“I know,” said Jadzia softly, wishing Worf had been there to hear his son confirm what she’d always been pretty sure of, though she wasn’t sure he would’ve admitted to it in front of his father, that he had received that treatment on Qo’nos.
The medical exam has obviously been more stressful, but at least he had been told he was in good health. It seemed to Jadzia, as she listened to her son talk about it, that he viewed himself as having conquered that exam, and so now was ready to conquer any academic exams too.
It was good to see him adapting well. Especially, she couldn’t help but think, because of what might happen with him if she didn’t avert this disaster. If worst came to worst, he did have two sets of grandparents who were both willing to take him in, although Jadzia’s parents had never seen enough of him for either their or her own liking. She supposed he might do better on Earth than on Trill, where they were more used to aliens, although obviously that he was half-Klingon was going to be a problem anywhere he went outside Klingon space.
His determination to conquer the exams also meant she had no trouble getting him to take up the right padd and buckle down to study before she went on duty. She left him hunched over it and quietly repeating to himself what sounded like a Vulcan scientific equation.
The lab overnight had received a shipment from the planet of newly discovered fossils from Martisheva’s arctic regions, and that kept Jadzia nicely occupied throughout her shift. Had she not had the most dreaded event of her life hanging over her head, she would have been very happy that day. Even as it was, she could not help but marvel over a couple of them that were millions of years old, containing evidence of some of the earliest life that evolved on the planet, forgetting everything for a moment or so.
Two hours before her shift ended, she was just entering the results of her analysis of one of the newer ones, which had a lot of information attached to it, when Commander Sand came in. He was not someone Jadzia would’ve expected that day at all, and nor was he something she at all wanted to deal with, not before she knew which way her entire life was about to go.
He first looked around to see if they were alone, then said, “Unfortunately I have bad news. Yesterday when I offered you a position as my first officer, you asked if I could bring your husband on board as well. I asked about this, and I now can confirm the answer is no. The Admiral who has the charge of the command is insisting I take one of his people for head of Security, as well as for Engineering, and your husband is too high-ranked to be under him either. He would’ve been overqualified anyway, honestly.
I know you’ll probably turn the position down now, but I would still ask, Commander, that you not do so this moment. Please take the extra day?”
Had he asked this the previous day, her superior or no, Jadzia probably would have officially given him her refusal right then anyway. Aside from the knowledge that she couldn’t take it, it displeased her when superior officers made these kind of pressure-filled requests to her, and it also raised the question of how happy she’d be serving under him, even if the position was in every other way what she’d always wanted. But now she was aware she might just need what that new position and rank could bring her. She could write Nerys her recommendation, for one thing.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll give you my answer tomorrow night.” If for any reason Julian failed her, she doubted Nerys would take that long to act. In fact, she was hoping she at least would give her time enough and not act sooner.
She went back and forth about comming her as she went to Julian’s. But she ultimately decided against it. Best not to give her any hopes until they could be fulfilled. Besides, Worf might or might not be too busy to talk to her anyway.
When she rang the bell, she heard Julian’s, “Jadzia? Is that you?” which sounded nervous and unlike him. When she called out, “Yes, it’s me,” the door slid open to reveal him still in uniform, but in his blue undershirt; he even still had his boots on. “Come in quickly,” he said.
He’d been on the starbase a little longer than Jadzia and Worf had, which made it shocking that he hadn’t unpacked. His suitcases sat by the table, one of them opened out on the floor with its contents scattered and spilling over. The rest of the room was bare; he hadn’t even set up the holo of his family that had been taken after his father had finally been released. “Wow,” she commented, “have they been keeping you extra busy or something?”
“No,” said Julian. “It’s a little more complicated than that. Or maybe simpler. Sit down.”
Something was wrong, obviously. In fact, when she took a close look at Julian now, Jadzia saw other things, like that it didn’t look like he’d been sleeping much, and, more than that, he looked almost ill. “I suppose I should get you a drink,” he said. “You might want it too, I’m afraid.”
