He deposited the datapadds on her breakfast table and turned to leave.

He stopped himself and stood facing the door. The emptiness between them seemed palpable, as if there was only vacuum in the room. Odo thought he couldn't stand it, this slow death. If this were the end, he would make the most of it.

"Kira."

He hadn't turned around, and at first his voice was so low she wasn't sure he'd spoken. For a second he wasn't sure he had either.

But it was too late to stop. Odo felt each word leave him as if it were his lifeblood. His voice sounded strange to him, because he had heard these words only inside his mind, and they were worn familiar that way. He closed his eyes and let them slowly flow.

"I am. I have been. In..."

"I never thanked you," she said suddenly. There was something in her voice that made him look around, not quite bringing his eyes up to her face.

"For -- saving my life. In the Moq Anaar."

He raised his eyes cautiously, looking into her face as if it were the first time he had seen it: the wide brown eyes, the sharp eyebrows, the mobile mouth which had always startled him with its expressiveness.

As he met her eyes Kira inhaled sharply. There was something in his face, the expression she'd thought she'd seen that night long ago in his quarters, only now it was unmistakable.

The distance between them suddenly seemed too great, and she crossed it, taking his hand, staring him in the eyes. If she were wrong, if this were the end of their friendship, she thought, so be it. But it wasn't going to be without a goodbye. "Odo --" She pulled him half to her awkwardly.

He felt very slight, as if he'd been wasting. Only her arms and shoulders were touching him -- they stood too far apart; but Kira pressed her face against his shoulder, and felt his hand move up slowly to touch her hair.

Odo stood still with shock, too still even to take in breath, so that the last of it came out in silence.

"In love with you. Nerys. I am in love with you."

Then he took a deep breath and spoke the words aloud.-----

6: Contact-----

In the end, it was the paperwork that brought them together.

They were up late, in Ops, looking over the incoming personnel files. The station was quiet, and the low hum of the machinery could be heard. The lights were on night-cycle, only the emergency floods illuminating the area where they were working.

After he'd left her quarters that night, hurried and overly formal, she'd stayed standing there before the door for what seemed like a long while, her hands and face still feeling the pressure of his weight against them.

She'd stayed up late that night, too, doing the Federation bureauocratic paperwork she'd been avoiding, as an alternative to drink -- it worked better as a mind-number, anyway. She'd dreaded the reaction she knew would break over her once she let herself think about what had changed between them. Yet in the morning she'd felt only relief, and a slowly growing certainty that progressed, to her surprise, into happiness. All week long she had held the fact of Odo's love around her like a shield.

But she hadn't talked to him, nor seen much of him since; when she did, he was reserved, guarded. Like now. After an hour of silence, Kira was getting nervous.

Finally she stilled her hands at the console and leaned back in the chair. "You know," she said conversationally, "I can't believe I'm doing this."

"Doing what?" asked Odo warily from his chair.

"Falling in love with you."

There. It was said. There was a long silence as they both listened to her words echo through Ops.

"What, exactly, do you find so difficult to believe?" Odo asked finally, his voice dangerous.

"I...just never thought I'd -- fall in love again. Or that when I did, it would be with my best friend. And I certainly never thought it would be with anyone who...wasn't...Bajoran."

There was another long pause, and Kira held her breath.

"Does that bother you?" Odo's voice was strange. He didn't dare look at her. Shut up, Nothing, please shut up, he thought.

"No..." said Kira, thoughtfully. "No, I like your being a changeling."

"You do?" Odo was behind her with his uncanny speed; she could tell by the sudden closeness of his voice. She loved his voice, as mutable and full of expression as his body. "Do you mind me being -- solid?" she asked.

"No."

Kira turned to face him. "What you did -- on the steppe..."

"Yes?"

"I liked that."

"This?" Odo shivered and bled upward to form a translucent ceiling above her head, a wide arch with the torso and feet of a man. Kira reached up to touch him, smiling at his versatility. He felt like glass against her hand. Kira pressed both palms against him and ran them down the inside of the curve his body made.

Suddenly Odo flowed back down into his humanoid form, his face still as ever, but his eyes intense and alight. Kira realized that her hands were on his shoulders. A second later she realized that they were standing very close. Kira swallowed. Her hands moved on his shoulders, and she remembered that his uniform wasn't made of cloth, that she was touching his bare skin.

Odo said hoarsely, "Nerys."

Nerys stepped closer to him, ran one hand slowly down the sharp line that formed his jaw. She looked at him, his solemn, smooth, familiar face very close to hers. He was of her aurohur, the small circle of those she'd chosen as family, life-friends. He was the last person she'd allowed into that circle, years after she'd vowed to retire the distinction. She had not thought of him as a lover for a long time; now, the two concepts of her friend wavered, struggling against each other. She looked away. "Odo," she said, "I'm not sure if I can do this."

