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Keiko O'Brien had always known, of course, that the occupation of Bajor was a rough and brutal time. She remembered her rather trying time as Deep Space Nine's resident teacher. Her class had had a number of local children on whom the Cardassians had left their blood-smeared fingerprints. There had been a teenage boy, a quick-growing kid who always had a couple of extra inches of limbs sticking out of his sleeves and trouser legs. An otherwise clever and rational young man, he would shake and shriek with terror at a loud noise or power failure. This had been in the early days of the station, when things were always breaking down, and so Keiko had had to deal with those blood-curdling howls on an almost daily basis. And there had been the nine-year-old girl who had wept, like a starving infant, whenever she got the slightest bit hungry, which meant that the class had needed to break for snack time every two hours.
But the station was thriving now. There was a proper school, with trained teachers, and there was a Bajoran psychologist in residence who was apparently working wonders with the children. Keiko had been able to step back and marvel at the progress being made: a new Klingon restaurant on the Promenade, a small botanical garden in the lower decks. As the planet healed, it was easy to forget what had passed and to focus on the future.
That was, until Kira Nerys - a woman who Keiko would have sworn didn't have a maternal bone in her body - had agreed without hesitation to carry Keiko's baby to term. Keiko had dealt with it by learning as much as she could about the physical challenges this would present and how they would deal with them: supplements, anti-rejection drugs, regular check-ups. She was relieved when Kira agreed to stay with them; the Major was notorious for working herself into exhaustion and Keiko would now be able to keep an eye on that.
She was so busy satisfying herself with the practicalities that it didn't occur to her, until much later, to wonder what effect it might have on the soul of a baby to gestate in a body covered by scars.
***
Not that Kira's scars were obvious at first sight. In fact, until one knew her well it might seem that the Major had come through the violence of the resistance remarkably physically unscathed, to the point where Keiko had always just assumed she had let a Federation doctor deal with her war injuries before they'd ever met. It took her by surprise, the first morning that she stayed with them, to see the Bajoran woman running a dermal regenerator over her hairline, masking the ghosts of old wounds there with a 12-hour cover. Trying to be helpful, she mentioned that Julian could perform a permanent regeneration in roughly the same time. Kira regarded her for a long moment and when she answered there was an edge in her voice.
"I know. But I like having the option of seeing them."
Keiko didn't know what to say to that, so she nodded, dropped her gaze, mouthed an apology. The truth was that she didn't understand. The faint white indentations were unattractive things, and Kira must have known that. After all, covering them up was obviously her regular habit; Keiko had never seen them before. So why not spare herself the trouble?
When she returned to the restroom later, to do her own make-up, she was surprised to discover that she really didn't want to bother.
***
But that was nothing compared to the shock she got when she awoke one night to find Kira at the replicator making a snack. Her loose-fitting nightdress had slipped off one shoulder, revealing ugly red lines that emerged from the fabric and stood out from her pale skin in sharp contrast. Keiko gasped and Kira whirled around, startled and instinctively defensive.
She relaxed when she saw it was only Keiko. "Sorry. I wasn't expecting anyone else to be up." She must have seen the horror on Keiko's face. "What? What's the matter?"
Unable to find the words, she just lifted up her hand and ran it over own shoulder. Kira's face darkened as she tugged up her nightgown. Keiko felt awful but she couldn't stop herself from asking.
"Are... are those from a disruptor? Or are they knife marks?"
Kira's mouth compressed as she shook her head. "Whip. Some Cardassians like the traditional approach."
The nausea Keiko felt was far worse than anything which she had felt when she was pregnant. Bile rose in her throat and she had to swallow hard to keep it down. "I'm so sorry."
Kira seemed genuinely confused when she replied. "Why? You didn't do it."
"Still..." Keiko desperately wanted to be understood. "I'm still sorry."
Kira slowly nodded. She turned back to the replicator and took her stack of ginger biscuits from it. "Do you want some of these?"
***
Keiko wasn't sure when Kira had started to offer the information unasked. Like their friendship, it was gradual and unexpected. And, like their friendship, Keiko cherished it.
Once, when Kira had pulled up her tunic so that Keiko could see the baby's tiny foot pressing against the dome of her belly, Keiko caught sight of an ugly dark splotch there. Without thinking, she let her hand slide toward the spot, only coming to her senses and pulling away when she felt the rough tissue under her hands. She had been just about to offer up an apology when Kira spoke.
"It happened when I was running away from a Cardassian scouting party. It was winter and we were in the hill country, so you can imagine how slippery the ground was. I stepped on a patch of ice and slid off the path and halfway down the hill. I landed on a broken tree. One of the branches went right in, and this is the result."
Of their own accord, Keiko's fingers returned to the scar. "How are you still alive?"
Kira shrugged. "Dumb luck. They must have assumed I'd been killed, because they never followed. Or maybe they thought it was worth losing me to get the rest of the group. It's possible it was just too risky to chase me down there; like I said, conditions were pretty bad. At any rate, I cleaned the wound as well as I could with snow and I put some ferka moss on it to seal it, but it didn't heal clean. That's why that one is such a mess."
It was indeed a mess. Keiko could feel the thickness of the mottled skin and judge the depth of the puncture. Despite Kira's best precautions it must have gotten infected at some point, because there were tendrils spiraling out from the site. "How do you stand it?" She had wanted to ask for ages and could no longer help herself. "Seeing this whenever you look down at yourself?"
Kira lifted her chin. "How can anyone stand to read history books?"
Keiko's child kicked again and Kira's scarred flesh stretched to accommodate him.
***
Miles, usually the gentlest of men, was angry at her.
"What are you doing asking her about her scars? It can't be comfortable for her, having us see them. Show some respect, Keiko!"
He had come home while Keiko was massaging Kira's calves with avocado butter, a treatment that had nourished her own dry skin and soothed her over-tired muscles during her pregnancy with Molly. She had been tracing the faint pink line on the back of Kira's left leg and listening to the story behind it - shrapnel from a bomb she had set herself which had gone off too early, field surgery using a thread pulled from a friend's jacket - when Miles had come home. He had kept shooting glances at them as he prepared dinner but, absorbed by the story, Keiko hadn't bothered to try to understand.
She still didn't understand.
"I wasn't asking. She was just telling me."
"Because she saw you staring, so she felt like she had to. But she doesn't want to talk about this stuff, Keiko. And bringing it all up now? It'll just upset her, and that's not good for her or the baby."
And then Keiko was angry too. Because this thing with well-meaning Starfleet officers coming in and treating the Bajorans like children, thinking that they needed to be protected from their own pasts, it must have been so frustrating. She was beginning to understand why Kira had been so distrustful and short-tempered with the Federation crew when they had first arrived. Fear of this behavior, writ large, would do that.
"But it happened to her and she remembers it," Keiko argued. Sometimes obvious things still needed to be said. "Whether we talk about it or not, it happened."
***
Keiko could not remember ever feeling more exhausted.
She had very nearly lost them both, Kira and the baby, at the hands of that vengeance-hungry Cardassian murderer. After so many miracles, for them to have died like that, would have been unthinkable. Yet it had come very close to happening.
Tears stung Keiko's eyes. Unable to help herself, she ignored Julian's command that Kira get some rest and knocked gently on her door. Hopefully, if she was sleeping, it wouldn't be loud enough to disturb her.
The speed with which Kira responded indicated that she hadn't been sleeping at all.
Keiko entered the room, and stood there in silence. She didn't even know what she wanted to say. She was angry at Kira, furious even, for taking off and chasing after a dangerous criminal now. She was heavily pregnant and therefore physically incapacitated, and so much depended on her. But on the other hand, she understood why Kira had done it. It was an understanding she didn't think she could ever lose now.
Mostly, she was just so, so relieved to have them back again.
In the middle of the heavy silence that filled the room, Kira took out her dermal regenerator. The pink light of the reverse setting flared as she ran it over her left arm. When she held it out to Keiko, she could see the scar that her friend had carefully kept hidden all these months.
It was a perfect hatch mark, uniform and clean, four straight lines and a fifth running through it. Keiko ran her fingers over it, as if it was a code she could somehow read by touch. There was no way this had happened by accident.
"People panic when it's time to kill other people, even enemies." Kira wasn't pulling her arm away and Keiko was grateful for that. "There's a lot of adrenaline in your system, especially if you're new to it, and it's very easy to make mistakes. You can misjudge a shot or discharge your weapon too soon. There are a lot of ways for your nerves to fail you."
Keiko nodded. That all made sense, although she didn't know why Kira was telling her this now. "What happened to you?"
"It was an early mission; I was so young and so nervous. The light was bright and my eyes were playing tricks on me." Kira blinked hard and Keiko wondered if she too was trying not to cry. "I shot a hara cat."
Keiko gasped. She had seen Bajoran hara cats in a sancutary on the planet. They were beautiful creatures, swift and graceful, and Kira must have only been a child when this had happened. It must have been devastating.
Kira went on. "She died instantly. She had kittens with her, four of them, and I can only assume that they starved to death. They must have done."
Keiko kept her fingers on the scar. "You did this to yourself."
"To remind me," Kira confirmed. "They weren't the only innocent lives I took; of course not. It was a war and there were always going to be collateral damages. But it was important to me to remember the whole truth. Not just what was done to me, but also what I did. Innocents really did die; Prin was right about that. I don't feel bad about the Cardassians, not even the civilians. But the Bajorans who were close to bombs that went off or who got caught in the crossfire? The ones who went hungry because we attacked supply transports? I regret them every day. I can't let that destroy my life, but I also can't forget. That's what the mark is for."
Keiko released Kira's arm and stepped back. Slowly, with trembling fingers, she began to undo the buttons of her own blouse. Kira watched her, waiting to comprehend, as Keiko let the garment fall to the ground.
"Here." Keiko put her hand on the smooth, warm skin of her own belly. There was no mark there; Julian did good work and he'd sealed the incision perfectly. "This is where I was cut open, so that my baby could be pulled out of my body while I was unconscious. He's going to live and he's going to be mine, but he was still taken from me against my will." She wasn't sure how, but she knew that was the right spot. She finally let the tears she had been fighting spill over. "This is where it hurts."
Kira's hand came up to cover Keiko's. Keiko welcomed it, a hand that had killed hundreds of people. The hand of her dear friend. The touch was warm and gentle.
"Yes," Kira said. "I see."