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“I suppose you want to talk about what happened with the Founder,” Odo said. The closet door slid shut behind him.
“I do,” Kira replied, “but not yet. We'll get to her later. We need to start this at the beginning.”
“The beginning,” Odo repeated. He watched, scowling, as Kira dragged out two of Dax's footlockers from the back of the closet. Kira positioned them across from each other and took one as her seat. She nodded at the other.
“Odo, are you going to sit?”
Odo stiffened and looked back at the door, a pained look crossing his features. Kira was afraid he would refuse, would give up and leave before they even got started. Kira knew if Odo walked out that door, that would be it, their friendship would be done, and that she wasn't about to let happen. She had to make Odo stay. So Kira did the thing she never did, for any reason.
“Please, Odo," she begged. "Talk to me.”
With a resolved sigh, Odo took a cautious seat across from her, perching uneasily on the edge of the box. "Well, Major," he said, folding his arms over his chest. "If not the Founder, what do you want to talk about?”
“I want to talk about Gaia.”
“I'm not sure that's a good idea.”
“Odo, we don't have a choice. It's been the point of contention between us for over a year, and I haven't been able to get you to talk about it once.”
“Me?” Odo replied, bristling. “For a month after we got back from that mission, you wouldn't so much as look at me. I took it to mean, Major, that you didn't want to talk about what happened between us, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.”
Kira sighed and ran her hands over her face and up through her hair. Odo was right. She had ignored him, for far too long, and indeed because she hadn't wanted to talk about Gaia. Oddly enough, she still didn't, but things had gone so wrong between them since that doomed day, this was no longer a question of want. This was need.
“Look,” Kira said, “we both made mistakes, we're both to blame. But we're here now, together, and we need to settle this.”
“You're right, Major, one way or another, we do. I certainly can't go on this way. I've had enough of hard stares and cold shoulders, of accusing looks and avoidance. I can't take it anymore!" He dropped his head in his hands and scrubbed them wearily over his face. “I'm exhausted...”
Kira sighed heavily and leaned back on Dax's vanity. “You're not the only one, Constable,” she replied. “So...”
Odo dropped his hands from his face and straightened slowly. “So...”
“Gaia.”
Odo took a deep breath and let it out. “What do you want to know?”
“The same thing I did on the Defiant, Odo. Eight thousand people winked out of existence, supposedly out of love for me. I can't understand it, can't get my head around it. It doesn't make any sense, with what I know of you. What your future self did was monstrous!”
Odo flinched and looked away as if she'd struck him, and Kira was instantly flooded with regret. Why had she used that word? She knew how many times words like that had been flung at Odo, and even worse words, and how deeply they had hurt him. Kira watched as Odo's expression shifted through the conflicted, dark emotions she'd just aroused. She bit her lip, her head scrambling to find the words to fix what she'd done.
Odo spoke before she had the chance. “Kira...are you afraid of me?”
Kira was silent a beat too long. “Of course not.”
“That's it, isn't it? You are afraid of me.”
“Odo, I'm not afraid of you! It's just...On the Defiant, you seemed to think what your future self had done was excusable, that you agreed with him. That it was understandable he'd slaughtered thousands of innocents for his own purposes, and—”
“—And you hold me responsible for his actions. Do you really think I condoned them?”
So you wouldn't have to die...Gooseflesh rose on Kira's arms as she recalled those chilling words. She rubbed them, trying to scrub off the memory. “Your voice, your look, your words...I guess they were frightening, Odo. It seemed like you felt the same way he did.”
“I can assure you, Major, that was not the case. That..being...that you think was me, was not. What he became, what he grew to be through his experiences on Gaia changed him utterly. But he wasn't a monster. He was misguided and miserable and had lived with himself for far too long. He loved the people of Gaia, and his decision pained him greatly.”
“So why did he do it?”
“Grief, Nerys," Odo said. "He was half mad with it. And it was more than just about you. His Nerys died in his arms, and he thought it couldn't possibly be worse than that, but he was wrong. Several more of the Defiant's crew followed her...Ensign Briggs died in childbirth. Lieutenant Carlson died of a lung infection, Joleth, an insect bite, Kir'tal, an animal attack..." Odo paused, covering his eyes. He dropped his hand and looked back at Kira, his gaze pain-filled and haunted. "Kira, I can no longer walk the halls of this station, can't go to a staff meeting, can't look in on Quark's without running into someone I watched die on that planet, thanks to the other Odo and the Link...You know, I think for the first time ever, I wish you were a Changeling so I could show this to you, so I could show you what a curse Gaia's Odo left me with...”