“No,” she said, because she couldn’t afford it for her side of this conversation. Although vital as that was to her and Worf’s future, it was getting harder to concentrate on that, when all she could think was a desperate What’s wrong with him, please…
He looked over at the replicator, then shook his head. “I should be sober for this conversation myself,” he said. “I suppose after it I can drink all I want now, until…”
“Until what?!” That sounded like…No. No, please no…
“Well,” he took a deep breath. “Remember when I once said I was glad that the person who did my genetic resequencing knew what he was doing? Well, it turns out, he made a mistake. A tiny one, which for over thirty years didn’t matter, but in genetic engineering, even the slightest thing off will spell disaster sooner or later, and later has become now. Became it a few months ago, actually, when I started having memory issues. Took me most of the time since to find out what the problem was.”
“And the prognosis?” Jadzia asked. Please, let the answer be anything but…
“It’s not an absolute one yet,” sighed Julian. “I might not even get that; it’s not like there are many examples we doctors can look to in order to get one. But given what’s breaking down in here?” He sadly tapped his forehead. “Death might be what will happen if I’m lucky.”
“No, that can’t be true!” Jadzia protested. “And can’t they go back in and fix you, like you did to Sarina?”
“I’ve looked into that.” He sounded so, so tired. “But my brain issues aren’t the same as hers. If I had a year, maybe I could come up with a version of the operation I performed on her which would work on me, or some colleague could. But in a year, if I’m still alive? I’ll be a blubbering idiot unable to remember what happened a few days ago if I’m lucky, and even less capable of doing anything if I’m not, and probably beyond the kind of help that Sarina had. They’ll have to take me to the institution they still keep Jack and Patrick and Lauran in, and what will they think, seeing me as in worse condition than even them-though they might not even be allowed to see me, to keep them from being traumatized.”
“But it’s not absolute.” Jadzia felt herself grasping at what she could.
“It’s over a 90% chance.”
As Jadzia still sat there, trying to face what she was realizing was the unfaceable, he said, “I made what’s going to be the closest I’ll get to a full diagnosis a couple of days ago. Right now I’m trying to settle my affairs, and taking care of a few last things. Tomorrow morning I’m going to hand in my resignation. I’m going to go home, go see my parents, then probably do some more traveling; there have been some places I’ve always wanted to see. I probably have at least a couple of months before I really start to degenerate. If I have time I’ll come see you again, but once I really start to go, I don’t want any of you to see me like that.”
The thought that this might be the last she ever saw of Julian made Jadzia burst into tears, rough, fast ones that nearly ripped themselves out of her eyes. And now he was moving around and giving her a hug, he, who should be the one crying, not her, but she was just feeling so weak and worn, and she wanted to just spill everything, not even for the sake of making her request, but just so Julian would know, so there wouldn’t be that awful barrier between them.
“Oh, Jadzia,” he sighed, and pressed the chastest of kisses into her hair. “You know, for the first time, I’m happy you married Worf. I think…maybe you know why I wasn’t before this. But imagine if I was your husband, and now this was happening to he who you’d been planning to spend the rest of your life with. Now you’ll cry for me, but you’ll still have him, and your beautiful little boy…”
“Beautiful!” Even under the circumstances, Jadzia couldn’t help but snort through her tears. “You know most wouldn’t describe it that way.”
“He’s your son. Of course he’s beautiful.”
“You shouldn’t be talking to me like this,” sobbed Jadzia. “You shouldn’t feel like that about me. You should feel that way about…”
“About who?” It was his turn to snort. “About someone else that in a year’s time I’d then either make a widow or burden with a literal idiot husband who she’d have to divorce is she had any sense? No, I think things have worked out for the best.”