Odo was silent. He lifted his hand to cover hers, slowly moving it to run his fingers along hers, touching the newly-regenerated skin of her knuckles and the suddenly sensitive pads of her fingertips and palm, watching as her breathing grew deep and her fingers flexed under his. She let him touch her, afraid to look back at him, keeping her eyes on the metal of the floor. She couldn't remember if anyone had ever touched her so sensuously, and she was half-afraid if she looked at him he might stop.

"Nerys," Odo said again. He thought that if she didn't look at him he would have to kill himself.

Kira looked at him. She reached up and lightly kissed his lips; they were strange against her mouth, harder than she expected, cool and compact and smooth.

They broke away. Odo's mouth was clearly not set up for kissing, yet with the contact Kira found her face flushed, her pulse quickening. She'd never thought she would want him this much, once they began to touch. A faint sheen covered Odo's face.

"Your quarters," she whispered, because she could not find her voice.

He nodded gravely.-----------

(And here is where I say, Screw the plot!)

They strode through the corridors without a word to each other, neither looking at the other. At Odo's quarters Kira punched in the lockcode and stepped in, stopping inside the door but not turning. From behind her she felt Odo's hand tentatively touching her neck, her hairline, the smooth coolness of his fingers gliding on her skin. She shivered, and he withdrew his hand, moving past her into the room. His quarters were lit dimly by the sleepcycle lights, gleaming off the various structures and hangings. Odo paced forward, not looking at her.

"Major. Do you want anything? Tea? Synthale? A -- a chair, perhaps?" She'd rarely seen him so flustered, all of his native grace evaporating in his nervousness.

"Odo." He turned, stared at her. She was going to have to say it.

"I want you. To -- touch me." She shivered again at the sound of her own voice saying those words. It had been a long time before she would even say them to herself.

"How?"

The word was wrenched from a deep place within him. Kira realized that it might have as easily come from her own throat. She opened her mouth to answer but he had already reached out to her, his hand on the corner of her jaw. Slowly, slowly, he traced on her body the path her hand had traced on his form, along her jaw to her chin. The palm of his hand changed as it moved until it felt something like a mouth caressing her.

Kira's eyes had closed.

"Like -- that," she whispered, "Ital." Her eyes opened. They stared at each other.

"Nerys," Odo replied, and moved towards her. "I --" His voice caught and fell. "I've loved you..."

Kira took him close into her arms then, swiftly, and pressed her mouth against his skin, where his neck joined his shoulder; he had the sharply acidic taste of raw citrus. Kissing him felt like kissing a river; he was warm and flowed inside her mouth like water, between her lips. She dipped her tongue into him tentatively, then roughly as she felt him respond, his body moving against hers.

Odo moved slowly, unguided by his instincts or his wits, wishing he dared bleed his form at the edges to encircle her body. She could feel the currents of Odo's body as surely as he could feel her heartbeat; the periphery of his body was still, but deep within he was molten, and his substance roared and sang. There was no silence now. He was shifting inside, she thought; through her uniform she couldn't feel it, but the idea of it made her stomach clench. Kira reached behind her briefly to unclasp her tunic, intrigued by the sound of him. She'd never been close enough to him to notice it before.

Odo unfastened her tunic to the rhythm of her heart. He slid it from her slowly, wondering at the concept of nudity; it was something he had never dealt with before, not like this. He stopped when he felt the scars raised along her back and stomach, his form clarifying as his attention focused.

She felt his change and shook her head, her arms pressing into his back. "The Resistance," she said.

"O Nerys," he sighed, resting his head against hers. "I'm so sorry."

She took a short, sharp breath. "It's okay. I've lived with these awhile, I'm -- used to them." She finished in a whisper as her voice gave out.

"I wish that hadn't happened to you," he whispered, the need for justice welling up in him only to be frustrated. The scars were like defamations to him; they so clearly did not belong on the perfectly proportioned body beneath him that the wrongness of them overwhelmed him for an instant. Then he felt her hand stroking his hair. "It's all right, really," Kira said. "I survived. I'm with you now."

Kira saw the helpless look on his face and knew what he was feeling. She had wondered, when she'd first met him, at the generosity of his compassion even in his single-minded pursuit of justice. As she had come to know him she had come to accept that as just part of Odo, but now she felt her own passion for him rise in answer within her.

