Pain radiated off him even as his words reverberated within the room: "Whichever side wins, one thing is certain, I'm going to lose."
Odo stood before her, his back rigid and his wounds bleeding. Kira Nerys shut her eyes against the heartrending truth of his words.
The war raged on with the Dominion, and here, behind the lines drawn by Jem'Hadar and admirals between the sparkling dots of light out there, one casualty of the conflict may never be counted in the millions already dead or injured.
"Odo?" She tried to turn him around to face her, but he resisted, ignoring her impatient hands. Not a woman given to holding out false hope, she tried vainly to find some words to comfort him, to bind up his raw and bleeding wounds, but she could find none. "Odo, I'm sorry."
He said nothing. The pain only intensified as if the silence fed its hungry maw.
Platitudes suited neither of them. And even if they had, Kira could think of none to offer. Blunt honesty offered now only seemed cruel and base against his anguish. Kira tried to form her mouth around words of sympathy, but even those seemed hollow against the enormity of his pain. "I know how difficult this is for you."
"Do you?" The crusty cynic had returned with a tone dripping with lethal sarcasm. Kira almost felt the need to take a step backward, to distance herself from the unbridled violence in his voice. "I can't help them, I can only continue to hurt them."
Keeping her own voice even and gentle against his jagged emotions, she tried to defuse the flaring tension in the room. "I know you care about them, Odo. But they've turned their backs on you."
The very words he'd used with Weyoun reared up to taunt him. "Isn't it the other way around?" he growled.
"No. They couldn't accept you, Odo."
"They're my people. They should have accepted me," he cried.
"But they didn't. They tricked you and they held out false promises. They offered their brand of justice, Odo, to the Alpha Quadrant and to you."
"They offered me a chance to know myself, to belong to something." Finally, he turned toward her, his mask-like face alive with warring emotions. Kira tried to keep her eyes on his face, hoping to read whatever she could from the features she had grown to know so well over the past few months. She tried to let the sting of his words pass by without comment or the hint that they pierced her deeply. "I know what it's like to be in a war for your life, for your very existence, Odo," she practically whispered. "I know that both sides lose in wars, no matter which side wins. Bajorans were able to defeat the Cardassians, but we lost...."
"What did you lose, Nerys?" He stepped toward her, his piercing blue eyes boring into her. "You still have your people, your planet, your gods...."
"My childhood? My family?" His raw anger had lit the fuse on her own and she stepped toward him, unwilling to back down now. "My friends? My home?"
Odo visibly shivered as her cold words cracked his fiery facade. His own despair had brought them to this battleground, and he realized just how treacherous a place it could be with unexploded mines scattered around them. Kira stood defiantly before him, her eyes locked on his, her breaths coming in deep, rasping waves of anger. He thought to surrender, but just then Kira's commbadge chirped.
"Colonel," came the voice of Ensign Nog, "please report to the Defiant."
"You have patrol," he said, traces of bitterness still in his voice.
Tapping her commbadge, she acknowledged the signal, but remained in place. Kira knew that they had crossed over an invisible line into a war zone of their own. Stepping backward, she ceded him the territory she had just gained then tried a new direction. "I'm just saying you're not the only one who will lose something, Odo."
If she had known how he would interpret her words, she would have thought longer about them, maybe couched them differently. Despite the firepower of his previous outbursts, she was unprepared for the explosion that ripped through the tenuous peace.
"This isn't about you, Nerys." The growl had become a roar. "This is about my people and what is happening to them. It's about the Dominion and the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar and who knows how many other people my people have enslaved and engineered for their own purposes. Their inherent need for order is now destroying them. It's destroying millions of lives. My people are dying. It's not just about what happens to Bajor or to you or even to us." His voice, once so loud it filled the room, faded as he realized what he had put into words. Like daggers, the words attacked the carefully nurtured relationship between them, and all Odo could see was Kira shrinking away from him in the same way she had on the Promenade over a year ago. Then he had placed the lure of the Great Link above everything--his individuality, her life, their friendship--and now he saw his own words make her bleed. Again.
Squared off, neither flinched although Odo knew they both needed to retreat. Kira stared at him, her face a kaleidoscope of emotions--anger, shock, hurt, grief--that she resolutely tried to control. Odo suffered his own avalanche of feelings, the pain in watching Kira wrestling for control his greatest ache.