Kira paled. “Odo, I had no idea...”
“Of course you didn't! You wouldn't let me explain any of this to you, would you? And if I can't talk to you about it, then who the hell would I talk to?"
“Well, I'm listening now, Odo. Tell me. Explain his decision, help me understand.”
“Over the years, the other Odo watched all of the original crew die, even as they were replaced by a new generation. Then he watched those children grow old and die, too. Eventually, he couldn't take the cycle anymore. He left the settlement and went out on his own, choosing to live away from the population. Before our Defiant crashed, he hadn't spoken to a humanoid in fifty years.”
Kira shook her head with disbelief. “I didn't see any of that when I was with him. He seemed so calm, so sure of himself.”
“Seeing you again, the crew again, restored him. He knew his suffering was over, knew he could change the timeline and send you all back, send me back. I wouldn't have to go through what he did. None of you would have to go through it... As soon as he saw you in sickbay, Major, he knew what he had to do. He accepted that his life was over. His actions were almost a form of suicide.”
“That still doesn't excuse it. That actually makes it worse!”
Odo sighed, frustrated, and looked away from her for a moment. He swung back to Kira, and said, “If you had the chance, Kira, to undo the occupation, would you? Even at the cost of your life?”
“That is not the same thing!"
“For Gaia's Odo, it was. Only instead of the thirty-odd years you've lived with that kind of pain, he lived with it for over two hundred. And there was no Link to offer him solace, to heal him. Nowhere to dump two centuries of longing and heartbreak, of isolation and grief...Are you beginning to get the picture?”
“Maybe...But then why didn't you tell me any of this before? It might have made things easier between us.”
“Would it?” Odo said. “I don't think so.”
“Well, I do! If you had told me this sooner, I might not have had so much trouble with...with the rest of it.”
“By the rest of it, Major, I assume you mean learning the truth about how I feel for you...Somehow I doubt that even the loss of eight thousand lives was as much trouble to you as that bit of information."
Kira sucked in a gasp. “Oh, that's not fair.”
“Isn't it? I've known you for over ten years, Major, and I'm very familiar with your obtuse tendency to ignore your feelings, and anyone else's, for that matter. Unless something is pointing a phaser at you, you won't deal with it and frankly, I'm relatively sick of it.”
“Oh, well that's rich, coming from someone whose emotions are frozen over harder than a Breen winter!"
Odo's smile was bitter. “Touche, Major. I think Quark said the same thing to me once.”
Kira closed her eyes and drew a deep inhale through her nose. She blew it out slowly, trying to calm herself. Tossing insults with Odo would be nothing but an exercise in futility. They knew each other well enough to keep it up all night, and well enough to do some permanent damage. Kira needed to slow this down before things got too heated and one of them ended up in holding.
“Alright, fine,” Kira said. “You want to talk about it, let's talk about it. Let's talk about these...feelings.”
“Oh, well, when you put like that, Kira—”
“Like what?”
“Like talking about my feelings is as appealing as something stuck to the bottom of your boot! I don't think I want to discuss anything with you, not when you have this attitude.”
Kira tossed up her hands. “Talk about it, don't talk about it. Blame me, but don't let me answer for it. Dangle it over my head like it's my fault you're miserable, but don't let me even try to fix what I haven't done! What is wrong with you?”
“You know what, you're right,” Odo said. “You're not responsible for how I feel...I absolve you, Major. You've done absolutely nothing wrong, ever. You didn't take my feelings and throw them back at me like they repulsed you. You didn't shut me out when you learned about them, leaving me confused and aimless. You didn't use me, my loyalty to you, for your own ends during the station's seizure, just like Founder... That wasn't you at all, was it?”
Kira froze. Just like the Founder? He was comparing her to that...thing that had him so twisted, so gone, so lost from all that he was? The Founder, who had lied to him, had used him and tried to try sway him to her side? Kira knew Odo longed for his home, for the Link, they'd even talked about it one long-ago night in his quarters. Yet he'd always turned away from it, chosen the light over the dark. What had changed? What leverage did the Founder have that kept him going back to her? It was more than the Link. Odo had more control than that, he'd walked away from it before. How had the Founder done what Kira could never seem to do, not in all these years, and gotten so far past that impenetrable facade that was the station's chief of security?
