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Fire
The human commander assigned to Deep Space Nine (the only person who’ll outrank her, for whatever value her rank holds) controls fire. She doesn’t know how to deal with that.
To be honest, humans as a whole baffle Kira. She doesn't like it; there's nothing more dangerous than a potential enemy you can't understand. Phasers, whips and explosives, that she knows. She has learnt how to use them, she knows how they shape a confrontation. She can predict what an enemy with a phaser can do and knows how to counter them.
How do you counter someone who will use the fabric of the world against you? How do you disarm someone whose very breath is a weapon? What will happen if these humans see Bajor — her scarred, exploited, but still beautiful world — and decide its oceans and lands are a commodity, once again?
Not all of the humans, she learns, are capable of such feats, but enough of them will be. Most of the senior staff are human and all of them are listed as benders.
"The force fields around those cells have been reinforced," Odo says, in the middle of the night shift, nodding to a row on the far left. "Even if they fail, I should be able to contain any detainees."
“We’ll get their measure soon, anyway,” Kira says, looking at the files Starfleet has sent.
The Commander looks back at her, young, straight-backed and confident, but the files speak of a man who has lost everything to battle and may be the less for it. For Bajor’s sake, she hopes he will be a fair man. That his presence will allow them to rebuild for however long the Provisional Government may last; but she’s ready to prepare for the worst. Hope alone doesn't keep you alive.
The commander arrives. His smile doesn't ring quite true, and his scars aren't as well hidden as he believes. For all of that. he's a man willing to put in the work, no matter how menial it is, and that soothes the edges of her anger.
So in the end, the worst doesn't come. Not just yet, at the very least. Still, there's nothing Kira could have done to prepare for what does happen.
She knows how to fight the Cardassians with nothing but an empty weapon and a resolve to not die, as easily as she breathes. The Provisional Government dallying and blustering whenever she has a demand to make is no less than she expected, and she navigates that particular minefield as well as she can. That Kai Opaka has broken her seclusion is a welcome piece of news, but not all that surprising, in the big scheme of things.
The Celestial Temple appearing in the sky, well. Hours after she has seen it, it remains imprinted in her mind's eye, like a blue flash of fire across the canvas of the universe. And when all is said and done…
The Emissary of the Prophets controls fire. She doesn’t know how to deal with that.
With any part of that.
Air
There aren't officers above the rank of lieutenant commander who manipulate air, as near as she can tell, but there are always some among the non-commissioned officers and lower ranks.
At first she wonders whether there’s an underlying prejudice keeping them at a lower standing; the Federation certainly sounds too perfect to be true and she wouldn’t be surprised if they had simply been hiding their darker side until they were entrenched over Bajor.
Once the new administration is set in place and the humans start to live on the station full-time, however, there’s none of the condescension she'd have expected to see if that was the case. The airbenders move with their shoulders as straight as the rest, they mingle without any hesitation and their gazes meet with hers as boldly as anyone else’s.
They aren't cowed. Sometimes they rush through their assignments and other times they stop and daydream, but there’s never the tension and fear she has grown accustomed to seeing under Cardassian rule. Even after a reprimand, there’s a certain undercurrent of freedom in these humans, a sense that they're only obeying because it suits them to do so.
It isn’t that they are unprofessional—their work is as painstakingly precise as she has come to grudgingly expect from Starfleet. However, when a round-faced ensign weathers her indignant rant after she catches her jumping off the upper level of the Promenade, Kira gets the very distinct feeling that if she refrains from repeating this stunt in the future, it'll be because she’s humoring her.
“Sorry, Major,” the ensign says, and she genuinely sounds contrite. There’s still something in the glint of her eyes though, a spark of humor that Kira can’t understand. She eventually decides that the young officer isn't, in fact, laughing at her and her anger deflates. The whole absurdity of the situation makes her sigh and give up. The ensign bobs her head and leaves with quirky, light steps that make her look like she’s skipping.
Kira resolves to keep an eye on her, but that ensign only remains on the station for seven weeks before she asks for a transfer to a small exploratory vessel scheduled for a five-month survey mission on the Gamma Quadrant.
A few days before her, a lieutenant junior grade with airbender abilities had already asked for a prolonged leave on Bajor, to explore the mountain settlements. Commander Sisko grants both requests with a puzzling nonchalance, as if they are par for the course.
During the first year, she'll come to realize the reason high-ranking officers of their kind are rare, and why there's little point in memorizing the faces of the Starfleet airbenders: they make up a good number of the temporary assignments. They come to the station as researchers, engineers, operation officers but they stay in stints of a few weeks or months before their wanderlust grows again and they move on.
Clearly, they serve in an organization that has learnt how to adapt around them rather than forcing them to conform. That's the first endorsement she can give in favor of this strange, alien Federation.
Water
Unlike the rest of their countrymen, human officers who control water are very easy to identify. For one, just as the ones who control metal gravitate towards the Operations branch, these are congregated on the Science branch. They're also the ones with a very distinct addition to the uniform; between the blue shoulders and the slim belts carrying water pouches, it’s obvious that all of the Starfleet medical officers have these abilities, from the aggravating CMO to a painfully quiet nurse who constantly shrinks from her.