"I have learned over the years, Constable, that we can choose sides. Whichever side we choose has to be one we can live with." Her eyes never left his face and he felt the fiery intensity of that gaze as her words were softly spoken. "I, for one, won't live like a slave to anyone." Her commbadge chirped again, and she angrily slapped at it, only to be urged to report to the Defiant again.
"Acknowledged," she choked out. Lifting her eyes to his, she looked at him warily. "I better go," she said simply while her face betrayed a host of emotions roiling just beneath the surface. She paused, the fire of her words reduced to smoldering ashes. "This is a war about more than just you, Odo," she whispered against the heavy air. "I know you're hurting, and I wish I could help you. I'd give anything to stop your pain. But I'm not the enemy, Odo. Don't treat me like the enemy."
She turned, then paused as if she had something more to say. Then she impulsively faced him, striding determinedly back to where she could roughly pull his face to hers and kiss him fiercely on the mouth. Surprised, Odo initially pulled away from her, then realized the message in her actions, and leaned in hungrily, infusing all his passion in that kiss.
She strode purposefully toward the airlock, certain that Captain Benjamin Sisko himself would be waiting there as much for her explanation as for the purpose of upbraiding her away from the rest of the crew. Fresh from one battle, she half-expected another and braced herself as she turned the corner. But the only Starfleet uniform to greet her tardy appearance at the airlock was that of Ensign Nog's. Without waiting, he launched into a hasty alibi for her as he slid into step with her toward the Defiant.
"Colonel, one of the Klingon ships--the Sola'ren--picked up some odd sensor readings just this side of the Badlands and one of the officers, Kem'tar, I believe, dropped these off for us," he offered as he handed her the dataPADD.
"Nog, what's this all about?"
The ensign stopped in the chamber between the large geared doors. "Chief O'Brien wanted to make it up to you, I mean, about the Captain's desk. And he thought you might need," he tried to lift her hand via the dataPADD, "a good reason for being late."
"Nog, I can take care of this myself." She dropped her hand, but still clutched the dataPADD.
"I know, Colonel," he said as they stepped over the bulkhead, into the Defiant's own airlock. "But the Chief wanted to make sure that you wouldn't, well, take up the Captain's valuable time with explaining what happened to his desk."
Kira sighed, and shook her head. "All right, Mr. Nog. I'll deliver the sensor readings to the Captain. I won't mention the desk."
The Ferengi's smile split his face in two. "Great, Colonel."
"Just tell me what story you told the Captain to find yourself at the airlock."
"Oh, that was really rather simple. You see, the Chief detected a problem in one of the sensors here and sent me down to check on it."
"Was this at the second comm signal or the third?"
"Second. You're usually very punctual."
Kira nodded tiredly, then paused, steadying herself just before the door leading to the Defiant's bridge. As the door receded, she stepped over the bulkhead and headed straight for Captain Sisko. Nog disappeared from her peripheral vision, but she guessed he made a detour to the Engineering station to confer with O'Brien.
"Captain, the first officer of the Sola'ren wanted us to have this before we departed. Kem'tar found some anomalous readings just outside the Badlands. It looks like Jem'Hadar engine signatures."
Benjamin Sisko studied the face of his First Officer before dropping his eyes toward the padd in his hand. "You're late, Colonel."
"Yes, sir. It won't happen again, sir."
Sisko tapped the padd in his hand and turned his eyes upward toward Kira. Anger still blazed in her eyes and he wondered to whom she had recently directed that fiery gaze. "I imagine you had to get these from the Sola'ren computers."
Honest by nature, Kira decided to drop the pretense. "Sir, I...."
But Sisko cut her off. "Man your station, Colonel. You can fill me in later. Right now, I'd like to test out the new graviton stabilizer."
Sketching a nod, Kira retreated to her station, glancing toward O'Brien who was busy at his panels and at Nog who had slipped into the helmsman's seat. She caught Sisko in that sweeping look, and felt little surprise that he, too, had busied himself with preparations for departure.
Patrols varied by the routes taken and the chance meetings along the way, but by little else. Space retained a tenuous map of ships passing through its territory, and by patrolling those areas, a good ship and crew could reconstruct the travels of dozens of vessels. Kira had already channeled the communications traffic she'd detected to Garak's station where he worked at dividing the various strands then deciphering them to make sense out of what merely looked like gibberish. Her own computer winked at her efforts to make tangible patterns of sensor readings that stubbornly refused to give up their secrets. For almost six hours, she fought to maintain her own patience made ragged by her encounter with Odo. From early on in her life, she'd been able to push aside personal feelings and errant thoughts to focus on whatever job lay before her. It had made her a deadly force within the Resistance. Concentrating on the electronic blips pushed aside the tendrils of despair which kept creeping into her thoughts.