And then, it struck her. “The Founder knows about your feelings for me, doesn't she?”
“Yes,” Odo admitted. “She has for some time.”
“When did you tell her? And why did she know, and I didn't?”
“You recall the incident on the asteroid a couple of years ago? Where she impersonated you?”
“Yes...”
“She drew a confession from me by making me think you were dying. Watching that..." Odo shuddered. "It was awful. The Founder used your face, your voice, and said 'I love you'. That was my first—and best—clue that she wasn't you."
Kira was dumbstruck yet again. That certainly hadn't been in Odo's report. When she'd asked him what gave the Founder away, he'd shrugged it off and said 'just a slip of the tongue,' casually dismissing the incident like it hadn't mattered. But this? Oh, this mattered. The Founder had used Odo's love, the love he held for her, to hurt him, twisted it into a weapon used to deceive him. No wonder he'd kept his feelings a secret for all these years.
Tears welled in Kira's eyes. “Odo, why didn't you tell me?”
“You keep asking me that, Major. With everything else that has gone on between us, with the war, and Shakaar, and the Link, when exactly would have been the appropriate time to pour my heart out? And why would I? After all, I am a Changeling. You could never love me. The Founder told me that then, and she is right.”
“And you believe everything she says?" Kira asked. "Odo, I can assure you, not once did I give that creature leave to speak for me. You should know better.”
“And I do, Major. I didn't base it what she said. I know you could never care for someone- some thing- like me. I'm not humanoid, not Bajoran. I'm not even technically male. I know how you feel about outsiders, and I would have kept all of this to myself, would have spared you this, if I'd been left the choice. You would never have known about my feelings for you because I know how the idea of...me...must repulse you.”
“You know, Odo, I don't remember giving you leave to speak for me, either," Kira replied. "Why would you think I was repulsed by you? And you are Bajoran, according to your file. A citizen for over fifty years, which is longer than I can boast.”
“Major, you know what I mean. How many times have you disparaged other races, eschewed other cultures? How many times have you filled my ear about Bajor being for Bajorans?”
Kira rolled her eyes. “I am getting really tired of everyone thinking I'm some kind of bigot. I am, admittedly, not fond of Cardassians, and overprotective of Bajor, but I have good reasons, and you know damn well what they are!”
“What about that incident with the Skrreeans, Major? You fought very hard to keep them off Bajoran soil.”
“Yes, Odo, I did, and I am not sorry about it. Three million refugees who wanted to plant themselves on my war-torn home world. The fact that they were Skrreean had nothing to do with it. Think about it. We had just gotten Bajor stable, we couldn't take the risk of having yet another peninsula full of people we couldn't feed, and I didn't see any of our supposed Starfleet allies stepping up to help us with a replicator or two...Besides, in the end, it wasn't my decision. The Council of Ministers voted them down.”
“But your endorsement would have changed everything for those people, Major.”
“Odo, I think you're giving me too much credit.”
“And I think you could be more socially responsible with the power you carry.”
"Oh, like you were?" Kira flew from her seat. "Like how you let that damned Founder walk in here and just upend you, let her lure you away from the council, from the resistance, from...from...”
“From you?”
“Yes, from me! You promised me, Odo! You swore to me you wouldn't link with her and you did it anyway, and we nearly lost everything because you—you, of all people!—failed to keep your word!”
Odo closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. “You're right, Kira. You are absolutely right.”
Kira dropped in her seat, the fire going out of her. That wasn't the answer she expected. She expected Odo to put up a fight, to say something about her being an uninformed solid like he had before. He was obviously pained over what had happened between him and the Founder, and the rest of Kira's anger dampened as she looked on Odo's grief-stricken face. Whatever had happened with the Founder was clearly not the homecoming she knew Odo longed for, or he would never have been in that cargo bay in the first place, denying the Link and his home yet again to save his friends from certain doom. Kira knew it was time to bridge the other gaping chasm between them.
“Odo, what happened between you and the Founder? It's not just the Link, and I think I understand all that, anyway. I know what it means to you, to your people. I was with you on your home world, and more than anyone, I know what you've given up. But there's more to it than that. What really changed your mind? What made you start to see through her?"
Odo looked down at the floor, avoiding Kira's gaze. “I...slept with her.”
Kira ignored the quickfire flash of jealousy that hit her. She would not be jealous of that creature, and she wasn't ready to acknowledge what made her jealous in the first place. She almost changed the subject, not really wanting to hear the rest of what Odo might say. However, that would make Odo's earlier insult about her obtuseness no longer an insult, and judging by the self-loathing in his tone, and the fact that he'd even mentioned it at all, Odo obviously needed to talk about it.
Kira took the higher road and put her feelings aside. “And?” she prompted.
“And it was awful,” he said. “It was cold, mechanical. Her disdain for anything remotely solid left her unable to open up to it. Not that I'm an expert, but I tried to show her what a...personal experience it can be for solids, but she couldn't be bothered to move her sensory receptors to the right places. I have no idea why she wanted it at all. I had told her I enjoyed my experience with Arissa, that I found it pleasurable, and that it was still my desire to share such pleasures with—"
Kira blushed as Odo cut off that last thought, and a rush of heat ran through her. She was fairly sure she knew how that sentence ended and she tamped down the happy little part of her that wanted Odo to finish it. She wasn't quite ready to listen to that little voice, not yet.
"Given what I told her," Odo continued, "she must have figured it was another way to manipulate me, but I felt so used, so...hollow afterward...Foolish, even...I will say that at least it served to render her manipulation of me through the Link null. The whole thing was so degrading, it held up a mirror to my own behavior, showed me my own weak willingness to let her use me and twist me how she saw fit...That, and hearing the Founder say she was going to have you executed. That certainly got my attention.”
“I'm sorry, Odo,” Kira said.
“I am, too. Sorry I wasn't stronger. Sorry I couldn't get through to her in the Link. If I had, then maybe we wouldn't still be at war...”
“Odo, no matter what you did or didn't do, this war is not your fault. You can't take the blame for something that big.”
“None the less, I had a chance to convince the Link, a chance to put this to rights, and I made a mess of it. I was too caught up in my own feelings, in my own misery, that I lost my objectivity. I let her in my head, without even fighting, hoping that she could somehow end it all for me, even though I know damned well what she truly is.” Odo looked straight at Kira and said, “I don't feel guilty about Gaia, nor will I take the blame for what Gaia's Odo did. I won't feel guilty anymore about my feelings for you, but the Founder...In that matter, I am guilty. I failed you, all of you. Prophets, I nearly walked off of DS9 and became your enemy, Nerys. I nearly let the Dominion have the quadrant and let you all die, just so I didn't have to be alone anymore.” He covered his face with his hands, but not before Kira saw his features start to blur. “ Maybe you're right, Major. Maybe I am a monster.”
Kira slid to her knees before him. “Odo, enough...Enough of this.” She peeled his hands back from his face and held them in hers. “You can't keep taking responsibility for everything your people do, and if it helps, if it's what you need to hear, I forgive you for what happened. But it's more important that you forgive yourself. We have been through so much, both of us, and neither of us has stainless paghs. Even after everything we've said and done to each other, I still want you to be my friend. I want you here, with me, on the station. I've missed you, and I do care for you. Please, can we start over? Can we put all this behind us, and try again?”
“Kira, I don't know. Maybe we're just not meant to...Maybe it's best if we stick to our working relationship, Major, and move on. ”
Kira lifted Odo's hands, kissing the center of each palm before pressing them to her cheeks. “Please, Odo, don't shut me out, not again. Please...”
Odo studied Kira's face cupped in his hands. The tips of his fingers gently traced her features, as if committing it all to memory. His touch stilled, and Odo's eyes fixed on hers, filling with the pain of every misery he'd ever been through as he asked, “Could you, Nerys?”
Kira's brow drew a little. Could she what? What was he asking?
A tingling warmth caressed her face, and Kira gasped, holding her breath. Gently, through the tips of his fingers, the natural fluidity of Odo's true form melded with the sensitive surface of her skin. Kira's eyes widened, and her breath came back in quick, desperate pulls. She was shocked, but in the most wonderful way. She had never, in all the years she'd known him, felt his real form. She'd seen him shift and she'd always found it beautiful, but feeling it happen against her flesh, feeling him, was another thing entirely. Kira closed her eyes and lost herself in Odo's true touch.
Odo leaned forward and rested his brow against hers. “Could you ever love a Changeling, Nerys?”
She opened her eyes slowly and smiled at him. “I could, Odo. And I do.”
“Well, then," he said. "I suppose the least he can do is be your friend.”