She tightened her grip on his head and back and felt her fingers sink half an inch into his flesh. Odo started, tightening around her. She moved closer to him and the boundaries between their bodies began to blur.

Odo slid her slacks from her hips, pausing as she hissed when the cool air touched her skin. When her knees buckled he sank down with her as she knelt on the floor.

He was becoming fascinated by the solid body in his hands, the mix of textures and consistencies under his touch. The closer she got, the more he felt his control leaving him. In the back of his mind he was terrified of slipping into his natural state, and he tried to hold his form. But Nerys' hands made it impossible. He felt her fingers dip in and out of his body, kneading his back. Kira heard him make a sound in what remained of his throat that reminded her of gravel slipping downstream. She opened her eyes.

He had turned gold and clear like liquid amber, though still he held his humanoid shape. She'd never seen anything so aesthetically beautiful as Odo "naked," balancing between form and formlessness. His translucent body caught and held the dim light, so he seemed almost to glow. His touch on her skin was dredging up images from dreams and daydreams she had had over the years; her fingers left trails etched in him as they moved over his surface. She suddenly ached to be inside him, to touch him at his deepest point.

She whispered hoarsely, "Odo, let me in."

Odo managed to nod, his forehead almost touching hers. Then, as panic rose, he rasped, "Ki-- Nerys, I may -- have to--"

She nodded, her eyes squeezed shut again in pleasure. "Ital, hei, es'aurur." Yes, O my beloved one.

At the sound of his name Odo quivered, ripples running over his skin. Kira caught her breath in delight. She couldn't wait any longer.

She thrust her hand into him: into his chest, up to the elbow.

Odo shuddered, rippling in circles from where her arm entered his body. Every inch of his surface was tuned to sensory input now, and Nerys' hand moved inside him, sending indescribable sensations through his mass. He had completely lost form, and he did not care. Amoeboid, he closed around Kira's body, touching everything.

He was gentle, so gentle, more than she had imagined anyone being. His surface was cool, but inside he was so hot he almost scalded her; not unlike his personality, she thought, briefly amused. Kira's other arm was locked around him, and against her hand at his back she could feel his surface constantly shifting, rough as bark, velvety, smooth as glass, spiny, gnarled. She could feel him beginning to move into her, flowing down between her legs like honey.

The rhythms of Nerys' body shook him: heartbeat, pulsepoints, ragged breath, the movements of her muscles as she rocked within him. Odo formed mouths to touch her, to kiss her; he had learned that shape from her. He moved inside her until he touched every inch of her. Something was building between them. One of his mouths found hers.

And then she felt him shaking. She'd never felt anything like it: a trembling that ran through him and grew until his whole body rushed, like the current of a river around her fingers and between her thighs.

Kira closed her eyes and tucked her head in against him, clenching and unclenching her fist within him as her muscles contracted. It came to her that she was repeating his name, Odo, Odo Ital, Ital, Ital. It came to her that she wanted nothing else but this, she wanted him and wanted him always. Kira dug her other hand into his flesh. Odo's tremors ceased, and a short flash of pain seared her fingertips; at the same time her vision seared red as she collapsed, weeping against him.

For a minute both were still, except for her small sobs.-----

7: Lifelines-----

"Sweet Prophets," Odo gasped. "Nerys?"

"I'm fine. I...Ital..."

"I'm sorry, Major," he said miserably.

She laughed, tears creasing on her cheeks. "Ital. That was...that was beautiful."

Suddenly she was aware of movement around her again. Odo was pulling away, coalescing back to his fully humanoid form. "What are you doing?" she demanded.

"I should leave," he said, in that voice of his. She loved his voice. "I have to regenerate soon."

"Stay with me, Odo," she said quickly.

"Nerys," he said, despairing, "You don't understand. It would be -- inconvenient for you if I remained." His voice was taut and hard.

Kira sat up, one hand on his half-reformed uniform front. "Listen, Odo," she said in her best Resistance voice, "I only want to have to say this once. You're --- you're beautiful. Graceful. When you--" she smiled, remembering "--take pride in your nature, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I like you being a changeling. I-- I desire you. And I want you with me. I-- You're--" She took a deep breath, and he could hear that she was still trembling. "I love you."

Odo let all his breath out in a short stab of wonder. He reached out one hand to her, and she took it and pulled him to her, holding him close enough that he could feel the dimming contractions of her body.

"Besides," she whispered, "We're in your quarters."

He laughed, the rare dry-leaf chuckle she'd heard so seldom before. Then he stilled and held her, his relief almost tangible through his skin.

"Will I be able to wake you, if I need to?" Nerys asked at last.