"Captain, most of the communications traffic we're detecting here concerns civilian supply ship movements within the area," Garak reported. The spy-turned-tailor-turned-spy swiveled to face the Captain. "I'm not able to find any other kinds of war-specific messages here."
Sisko nodded, and steepled his hands in front of him. Patrols gave him a lay of the land, so to speak, but none of his instincts had been triggered by sensor readings or communication traffic so far. The viewscreen had only provided a calm blanket of space. His bridge crew, dedicated and professional, never missed much, but he sensed that they had reached a plateau of usefulness.
He pushed the comm button at his console and announced a reprieve for his bridge crew. "Second shift report to the bridge."
All around him he sensed a collective sigh from the tired officers who stretched and began updating displays with a renewed vigor.
As the new set of officers filtered onto the bridge and began taking over stations, he focused his attention on Colonel Kira. For six hours, she'd said little, leaving the banter to O'Brien, Nog and the others on the bridge. He sensed that she wrestled with more than recalcitrant sensors and overlapping communications traffic; his instincts told him that he need look no further for an explanation than Odo's report on his encounter with the Vorta. At times, Kira could hold off thinking or feelings about parts of her life with the control of a Vulcan. It made her a good officer, but it had also crippled her at times. Sisko studied the precise movements of the woman as she called up star charts and sensor data, then he shivered as a stray thought sneaked up on him: Kira could lose as much as Odo in this war.
Whatever demons visited her waking moments, Kira remained a steadfast presence on the bridge. One of the last to arrive to the ship, she would also be one of the last to leave the bridge. Quietly she briefed her replacement, calling up information on the display screens to illustrate her points. The Starfleet lieutenant nodded, interjecting a question or two while sliding into the recently vacated seat.
"Is there a problem, Colonel?" Sisko banished thoughts about Kira and Odo to a closet of his mind which he closed and locked for now.
"No sir, we're still using one of the secondary sensors. Engineering warned that if they can get the primary sensor back, it's likely to create a sensor shadow if the secondary is still on line." Kira prodded one of the displays to life. "There's a problem with the command relays. Engineering is working on it."
Sisko considered her for a moment. Realizing that he was still at her back, Kira turned. "With your permission, sir, I'd like to stay here until the sensors are fully operational." The other officers had practically fled the bridge for their quarters or the mess hall. Her eyes pleaded with him and he knew that she needed work to help distance herself from the emotional turmoil lurking within. He little doubted that Weyoun's death had touched Odo alone.
"All right, Colonel. Give me twenty minutes or so. In the meantime, you have the bridge."
Starfleet Academy lecturers taught that a good captain could read his crew. Sisko felt the changed dynamic within the mess to be a hundred light years from the studied professionalism on the bridge. One table of officers was caught in the throes of a half-serious debate filled with wild gestures and raised voices while another erupted into full-scale laughter. The break from the routines of patrol had occurred none too soon for the war-weary crew.
Garak, Nog and O'Brien had taken up station close to the Replicator where the three seemed engaged in a quiet discussion. With his own steaming cup of raktagino, he slid into the seat at the head of their table.
"Sir, is it true that Constable Odo brought a dead Vorta to the station?" asked Nog. "And that the Vorta killed himself rather than let Odo be killed by the Jem'Hadar?"
"And where did you hear that news, Ensign?" Sisko blew at the steam and tested the strong Klingon coffee. Few secrets could be kept from the close-knit command staff.
"It pays to keep one's ears ready, sir."
"And dataPADDs from Klingon first officers." Sisko hid his smile behind another sip of coffee.
Nog flushed, then began studying the table with renewed zeal. O'Brien stared into his own drink and avoided the eyes of the Captain.
"We were just saying, Captain, that the Vorta must be very dedicated to the Founders if one of them would sacrifice his life to save Odo's," Garak offered to the awkward silence. "I was just wondering if Odo could have any influence on the Founders regarding this war, especially now that the Founders appear to be ill."
Sisko had wondered the same thing, but thought to sound out Kira on the subject before approaching the Constable. For now he shook his head and caught the eyes of all the men at the table. "Whoever wins, the outcome will be hard on the Constable."