But you should never feel that way about yourself. Not even if he was about to die, not even then, because as far as Jadzia was concerned, Julian deserved the love and devotion she had never been able to give him, and the woman who would travel with him and nurse him to the bitter end and be thankful even in her grief that she’d gotten to have him.
Besides, if she’d married him, she wouldn’t have committed the sin she had. There wouldn’t have been a need, probably. But then again, she’d always known that marrying Julian would have led to her having a much easier life, even if she’d never given too much thought to it. She’d never made her choices based on what was easy.
And she wasn’t going to now, either. It would be easy, she thought, to explain everything. She thought if she did, Julian would give up the last months of his life, take the promotion and use it to save her and Worf. It was the logical thing to do, he would say; they had their entire lives to live out preserved from disaster; what was one year compared to that? Jadzia could tell herself that as well, repeat to herself that Julian had willingly made the choice, and also that she’d done what she’d had to do. She could do that every day for the rest of her life, and eventually, she thought, she wouldn’t even feel that guilty anymore.
But thinking about doing all that, taking advantage of this man, who had loved her for years, quietly and resignedly after he had been forced to give up all hope, who had acted as her friend and often confident, listening without complaint whenever she’d been mad at Worf, even helped them have Turink…it made Jadzia feel ill. She wasn’t going to do it, not even for this.
Except now Julian was looking at her and saying, “Is there anything you need to tell me? It looks to me like there is.” Nothing in his voice besides concern; he wasn’t even hoping for a declaration of feeling or anything like that.
“Nothing you need to worry about now,” she said. “Or should.”
“No, Jadzia,” he said. “I know you. You’re trying to spare me something, and please, don’t do that out of pity.”
“I can’t,” she protested. “I can’t take advantage of you. I’d be a monster if I did.”
“Jadzia, please, if you need my help…you ought to have known already I’d do anything for you, and that’s even more true now, when what would I lose by doing it?” He was getting up from his seat now, moving to kneel at her feet, and that sight was not one Jadzia was ever going to be willing to see. In a desperate move to stop him she grabbed him to pull him up, a desperate tiny please escaped her, and next thing she knew they were kissing, hard and deep.
It felt good, better than Jadzia had ever thought it might. Her hands found Julian’s face; his skin was soft. He didn’t even flinch from how cold she knew her hands were. His arms were around her, and he was kissing without shame, making tiny sounds into her mouth that Jadzia thought just might wreck her.
Some tiny voice in the back of her mind was yelling at her to pull back, but she wasn’t listening, not right now. Now instead she heard the blood roaring in her ears, the shifting of cloth against cloth, the overwhelming part of her brain that just wanted to go on kissing this man forever.
She didn’t even know how long they’d kissed for when they finally parted, foreheads still pressed together. She kept her eyes and hands on that flushed, panting face, tried to memorize the feel of it beneath her hands, since she knew she’d certainly never touch it again, even if she perhaps might again see it.
“There’s no one in my life who’s meant to me what you have,” he finally breathed. “Even if I had longer to live, I don’t know if there ever could be, though that doesn’t really matter now.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be troubling you with this part.”
“Quit acting like you’re now just a burden on the universe!” she cried, feeling even worse when he gently but firmly pushed away from her. “You never were and you never will be.”
But Julian was shaking his head. “If you don’t want my help, you should go. Before you possibly do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”
The crazy thing was, while she’d no doubt feel guilty afterwards, Jadzia wasn’t sure she would actually regret it. She knew she ought to, but some instinct warned her the feeling wouldn’t come, at least so long as Worf never found out.
So much where it would all be fine, just as long as her husband never found out.
It was that awareness, and the fear, that got Jadzia to do as he had said, to turn around and start walking out, the door barely getting open for her in time, fast enough there wasn’t time to feel any temptation to look back. For ten more minutes after even that she strode down the corridor, at least one ensign scurrying out of her way, putting more distance between herself and the man she still wasn’t sure she wouldn’t want to run back to if she stopped to think.