"I'll be able to hear you," Odo assured her, "I don't lose consciousness immediately." He kissed her, and slowly fell from the kiss, as Kira felt him dissolve in her arms into a rounded golden puddle.

Kira drew her fingers through him luxuriously and Odo stirred, slid a little up her fingers by way of a goodnight kiss. Then he subsided, and she curled up around him on the floor of his quarters, feeling Odo shift a little beneath her and listening to the beat of her own heart and the low thick hum of the station as it turned in the night around them.-----------

It was still nightcycle when she awoke, her limbs aching and stiff from sleep. Her first thought was that she could not hear her lover breathing, until she remembered that Odo did not breathe in rest. But the floor was hard and bare beneath her body, and as consciousness returned full force Kira realized in shock that Odo was no longer near her.

She sat up quickly, shivering, and cast about the room. Her eyes could find nothing in the dark. "Odo?" she called softly, frightened.

"I'm here." The voice came from behind her. She turned, and relaxed immediately as she spotted his dim humanoid form seated against the wall. "I was watching you sleep."

"I thought your body needed rest..."

"Every sixteen hours. I'm a little off-cycle. Besides, I couldn't stay asleep."

Kira pulled herself across the floor to Odo's side and leaned into him, so that she rested in his warmth. He wrapped his body around her and sighed, stroking the skin of her belly and the sensitive inner flesh of her arms. For a while neither of them had anything to say. Then,

"Ital."

"En zalai Nerys, es'auroha?" What is it Nerys, my love?

She smiled to hear her language in his voice. The words, the endearments, were like a gift. "I think I know when it was I fell in love with you."

"Hmmm. When?"

"It was after we found your people. You started ...experimenting."

"Oh?"

"You'd come into Ops one day with more lines on your forehead -" She reached up to stroke it -- "Or longer fingernails..."

"...I decided against those..."

She smiled. "I didn't know it then, I -- wouldn't admit it to myself; there was Bareil... But I was watching you...discover yourself, your abilities...and I fell in love with you then, Odo."

"I had loved you then a long time."

"I always was a little slow," she said dryly. Kira took one of his hands in her own, stroking the palm. At her back she felt Odo shudder. "Are you all right, Constable?" she asked reflexively.

He gave a short, happy laugh. "I'm fine, Major. That... feels...very pleasurable."

"I'll keep it up then," Kira said, continuing to explore his hand in the dark, by touch. "This has been easier than I thought it would be."

"How do you mean?" he asked.

"We've -- I never thought you'd even want to make love to a humanoid. For all I knew how to -- touch you, this way -- it could have been my first time. I...but it was...easy. It is so damn easy to make love to you, Odo Ital."

He said nothing, only ran his other half-formed hand along her face and neck to feel her smile. "I feel the same," he said at last.

"We make a good team," she said, and he almost smiled. "Most people wouldn't say that," he told her. "Neither of us has a reputation for affability."

"That's why we make a good team," she agreed. Her hand still moved over his; he could feel every line of her fingerprints, every minuscule ravine of her skin as the movement aroused his sense-organelles. The feeling had been growing more intense as they talked, and now he closed his eyes and gave himself over to her touch.

"You don't have any lines," she observed suddenly.

"What?"

"On your hands. No life lines. In the Resistance, we used to say that the length of the lines in your palm could tell how long you would live, and if the life would be happy." She added, "It was something we would have liked to believe."

"And I have none." There was a thin sharp note somewhere in his voice, a familiar one that she recognized for the first time as pain. She paused for a minute, remembering how he stood apart during staff meetings, the unbridgable gap between himself and the others.

Kira dug her thumbnail into his flesh, carving a deep crescent from the pad of his thumb around the base of his palm. She could hear him gasp, and felt a thin ripple run through his body, a mild echo of what she had felt there before.

She whispered, "You have one now."

Wordless in pleasure and emotion, Odo held her tightly against himself. Finally, he managed, "Life -- life, Nerys..."

"I love you," she whispered harshly. She had started to cry, startling herself. As Odo became aware of her tears, her sobs increased until she was shaking.

"Nerys. Nerys. What is it? What's wrong?"

"So much--" she choked, then gulped out, "So much death."

Odo held her, remembering the face of the Founder he had murdered. A hundred times over for Nerys, he realized, and held her tighter.

She wiped at her face furiously until he took her hands between his. "The people in the torture camps..." she said, her voice a haunted monotone. "So many people...I killed so many people, Odo, sweet Prophets, so many. But I could never do what they did. The things they...You couldn't imagine..."

He held her a while in silence. Then, "I...have had some experience with Cardassian -- methods," he said slowly.

