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Maybe moving all of Odo’s furniture had been a bit of a tip off. Maybe it would have been more effective to just move half of his furniture a half inch to the left. Surprise him. Be unpredictable. But that bronze sculpture… It was so tempting. The questions he’d have. The mysterious looks she could give.
She hadn’t expected the questions to be quite so pointed.
“No but, Dax, how did you move it?” Odo paced behind his desk, hands clamped behind his back so tightly they seemed to be melting into each other. “Don’t give me that-”
“It’s a trade secret-”
“-its a trade secret nonsense.” Odo’s neck cranked around just enough to make her uncomfortable. “I have a power grid under the floor specifically to keep that structure in place while I…”
“Explore your true self,” Jadzia suggested.
Odo scowled. “It is irrelevant. How did you move it? There were no power interruptions. So either you tampered with the entire stations power-sensing system-”
“-which would have been far too much effort,” Jadzia agreed.
“-or you brought in a team of Nausicaan movers,” Odo finished. He was really staring at her now. Tiny pinpricks of black showed on his uniform, not-quite eyes that nonetheless served the purpose of making the hairs on the back of Dax’s neck stand bolt upright. “So?”
Dax twitched in her stomach. Carefully, Jadzia loosened her grip on the arms of Odo’s interrogation chair. It was quite nice, and it would be rude to ruin it in her anxiety. Jadzia sighed, and held out her hands palm-up on her lap. “Well, you see, it’s a bit of a long story.
“Nerys.” Shakaar nudged her arm again, half a molding moba fruit on his palm. “You have to eat something.”
Kira shook her head. It was so cold in the woods tonight that the thought of food made her nauseous. She wanted another blanket. She wanted to find some kind of animal with fur for spinning, anything to weave herself a new cocoon of protection against frostbite and the wind and-
No. She wanted to eat. She knew what it would feel like, if she accepted Shakaar’s rations. There would be a flush of energy. Her cheeks would redden. She’d warm up, in a way she hadn’t in a half-dozen days. The taste of the moba fruit would linger on her tongue for hours, taunting her.
She wanted it. She didn’t need it. So she pushed the first food she’d seen in eight days back at Shakaar. “It’s yours,” she said. Her voice didn’t even creak. “You know I’ll be alright.”
“Nerys,” Shakaar said, urgent. “It’s not-”
She turned away from him. The cold bit into her anew, lifting under her hair and sending icy fingers down her spine. “No way out but through,” she told him. “I need you to get out too.”
Kira found her in the Klingon place a few hours later, staring down a plate of gagh. It looked incredibly good, a compliment to the chef as always, but Jadzia’s fingers were still shaking with that strange energy. She didn’t trust herself to pick up one of the worms and not have it explode.
Kira sat across from her. She didn’t look at any of the food. She never did. She just looked at Jazia and it couldn’t have been any more different than how Odo had looked at her earlier but the look made Jadzia prickle all the same. “I heard something from Quark.”
“See, I told you Odo gossips.” Jadzia tried for a smile and then tried for a fork, even though using utensils was all but illegal in this place. Dax only had it in her fingers for a split second before it twisted and squeezed and clattered back onto the table a hell of a lot worse for wear. “QI'yaH.”
Kira sighed. “Open up,” she said, which was confusing for a split second until she carefully picked a few choice bits of gagh off Jadzia’s plate and held it towards Jadzia’s face.
Jadzia took the food from Kira, careful not to lick her fingers. There was some sort of understanding in Kira’s eyes. She swallowed. “Thank you.”
“It can’t be easy.” Kira looked down now, to her empty place at the table. Her hands half curled in on themselves on the table. “It’s easier to be angry and scared when- It makes it easier, for me. I just have to endure. It doesn’t matter how or why.”
Dax remembered the lack of fear in Kira that time they’d been in a ship so ramshackle they were only in the sky because the sky had been too surprised to react properly. Seat of the pants technology, Kira had said, like it didn’t matter at all.
“Easy,” Dax said. The buzzing in her limbs was subsiding now. She knew what that word meant, when someone said it like that. “I can see that.”
In the silence that followed, Kira fed her another handful of gagh.