Chapter Text
Prologue
“Seems like rations have gotten smaller again...”
“Yeah, what did you expect from those bastards? They’re trying to starve us all!”
“Peace. We will make do with what we have. The prophets have always provided for our needs. They will not abandon us.”
“Aye, praise be the prophets.”
“Praise be!”
Trying to tune out the inane conversation at her parents’ table was kind of hard when the grey gruel in her bowel offered no meaningful distraction. It tasted of nothing and she had no idea what it was made of.
“Daughter, don’t look so glum! Everything is going to be alright!”
She lifted her head to smile at her father, even if she felt none of the comfort he tried to convey. It was something she had gotten used to over the course of the last year, as shameful as it was for a nearly five year old to be forced to reassure her begetter in such a way.
Oh well, perhaps she was being uncharitable to the man, but he was kind of annoying to her on a personal level. Always cheerful and preachy, espousing the greatness of his gods to all who wanted to listen and also her, his daughter, who most certainly didn’t want to. He was an acceptable father, but his profession as priest didn’t bring much food to the table, especially since the alien invaders had burned down the temples and cracked down on public gatherings.
Her mother was even worse. She loved to complain about anything and everything, seemingly out of an inborn belief on how the world should be and look like. ‘Everything had its place and purpose’, as she was fond of saying. Too bad then that her worldview was a very conservative, dogmatic one, harkening back to millennia of tradition which was particularly antiquated for a civilization that had achieved space travel. Women were supposed to stay at home and provide for their husbands, all citizens should pray three times per day, the old songs had to be sung at every holiday in the exact same way, little girls needed to be able to recite the Hymn of Revelation in their sleep and so on and so forth.
Shouldn’t technological progress also have spread some ideas of enlightenment and liberalism among the population? Apparently not. Well, she shouldn’t judge her new people under human parameters, because they were strictly speaking not Homo Sapiens...
At first she had assumed the small bony ridges on the back of her nose were just a weird birth defect that ran in the family, but all her neighbours had them too. Her father had laughed heartily when she haltingly asked him – in a, for her at that point in time, unfamiliar language – what they were.
Bajorans.
She was a weird humanoid extraterrestrial lifeform now . It wasn’t just a strange path of divergent evolution caused by some cosmic butterfly. No, the planet they were on had nothing to do with earth. All the continents were different and she hadn’t recognized any of the plants or animals in her picture books.
Truly, the nigh-omnipotent being that had seen fit to gift her another chance at life had the worst kind of humour. Born again on a planet of religious zealots, this time too young to defend her home from invaders and without any historical knowledge she could fall back on to predict the future? Yeah, she was most certainly being messed with by that supernatural piece of garbage.
Especially considering her name was...
“Tianya, are you excited for your birthday tomorrow? I hope you remember your mantras! I know you’re a clever girl, but do you want to practice them again before going to bed?” smiled the woman across the table, absentmindedly playing with her wristband as she often did when she was nervous.
“No, thank you mother. I have not forgotten them.”
The Bajorans had rites and festivals for everything and religious scriptures and verses for every occasion. Tianya would have rather spent her days learning about the wider galaxy or the economy of her people, but instead her parents crammed encyclopaedias worth of religious drivel into her young brain.
“Are you sure? You wouldn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of-”
“Rigla, let it rest. Tianya is a smart and dutiful child.”
“Yes, I know, but-”
Ah, she couldn’t wait to get tomorrow’s festivities over with. It was bound to be a mostly boring circus show and a few treats if her parents had been able to afford them this time.
Looking down at her bowl, Tianya found it disappointingly empty. A quiet sigh of disappointment escaped her when she noticed that she was still hungry...
o-0-o
“Oh, Prophets, we thank you for five blessed years!”
“Praise be!” “Praise be!” “Praise be!”
“Now come here, my daughter. Let me feel your pagh.”
‘Pagh’ was a somewhat analogous concept to the human soul, though not as useless. Allegedly it could be read by priests such as her father to determine one’s will or determination or even health in some cases.
Tianya was sceptical on how real it was, but she hadn’t believed in magic before her second life either, so she was trying to keep an open mind. It was kind of bewildering however that the way to feel this mystical life essence was through fondling one’s earlobes.
Her smile thinned as her father kept touching her ear, the entire conglomeration of her stupid birthday expectantly staring at him even as he kept his silence for an awkward amount of time. Could he please release her now? It was starting to get embarrassing.
“What is it, Tegro?” asked her mother finally, carefully approaching from the side.
“It... This... Incredible....” he answered haltingly, his eyes filled with a near rapturous expression.
Oh no... Was there truly something to this pagh-thing? Could her father read the memories of her past lives!? Would that brand her as some kind of body-hopping demon, an impostor who had replaced their beloved child in the womb?
“Her Pagh... It is the one of an old warrior... It is far greater than her body should allow!”
Damn it! Shit! Was this the moment where her life would inexplicably turn for the worse?
All the muscles in Tianya’s tiny body tensed up as she prepared to run for her life.
“It must be a sign! My daughter is a life-traveller!”
The exclamation was met with thunderous delight and jubilation by the gathered crowd much to Tianya’s confusion. Why were they celebrating this revelation?
Her father kneeled before her and looked her deeply in the eyes with more seriousness than she had ever seen before.
“Can you remember something from before the time you were born? Flashes of other lives?”
What was she supposed to say to that? Nobody had ever previously unmasked her as a reincarnator! Would the truth even change anything at this point? It wasn’t like these people even knew what humans were...
Hesitantly, she nodded her head and he broke out into laughter.
“The Prophets must have sent her back to us for a purpose!”
Rigla, her mother, even began weeping tears of joy.
“This invasion of the Cardassian scum... it must be a test! A trial! Hahaha!”
Others were similarly raining their hands to the sky, hope and gratitude smeared across their faces with ecstatic expectancy.
Alright then! Tianya was thoroughly uncomfortable now. Instead of being labelled a demon, she had become some figure of religious worship. The Bajorans had been oppressed and now had latched onto the first dubious sign of intervention from their presumed heavenly patrons. It was to be expected really, but that didn’t stop her from being viscerally repulsed by it.
Why were they placing their hopes and dreams on a five year old child instead of taking the problems plaguing their lives into their own two hands? Because it was easier! It was a coward’s tactic to avoid both blame and responsibility! ‘Let god’s chosen do it!’ they would say, instead of taking action themselves, falling into passivity and complacency. How disappointing...
This couldn’t stand.
She wouldn’t let these poor, deluded people poison themselves with the empty drug of vain idolatry. Tianya had seen enough horrors to know where that would lead.
“I’m not your saviour!”
Her angry scream brought instantaneous silence over the room.
All eyes were on her, nobody having expected her to raise her voice since she had never done so prior.
“I am not some divine messenger! I don’t know how to expel the invaders from our planet! Aside from having lived multiple lives, I’m nobody special!”
Her gaze wandered from each guest to the next, her arms spread for emphasis, until she reached her parents, glaring at them with all the fury she could muster, trying to drive the point home.
“I can’t cure the sick or feed the hungry! I am hungry myself! I don’t know the secrets of the universe or the purpose of life. No...”
She shook her head, pursing her lips as she thought back to past regrets.
“Do not look to me for deliverance. I am a Bajoran like all of you! No better or greater than any of you! I am not your saviour. If you want to be saved... Well, as they say, the Prophets help those who help themselves.”
They all kept staring and she knew not what they were thinking. Were they angry? Did they feel betrayed? Had they understood what she had been trying to convey?
Ultimately it was her father who broke the silence.
“My daughter is humble. She speaks the truth... Before the Prophets we are all equal and any single one of us will not be enough to stop the tide.”
For a moment she thought she had truly gotten through to the man, but he immediately proved her wrong as maddened passion crept back into his voice and replaced the earlier sombreness.
“But her existence is not random! It is an extraordinary occurrence in these extraordinary times! Hardship has come over us all, but the Prophets are already at work to restore Bajor to its former glory! Tianya is but an omen of the great and terrible times ahead! A living manifestation of this turbulent age!”
Quietly she had to applaud Tegro. The whole crowd had fallen instantly under his spell, now seeing themselves as martyrs who were being tested by their gods. He could have become a good politician with his oratory skills. Indeed, priests and politicians were basically the same thing in this civilization.
However, would that flame of righteous determination burning in their chests still be alive tomorrow? Who could say? But at least she wasn’t expected to play the part of saint any more. She’d rather get to eating her birthday cake than become a martyr...
o-0-o
This... This was not what she had envisioned happening. In hindsight she really should have anticipated the cumulative error of many people retelling the story of her birthday celebration amongst themselves to result in a hyperbolic farce. Now whenever she went out to take a run around her city block she would face stares and whispers and perhaps, worst of all, the occasional bows of especially reverent believers.
This would not have been especially annoying if the Bajorans hadn’t also increased their hatred for the occupying forces on their planet. Patrolling Cardassian troops were spit at or insulted. