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Lenara Kahn sat by the window in her quarters, staring vacantly into the dark. Stars streaked by, the familiar background of a ship at warp. Many of them nurtured a planet – sometimes more than one – with its own people, its own ways, its own prejudices. She didn’t see any of them.
She held the bottle of Risian perfume in her hands, the last gift she would ever get from Dax, and worried at the lid with perfume-scented fingers. Kahn could no longer remember which host that habit had come from. It had become a part of all of them, and would be part of every future host too, now she had ensured at great cost that there could be future hosts.
The wormhole generation experiments had been remarkably successful despite the damage to the Defiant, and the resulting data would keep Lenara’s team busy for some time – hopefully long enough that should she ever need to return to Deep Space Nine at all, it would be long past Dax’s next reassignment. An hour ago, Bejal had come to assure her that the ship’s passengers and crew had been told she needed rest after the accident, then he had hugged her and left her alone. He meant well. That almost felt worse.
Lenara Kahn had been ready for this trip, resolute and balanced and sure there would be no problem. It had all been a long time ago after all – two lifetimes ago, more than enough time for hearts to heal and move on. Kahn’s many lives had all been spent on Trill, within easy reach of their predecessors’ nearest and dearest. Kahn had worked alongside previous hosts’ children and politely declined invitations from unjoined former spouses hoping for more than mere closure. There had never been a problem before. And then Lenara Khan stepped out of the airlock and met Jadzia Dax and everything shattered.
That Kahn could not be with Dax again was known, accepted, nothing to write home about. The Trill had lived this way since antiquity. What Lenara Kahn had not accounted for was the possibility that Lenara would like Jadzia. They suited each other and might well have done so even unjoined. They had shared interests, and most of those interests predated joining. They found each other physically attractive, something in which Kahn was largely uninvolved. So many of the things that drew them together were of Jadzia and Lenara themselves. None of that counted for anything in Trill society.
The dual attraction was an entirely new feeling. How Nilani Kahn had felt then and how Lenara Kahn felt now merged and flowed like ink in water. It was confusing and exhilarating and terrifying and irresistible. No doubt Jadzia Dax felt the same way. Was this how it always was, for those few who had chosen the path of exile?
Lenara gripped the bottle harder, unmoored and adrift. Torias bought Nilani perfume when he apologised; Jadzia loved Risa. Torias was sorry (Jadzia was sorry) for hurting her, for underestimating the risks, it was too early for the test and she (he) should have listened to her. Torias should not have got on the shuttle (Lenara should not have got on the transport) and broken her heart. Nilani loved Dax. Kahn loved Jadzia (no, Torias, no, both) and always had and always would. Dax would do anything for Kahn. Jadzia would do anything for Lenara no Nilani no Kahn no all of them, always all of them, it was confusing but it was right.
“I love you,” whispered Lenara or Nilani or Kahn, or all three, did it even matter which? Torias loved Nilani loved Dax loved Kahn loved Jadzia loved Lenara like coloured strands woven together, bright and different but belonging with each other. Who had the right to separate them?
But it was one thing to know what your hearts wanted, and quite another to act on it. The price was too high.
There wasn’t actually a law against reassociation – the mere concept of a law that could harm a symbiont was anathema to Trill society – but there didn’t have to be. The taboo was so strict and ubiquitous that it might as well be a death sentence. Trill who reassociated would not be welcome or safe anywhere on the homeworld. The great respect humanoid Trill had for symbiont Trill would not be enough to protect them. Reassociated couples were rejected and scorned, sometimes even attacked. The families of reassociated hosts would go to enormous lengths to separate them – there had been kidnappings, coercion, even attempts on the other’s life in the hopes of freeing their own relative from ignominy.
When a reassociated host died, the Symbiosis Commission would not perform another joining, if any host could even be found who would accept such a symbiont and the lifetime of exclusion that would follow. The symbiont would be nursed back to health and returned to the pools (harm to symbionts was unthinkable after all) but no Trill pod would accept them either. They would spend the rest of their life alone. No Trill could bear such excommunication, and few lasted long. Most didn't return home at all – better to live peacefully elsewhere and accept the inevitable.
Kahn understood the reasons that were given. A new host had to mean starting over because Trill society deserved better than an insular elite accumulating advantages over many lifetimes. A new host had to mean a new life because it was the host’s life first and foremost – making them relive someone else's instead wasn't just rudeness, it was obscenity. The Trill owed their hosts so much – through them they not only walked the earth, they had reached the stars. The least they could do in return was offer an equal partnership and a contribution to a fairer society. It was the way things had to be, no matter how unfair it felt.
Dax saw it differently, of course. As far as Dax was concerned, Jadzia wasn’t Torias and Lenara wasn’t Nilani and all of them had a say in this – joining was a union not a takeover, and society had no business telling any host who they could fall in love with. To Dax, the taboo treated hosts as if they were mere vehicles for their symbionts and symbionts as if they were mere flight recorders for their hosts, and that was the real obscenity. Only those who had experienced joining could truly understand it, and those who had been joined were far outnumbered by those who hadn’t. The supposedly reasonable justifications for the taboo were simply a cover for fear of the unknown.
However you saw it though, challenging such a taboo was for people like Dax, not for people like Kahn. Dax was headstrong and chose headstrong hosts to match; Dax never chose a host who didn’t know their own mind and stand up for what they believed in. The Dax name had been borne by ambassadors, trailblazers, leaders and reformists, people who took great risks for great rewards. Kahn preferred peace and subtlety, scientists and teachers, the incremental over the revolutionary. No doubt Dax’s former hosts were divided on the issue, commitment to Dax’s safety warring with devotion to their ideals, but each would be making their case with certainty whether they felt certain or not. Kahn’s former hosts, however, were all urging caution. Lenara Kahn may have told Jadzia Dax that she would think about it, and perhaps come back, but all of them knew the answer would not change.
"I am sorry,” Lenara Kahn whispered to the perfume bottle, a final memento of a path too hard to take. “I do love you, you know. I wish I could be brave like you.” She brought the bottle to her lips and kissed it gently, then slipped it back into her bag and returned her gaze to the emptiness.