Kira had scoffed when she first heard of manipulating water. Not only could these humans be more easily parted from their source of power: the very notion of throwing water away like that had initially struck her as insultingly wasteful, another demonstration of Federation overindulgence.
Yet, she's soon forced to concede in this matter.
When these humans bend on the station they create shimmery ribbons that barely resemble water. They curl around their patients, curing burns and easing aches, with an ease that seems almost out of a fairytale. She sees them patching scraped knees for children running through the Promenade; making idle, delicate figures spring from glasses while eating on the Replimat or laying a hand on a partition where she knows there are fluid tubes near the surface.
Eventually, Kira also starts noticing other things. These humans are more openly demonstrative about their abilities than the earth and fire benders; for all of that, they are the ones who carry a familiar air about them, the look of someone trapped by circumstance and not sure how to break free.
“As near as I can tell, it’s something to do with the artificial gravity,” the Science officer tells her one evening. Even in so short a time, Kira has come to truly appreciate her company. “Waterbenders respond to the tides and the satellites of the planets because they are connected to the water cycle. But on spaceships and space stations where everything is regulated by machines, they tend to get restless.”
“Why do they take those assignments then?”
Dax gives her a long, wry look before answering. “Well, for one, Starfleet Medical does have an unmatched reputation in the Federation. After a few years of service, there aren’t many institutions that would turn retired officers away, and there are many opportunities for promotion as well. Of course, there’s also what drives the rest of us: some of them are in it for the thrill of the unknown, some out of patriotism, some are running away from something.”
Kira’s gaze slides to the counter on their right, where the senior doctor is sitting. He’s drawing slow, circular patterns with a finger on the rim of a glass filled with a pearly white liquid. The ice in it gently dips and rises, creating glinting refractions of light and color that appear and disappear in a beautiful display.
She looks away before the man catches her looking and takes that as an invitation to approach, but when she returns her attention to the table, Dax seems to have noticed where her attention has wandered. She braces herself for a comment, but there’s something almost yearning in the other woman’s gaze when she refocuses on her.
“I wonder, not often, but sometimes, what it must be like,” She says with a sigh. “A few years ago, a Trill had to be hosted temporarily within a human, an earthbender I believe. While they were joined, they couldn't move even a potted plant. But the symbiont could sense… it. For humans, their element isn't something they have. It's something they are. ”
“That sounds…” Hard to believe. Intriguing. Familiar. Far too close to something she recognizes and hasn't wanted to see in these people who roll their eyes at the vedeks and tolerate Bajoran prophecies as a quaint foreign foible. “…interesting.”
It sounds almost like faith.
Earth
The station is quite literally falling apart.
It's better, infinitely better than it had been. The lights are at full power, there are no fences, no debris, no fumes and steam. As far as she’s concerned, all the minor and not so minor inconveniences are worth it, because this is no longer a Cardassian bastion.
The random malfunctions, missing parts and concerning noises are still supremely annoying, if not outright concerning. So much so that when the human Chief of Operations takes control of his department, he’s greeted with a collective sigh of relief from even the most skeptical of her people.
O'Brien is a surly man, more prone to listening in silence than to trying to force his opinions on the Bajoran compliment anyway; of all the senior crew, he’s the one who reminds her the most of the members in her resistance cell. Not surprising, perhaps, when she learned that he had been one of the fighters on Celtik III. Kira would like him on that basis alone.
But he’s also a miracle worker. The station comes alive under his hands: strips of metal that they hadn’t been able to tear down buckle and fall with one wave of his hand, panels straighten until they almost look new.
One time, the Chief settles down in Ops and rewires the entire life support system on his own. Eventually she stops her own work to simply watch, fascinated almost against her will. For nearly an hour, the machine looks like a living being as the cables and relays writhe and spin around each other at the simplest gesture from the engineer, finding their place like they have a mind of their own in a dance for which she can’t understand the steps.
The end result is a little messy, a patchwork of odd components working together in precarious balance. No gul in his right mind would have allowed something like it in his vicinity, or would have been allowed to keep his rank if he had. The realisation makes Kira smile.
The design is still Cardassian, but the heart of Deep Space Nine is finally beating for her people.
When O'Brien is done he smiles at her from where he's laying flat on his back, a small but genuine turn of the lips. Sweat has plastered some curls of hair to his forehead and it's an entirely unconscious gesture for Kira to offer her hand and pull him to his feet.
"Is this setting up to standards, Major?" He asks, dabbling his face with a handkerchief he has produced from a mostly untouched toolbox. It has a curly K stitched somewhat clumsily in the corner. "I'll teach the senior staff how to repair minor malfunctions later, but I can show you what to look for now, if you prefer."
"Yes," she says, taking a step closer and he smoothly moves aside to let her approach the console, like he doesn't need to think about the gesture at all. He begins explaining; most of it is technical knowledge she has never been allowed to have, knowledge that she has had to fight tooth and nail to learn. And yet, he never talks down to her. He never condescends, never treats her as anything less than an equal.
She won't realize it until much later; but at this moment, she's no longer afraid of what the future will bring.