Eventually she began to tire; it had been a long day of worrying even before this. She slowed her pace down, but continued walking, making her way back to her quarters.
By the time she got there, she had relived that kiss three times, each time pushing it from her mind, knowing she needed to forget it had happened, even though she also knew she never would. Worf wouldn’t be in, she reminded herself. Turink wouldn’t either. No one would be in their quarters, and she would be safely alone to break down and cry and figure out how she was going to live even with losing Julian like this, let alone the even worse thing happening at the moment.
Except Nerys was there. Jadzia hadn’t even known she knew how to break through Starfleet locks. She was so shocked she was completely unable to speak as she just stood there, then at Nerys’ impatient gesture finally stepped forward just enough for the door to close behind her.
“I just had another exchange of messages with Worf,” she said. “I won’t even repeat what he said. Honestly, I’m starting to lose a lot of my respect for him. Enough that I really don’t feel bad about doing what I’ll have to do now.”
That just made Jadzia know what she herself now had to do. She wished she had a knife on her. Then she could’ve done it right away. But instead she could only hiss, “You won’t. I won’t let you. In fact, you’d better contact Worf right and now and tell him you’re about to lose all your power over him, because it’ll be gone with me!”
She hadn’t even finished talking before she started a purposeful stride towards the kitchenette, but before she could get more than a couple of meters Nerys, her resistance-fighter reflexes undulled by all the years that had passed, was in front of her, with a, “No, Jadzia, you’re not killing yourself.”
“You,” Jadzia growled, “do not get to act like you’re my friend anymore, especially not when you’re driving me to do this to protect my husband.”
“Fine, then. You kill yourself right now and I’ll frame him for murder.”
She obviously could, and at the moment, Jadzia couldn’t think of an immediate way to off herself which would make it impossible for Nerys to make it look like she’d been killed. She sagged, and said, “Well, I know what he said to you when you told him.”
“Told him? Oh,” Nerys shook her head. “Actually, I haven’t told him anything yet. He didn’t give me a chance. But the minute I get back to my quarters, I’m going to start writing a message to him. I don’t know if I’ll finish it tonight, but I’ll try. Do you know, if you kill yourself after I walk out of here, and I still go public with the story, anyone who even slightly believes in any of the Klingon stereotypes will find a way to blame him for it, even if they don’t think he did it himself?”
“You don’t get the chance to frame him, then what does that matter?” Jadzia could have laughed, had she felt less devastated. “He won’t care what any of them think.”
“But I think you would. And I’m pretty sure, sooner or later, that your son would.”
That last one stopped Jadzia’s thoughts in their tracks. Nerys could tell, too, and she pressed on: “You want to condemn him to grow up with two parents disgraced, one dead? And you know Worf needs help when it comes to raising children. Just look at the whole sequence of events that happened with his first son.”
“That wasn’t entirely his fault,” Jadzia growled, repeating the speech she’d made more than once. “His parents struggled with Alexander first.”
“Yeah, Alexander, who didn’t get along with his peers, who struggled with only being partially Klingon, and whose mother died a violent death when he was young. Sound familiar?”
It did, all too much. And then Nerys said, “But I do know one thing Worf would do, what any good parent would do. That’s protect his children at all costs. Even that of his honor.”
“You don’t know what Worf would do.” Not like Jadzia herself did.
“I worked alongside him, much more closely than you did, at times. I know enough. I know that I’ll get even more than my recommendation out of him now. That was all I would have demanded, you know, when this whole thing started. Foolish of me. I’ve thought since, of what will probably await me when I reach Earth. Don’t tell me they’ll want me there. I know they won’t. They might still grant me admission. From what I understand about Federation-Bajoran relations right now, they’ll probably worried Bajor will be offended if they don’t. I need all the paperwork in order, but if I get it, I get that much.