Nog had earned a special place among the bridge officers and station personnel with his devotion and work ethic. But now his desire to have the right answers at the ready only grated on Sisko as he heard the very words he had been trying to store in the back of his own mind. "If the Dominion wins, they won't much like the fact that the Constable was involved with the war against them and they will probably resent his involvement with a solid," Nog poured out breathlessly. "Would they execute some of the solids as a means of punishing the Constable?" The implication remained unspoken, but each man could guess at which solid might be one of the first to die.
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," pronounced Garak.
"I'll second that," O'Brien added grimly.
Sisko set his mug down firmly, a means of punctuating his words. "They have to win the war for that particular scenario to be played out, gentlemen. We've been able to keep them off-balance and weaken them considerably of late. And I for one have no intention of seeing them win this war."
His words had the effect he wanted. O'Brien brightened a bit while Nog straightened his shoulders and pulled himself taller in his seat. Garak simply nodded and curled his lips in a kind of smile.
Sisko had wanted to talk of other things to draw the discussion to a lighter fare, but his commbadge chirped at the same time a signal washed the mess in red light. "Captain to the bridge. Battle stations."
The short trek to the bridge was fraught with danger as the deck beneath his feet rocked and bucked wildly. Sisko could not feel the shocks which usually meant the ship had been hit with a phaser charge. He did feel the vibration of phaser fire coming from the Defiant. Once. Twice. As the doors revealed the bridge, the scene appeared surprisingly calm despite the hazardous journey there as one officer attacked a fire sparking from one of the consoles and Kira sat at the helm, her fingers flying over the controls.
"Report!"
"Two Jem'Hadar attack vessels came out of the plasma fields and fired at us, but missed. They exploded some of the debris in the area," Kira cried over the red alert blare. As Nog replaced her behind the helm, she turned her complete attention to the Captain. "There must have been a mine or unexploded torpedo in that debris. We were hit by the shock wave. A sensor shadow alerted us to their presence and we were able to destroy one of them before the other one disappeared into the plasma field."
"Damage?"
"A plasma conduit ruptured on the bridge, Ensign Ryka was slightly injured, but no other reports of damage here, sir." Sisko's eyes took in the medics treating forehead of the dazed helmsman.
"I've got a minor leak in section 5 alpha, sir, but she's still solid as a rock," O'Brien added. He and most of the first shift officers had reappeared at their stations and were assessing the conditions of the ship and crew while watching for menacing blips on their consoles.
"They missed us?"
"We ducked," Kira shrugged.
Sisko arched his eyebrows. His First Officer, usually blunt in other things, used understatement to describe her own accomplishments. "How did a sensor shadow alert us to a Jem'Hadar attack, Colonel?" Sisko queried.
"We were getting two readings for several minutes, Captain. Lt. Gottlieb figured out that the shadow and the primary sensor readings were essentially different. I took a chance, went to red alert and readied phasers."
His Bajoran first officer managed even now to surprise him with her battle instincts. Her training in the Resistance had made her combat sharp; her six years working with the Federation had refined her hunches. She also had developed a fine grasp of managing a crew. Lt. Gottlieb visibly straightened at the mention of her name, her body language acknowledging the compliment in the attention by her superior officer. "What do you think we'll find in the plasma fields?" Sisko asked as he eased himself into his chair. Kira remained standing to his left.
"The Sandburg was reported missing in this area, sir. My guess is we'll find them hiding there."
The Captain whistled then threw a look to his First Officer. "How do you know it's the Sandburg?"
"Our sensors picked up the residual warp signature of a vessel just before the Jem'Hadar appeared. It seems they might have tried to come out of the plasma fields, but thought better of it when the Jem'Hadar appeared. It's a Federation signature, but beyond that, we don't have any other information."
Sisko studied Kira's words then nodded. "We're going to trust the Colonel's instincts, today, gentlemen. Take us in Mr. Nog."
The Bajoran Resistance used to hide out in the Badlands, the plasma fields spurting odd plumes of gas that disrupted sensors which provided cover to any daring enough to use the area as a shield. For the sub-impulse ships of the Resistance, it was a perfect playing field against the warp power of the Cardassian ships. Both sides flew blindly, but the Bajorans with their tenacious desire for independence and reliance on their senses rather than their sensors had developed an almost unfair advantage against the technology-dependent Cardassians.
Kira Nerys, her late teens spent learning how to fly one of the sub-impulse raiders, paid more attention to her view screen than to her sensors. A flicker, then a spume of flaming gases, then... "There. At 137.3."