Still trembling, she narrowed her eyes in surprise and turned towards him. "On Terok Nor?"

"No. I was far too valuable for that sort of thing," he said sardonically. "It was -- on Enabran Tain's ship. He and -- Garak -- wanted information about my...my homeworld." He huffed out his breath. "It wasn't pleasant."

Kira was staring at him in shock. "Garak interrogated you? You never told me...He --?"

He nodded, never breaking her gaze. "Hei, e'Nerys," he said softly.

She gritted her teeth. "I'll kill him. I'll rip his fucking eyes out. I'll --"

Odo shook his head. "It's all right. It's over." When she only stared at him he reached up and ran his hand down the length of the thin scar on her abdomen. Very gently he repeated, "It's over, my loved one, Nerys. I'm with you."

"Ah, Prophets, Ital --" She fell forward against him, and held onto him with the strength of grief.-----------

They sat like that, listening to her breath, for a long time. Kira felt him shift beneath her to fit the shape her body made, and when she moved she felt him readjust. Slowly it became a rhythm of give and take, she moving to make new patterns with her body and he moving to fill them. They were silent, concentrating only on the new forms they made together and listening to the sound of her breath.

"You know what this is like?" Kira whispered finally. There was a pause as Odo slowly reformed lungs and esophagus and took in air to speak. "What?"

"It's like dancing."

"Dancing?"

"I used to be good at that."

He pulled away from her to look at her inquiringly, his face re-forming as he did. Fleetingly Kira marveled at the grace of his movements, his changes; he had never allowed himself such ease with his shapeshifting around her before...except once. "You dance, don't you?" she whispered.

"Me?"

"When you drill, you have music..."

An odd expression came over his face, an expression she'd never seen before and that she somehow doubted he'd ever made before. "I...I did think of it that way. I...didn't think anyone else would see it as that," he said.

She smiled. "Come on then." Kira heaved to her feet, still nude, and walked to the middle of the room. "Computer," she said, "Audio program Kira-delta-indigo-nine."

Horns started softly in the air. Kira held her hand out. Odo stood, his form solid now and familiarly uniformed, and went to her.

[Dan-cing in the dark...]

Her hands slid around his waist, and for a minute they were still. Then slowly Kira began to move, a swaying that started from her hips and grew as the music grew. After a second Odo followed her, feeling the rhythm of the music as he had felt the her heartbeat. They were silent, both concentrating intensely on their bodies and the motion they were creating. Kira moved her hands up his body to rest around his neck, leading him into turns and feints as the clarinet looped and soared. The look on Odo's face was extraordinary; it was the look she'd fallen in love with, that of unashamed pleasure in what he was, and in what he was doing. In the absence of pain and bitterness, she decided, Odo's face was intensely beautiful.

They were perfectly in sync now, moving against each other across the bare floor of Odo's quarters. Suddenly Odo turned and dipped her, and she laughed in delight, bringing a hand up to caress the back of his head. Odo stared into her face as they moved. He'd never seen her so relaxed, so -- trusting. So in love, he thought, and then realized what he was thinking and what it meant. Kira Nerys is in love with me.

Kira pulled him in closer. "This dance is from Dahkur Province, from before...the Occupation," she murmured. "The music is Julian's. Old Earth Jazz -- Ellington." She reached up to touch his face. "Garak -- you `eat' with him, after what...he did to you."

"We share something," Odo replied slowly. "We -- we are both -- exiles. It's important to have someone who understands what that's like." Kira was about to speak, so he said quickly, "I still-- long to be among my own people. I can't join them, not ever now, I know that. But I long for them, for my family. Nerys, I was -- so -- alone -- here. Every day, seeing you, and thinking: it's something I'll never have... I --"

She grimaced. "I'm sorry, Ital, e' taquu auroha. I'll try to -- make up for lost time." She smiled soberly, with a little fear. "Just don't leave me, all right? Don't go anywhere."

Odo shook his head. "I never will, Nerys. Not without you."

He wrapped his arms around her and moved with her like a flame to the music around them. "What is this, Nerys?" he whispered in a hoarse rumble. "Where are we?"

She thought before she answered, her voice very low. "Efre'."

"That's a Bajoran term."

"It means, lasting peace. It's safety, and -- being loved. It's what we prayed for in all those years of war..." She paused, smiling a little. "I didn't think I'd ever make it here."

He laughed at that, the low sound thrumming through his form. "I didn't either...Efre'..." He ran his hands along the lines of her face. "You were right about one thing."

"What...?"

"It is like dancing."

She laughed then as the music ended, slipping her hand into his, and feeling there a long crescent line.

- END -

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