But do you really think they won’t look for any excuse, and I mean any, to throw me out once I get there? Or, if they can’t find one, they won’t make sure I never obtain any rank above Ensign? And I’ve worked too hard and lost too much-”
“Yeah,” Jadzia interrupted, her rage kicking in, “like all of your morals.”
But she was chilled to the bone by the complete lack of change in Nerys’ expression, and the cold way she replied, “You haven’t seen anything yet, Jadzia. You and Worf, you’ll both be dealing with me for a long time. I get expelled, it all comes out. And after I graduate, you’ll get me up to my old rank as fast as possible. Since the start of this, by the way, I’ve been hoping I might eventually get myself into a position where I can help Bajor, but then, I was worried the way things go at Starfleet, I might be old before I got that far. But you two, you’re going to get me there within a few years.”
“Are you truly going to try to justify yourself?!” Jadzia demanded, even more appalled. “When once, the Kira Nerys I knew…”
“The Kira Nerys you know had a history of doing sometimes violent things indeed when her planet was at stake,” she retorted. “Things that sometimes pushed the boundaries of interplanetary law, at the very least. I know you don’t like to remember that, of course, didn’t like to think of the fact that at one time I was a terrorist.”
“Only because you had to be. Bajor’s not going to be in that situation again.”
“You don’t know what’s going to happen on Bajor.” There was a very real resentment in the way she said that. “Even if the Cardassians aren’t really in shape to do what they once did to it again, no society recovers that quickly. And you saw what happened a year after the Occupation ended, and what’s happened most recently. For the record, Jadzia, I would give my life to prevent that from happening again.”
“That’s your life, not mine,” Jadzia protested. “That’s still at stake here.”
“Didn’t I just point out how killing yourself will do Worf no good? I’ll get what I want either way. And in fact, speaking of your marriage,” and there was something new her tone here, some hint of genuine regret, “don’t you think you should’ve told your husband about all of this, long ago?”
“You really don’t understand…”
“Maybe I don’t. But you know what, Jadzia? I’m going to do you one last favor, explaining this to him. I’ll even try to emphasize that you really felt you needed to do it to keep him alive. I do feel he ought not to be angry with you, though I suppose it’s too much to hope for he won’t be. At least you won’t have to keep any dark secrets from him anymore.”
Had she said only an hour ago, of course, that would’ve been true. And Jadzia certainly wasn’t telling her now why it no longer would be.
So instead she remained silent, as Nerys turned and walked out. The door was in the process of closing behind her when she turned and said, “You have six hours to tell him before I do.”
After stumbling into the nearest chair, for a few minutes, all Jadzia could do was cry. She thought of the life she’d planned to have, the things she might now not get to see, such as her son growing up. When she thought of what Nerys had just said, she found she wasn’t sure which option would be worse, Turink growing up with a mother who had committed suicide, or him growing up with parents disgraced by his father’s race, and both of them probably struggling to live with everything that had happened.
Anger kicked in next. Jadzia wanted to go out and yell at everyone. Nerys, Worf, the Klingon who had refused to not kill him when anyone with either sense or decency would’ve backed down, and everyone else she could even partly blame. She even thought uncharitably of Odo, of how if he hadn’t left the woman he’d supposedly loved so much and for so long, she might have avoided much of the downward spiral she’d gone down that had led them to this.
But then again, she found herself thinking, maybe she should be nicer to Odo. Because as she sat there, she came to realize that her next course of action had to be to disclose everything to someone, make a statement of truth they could attest to, and Odo was pretty much the only person she had for it.
So when she pulled herself up, her tears mostly dried, she went to comm him, to ask him to please come as quickly as possible.
Much to her relief, he answered only a couple of minutes later, saying he was on his way. But when Jadzia checked the chronometer, she discovered enough time had passed that Worf would soon be back as well.
And, unfortunately, it was her husband, rather than Odo, who walked in first. Somehow Jadzia found herself blurting out, “Nerys just said to me the two of you talked again.”