She had called attention to its presence even before the large view screen revealed a starship heavily damaged, listing to one side. Sisko tensed, certain that he could be sure of almost nothing in the treacherous space of the Badlands. Broken ships like this one had drawn in more than one Federation vessel only to explode or reveal Jem'Hadar hiding nearby. But his own well-honed instincts took over, pushing away those troubling thoughts and he decided to go ahead. "One quarter impulse, Mr. Nog. Chief, can we get a tractor beam on them?"
"We'll have to get within less than 100 meters of them for the tractor beam to be effective, sir."
"Mr. Nog?"
"I'm on it, sir."
"Communication?"
"Trying, sir," Kira reported, "but there's no response. Sensors are picking up what might be massive hull breeches, some life signs, human maybe, but it's hard to tell with all the interference."
Sisko spared a glance at his first officer, her back toward him as she tried to make sense out of sensors spurting out information at the whim of spitting plasma.
"It looks like the Jem'Hadar used them for target practice," Nog muttered as he brought the ship alongside the wounded vessel. Gaping holes offered up intimate views of the belly of the ship, laid bare by strafing fire along its hull.
The plasma fields rarely made anything easy. "Colonel?"
"I can't tell how many survivors, but there is minimal life support in the saucer section," Kira offered.
"Keep trying," he ordered knowing full well how tricky sensor readings could be in the Badlands.
"I've got a lock on them, sir." O'Brien cursed, then repeated the message. "I've got them, but we better move fast."
"Two Jem'Hadar fighters at 246.9 and 268.2," Kira called out at the same time. "Phasers, Mr. Montrose."
"Ready, sir."
"Target the lead ship. Fire!"
The Defiant limped home slowly with the Sandburg in tow, a routine patrol made less routine by the rescue of a battered ship and crew and the destruction of four more Jem'Hadar fighters. The cost of playing in the plasma fields had been high: with a normal crew complement of 150, the Sandburg claimed only 73 officers and crew among the living. The Defiant registered only seven injured crewmen, but enough bruises along its hull to give O'Brien and his engineers days of repair work.
When Kira stepped onto the ship with O'Brien and medics at her back and an engineering crew sparkling to life just behind them, she felt the cold sensation of having stepped inside a tomb. A life spent hiding in caves and finding sleep in hollowed out mounds of earth had prepared her for harsh conditions. Years spent as a soldier had readied her for the smells of death that flared to glorious life as the transporter sparkle faded away.
The small contingent of medics dispersed through the corridors to seek the living.
Engineering crews scattered to resurrect dead sections of the ship.
With only O'Brien behind her, Kira slowly made her way through the tangled jungle of conduit and ruptured bulkheads toward the bridge. Life support and lights were at minimal levels, and Kira could hear O'Brien's labored breath sometimes compete with her own. Now and then a tricorder reading would alert them to excess radiation, forcing them to find a different route toward the heart of the ship. It was heartbreakingly slow going and neither O'Brien nor Kira said much as they waded past crewmen caught in cold, broken statues of death. They tagged the injured they found with tiny transmittersÐÐbeacons to draw medical teams; they ignored the dead as best they could.
In a small corridor just below the bridge, they found one couple forever locked in an embrace leaning against one of the bulkheads. Numbed by the destruction they already found, neither Kira nor O'Brien had spent much time contemplating the dead so intent were they on finding the living. But both stopped and stared openly for several minutes at the intimate union. The man encircled the woman in his arms, mindful of only her returning embrace. The woman seemed to be resting her head on the man's shoulder; his head cradled hers. Somehow, their bodies had seemingly melted into one, then froze in place. A large piece of shrapnel protruded from the back of the woman.
Neither O'Brien nor Kira spoke, but each offered up silent prayers for the lost lovers and for loved ones back on the station. Then they moved on.
More and more Kira found it as difficult to wash away the grime of war as it was to rinse away the offending images. With little more than eight hours of sleep scattered over 79 hours of patrol duty, the achiness in her bones had erupted into painful creaks. But even as she tried to find sleep behind her eyelids, the glaring scene of a couple embracing each other in death appeared before her. She dared not reflect too much on them for fear of what other images it might conjure in her weary brain.
Tired beyond all reason, she silently thanked the Prophets that Odo was on his own patrol of the Promenade and that she might succumb to sleep before he returned. She had fought too many battles within the last few days to fight another.
Yet she missed him. Beyond massaging her weary bones to sleep, Odo could regale her with tales from the station's denizens to drive away images from her mind. Or he could listen to her own story of adventure on the star-studded ocean. Or he could just be, in the same way she could just be. Their silences spoke much.
Too tired to find her commbadge, she called to the computer to contact Odo. "Constable," she said to the audio sensors in the ceiling, "please report to Kira when you can."
For a moment she thought to call him back and replace the cryptic message with a more detailed one, but her mind, already numbed by sleep and half a glass of Bajoran spring wine, refused to devise a better invitation. With that one offer outstanding, she let sleep claim her.
Reared in the Resistance, she'd learn to take what rest she could. Bits and pieces of sleep would have to take her through to morning or beyond, and that habit remained deeply ingrained within her. As a child of the Resistance, she could wake at the smallest noise. When the doors to her quarters swooshed open, Kira woke slowly, pushing aside the hazy veil that still surrounded her. "Odo?" she called from the bedroom.
As if to answer her, the tall, lean security officer shyly stepped into the room. In the dimmed lights, the shadows accentuated his mask-like visage. "Colonel?"
She'd half-expected a return to the hostilities that marked their last meeting, but she had little energy and no desire to fight. "Lights up," she ordered even as she pulled her reluctant body to a sitting position on the bed.
The shadows chased away, Odo remained stiffly attentive, his hands folded behind his back. He'd made little progress into the bedroom, his eyes betraying his nervousness. And doubt.
Pulling her robe closer around her, Kira stood, then padded over to him. Gathering him in her arms, she surrendered whatever battles still needed to be fought between them and simply savored the victory of holding him. "You feel so good, Constable."
He relaxed in her arms and drew her closer. "I'm sorry, Nerys. I shouldn't have...."
She pushed away from him suddenly, causing the look of fear and doubt to return to his eyes. Smiling to reassure him, she rose up on her toes and kissed the tip of his nose as she cradled his face in her hands. "Have I told you about the Great Continuum?"
Odo snorted in surprise, but his eyes softened and he graced her with a look of pure enchantment. "You called me here to tell me about Ferengi commerce theory?"
"Nog or Quark could probably explain this better than I can."
"I'm sure." Amusement danced in his eyes.
She kissed his thin, forbidding lips which melted to meet hers. For a moment, they let the wars be fought by others as they made their own truce. Breaking away from him reluctantly, she continued her story. "There are millions of universes, each with their haves and needs...."
"And the Great River runs through it all. I've heard this particular Ferengi story. You haven't gotten much sleep, have you?"
"Just think about it, Odo. Maybe there is a way for you to win, and your people to win, and for the Federation to win. Or at least, get something out of this." Kira Nerys, not born to compromise, was offering him an oar to face the great deluge around him. "Maybe we have something that they want."
"Order and control of the Alpha Quadrant," he offered wryly.
"No, something else, Odo. Something far more important to them than the Alpha Quadrant. I can't give you," sadness crept into her words, "or them the Great Link, but maybe you can give it back to them."
He stared at her, the realization just beginning to break against his resistance. "There are so many things I don't know about my people, Nerys. I don't know how to help them. Or even if I can. And I doubt they'll accept my help. And what about the Federation?"
"The Founders may have little choice if they want to survive, Odo," Kira said earnestly. "I'm not sure if it will work either." Thoughts tumbled together, and she knew her words might make little sense outside her own mind. "Maybe I haven't had enough sleep, or maybe it's that I'm tired of spending my life at war. I don't know. But it's worth exploring, Odo. I don't trust them, but I have faith in you." She paused. "It's something to consider at least. Weyoun might have been right, you might be able to create a new Dominion."
"Nerys, don't."
"Odo, I don't know if any of this makes sense. Maybe the answer isn't in looking to belong, but in creating a place to belong to."
Odo let the words settle around them as he considered their meaning. It was an idea without a plan, a map without a key. "I don't know where to begin," he stammered.
"Neither do I," she confessed. "But according to Nog, if we navigate the river with skill...."
"...And grace, the river will provide," Odo finished. "Since when did you start listening to Ferengi stories?"
"I spent a lot of time with Nog this trip," she deadpanned.
He chuckled, then drew her into his arms. "The river will provide."
"I hope so," she said as she snuggled into him. "Maybe there's a way. Maybe we can find it together."
"I hope so," Odo murmured as he felt her fall into sleep in his arms. "I hope so."