“Jadzia,” the warning tone in his voice was unmistakable, “I do not wish to further discuss this matter, and you ought not to waste your time when I will not change my mind.”
She shouldn’t have hoped for otherwise. But she still asked, “Just tell me what she said in response. I’m kind of worried she’s mad at me, but she didn’t give me anything to go on.”
“She ought not to have become that foolish. And she said very little in response, at least then, though she did indicate she might soon send me a message.”
Before Jadzia could even react to that, the doorchime sounded. “That’s probably Odo,” she said. “I just need to talk to him about something that came up in the lab today.” She’s in front of the door when it opens, and before he can speak she says, “Odo! So glad you got here so quickly. Let’s talk about the readings off those weird quartz stones out here; I’m not sure the commander wants me talking about them around anyone else, even my husband.”
When they were safely out in the corridor, he hissed at her, “And what if he happens to hear there aren’t any ‘weird quartz stones’ on the Starbase?”
“He won’t,” she replied. “He rarely pays attention to what I’m doing in the lab if something hasn’t given him a reason to. Do you have a communicator?”
“They gave me a handheld.” He pulled it out of a side pocket. “Who do you want me to contact? I…I don’t think I could do this with Nerys over a comm.”
“Noone. I just want you to record this and be able to testify to its veracity later, if that becomes necessary.”
“What? Commander, you…”
“Five years ago, when Worf and I escaped Dominion custody, he was asleep when we received a distress call from Yarmok III.” She told the entire story, holding up a hand whenever a shocked-looking Odo tried to interrupt, finishing, “Since then, Worf has never had any idea that any of this has happened. I hearby make it my dying declaration that all I have just said is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and memory, and that Mr. Odo, who is making this recording, can attribute that it is not in any way doctored.” She then reached over and turned the communicator off.
“Your dying declaration?” Odo now sounded horrified.
“That makes it admissible in all Federation courts. I don’t know about Klingon ones, but I don’t think they’d be all that likely to outright charge Worf with anything; the biggest danger he’d be in legally would be a court-martial-and one look at this recording and they’d never go forward with it, what with all the other circumstances involved.”
Odo just shook his head. “Jadzia, you don’t intend to die, do you?!”
She has to explain this now, which she never thought she’d have to do, or maybe just really hoped. “Odo,” she said, “Nerys knows what happened; I don’t even know how she found out, but it doesn’t really matter. And she’s…” This is really going to break his heart. “The things she suffered while you were gone, the state it reduced her to…she is now threatening to make this public. In which case…” Here came the part she could only really half explain. “Worf would do something wonderful, and miraculous, and that I couldn’t stand to live with him having done, because he would do it for me. I couldn’t stand to live with it.”
“And yet it’s wonderful and miraculous?” Odo was just shaking his head.
Maybe she could’ve explained it if she’d had more time. But it was only so long before Worf would come out to check on them. Even now, she was trying to figure out what to say to him when they came back in.
After another moment, Odo said, “Listen, Jadzia, maybe it still doesn’t have to come to that. I may know that Nerys went through a good deal, but I still can’t believe she truly wants to do this to you, that she wouldn’t maybe listen if I tried to talk to her. It’s worth a shot, I think."
Normally Jadzia would’ve hesitated, would’ve not wanted to put Odo through that if he still wasn’t ready. But at this point she was truly desperate. And anyway, it might ultimately be very good for them both to finally talk.
“All right,” she said. “She’s given me six hours before she contacts Worf.”
As if this last utterance of his name had summoned him, the doors to their quarters slid back open, and her husband peered outside. Before he could ask, Jadzia quickly put her smile back on, saying, “Odo and I are just wrapping up the serious business for the day, and now if you want to have him over for dinner…” Probably he’d say no.
But to her surprise, he said, “Very well.”
It was all right, she told herself. It would only be a couple of hours. After that he’d still have time.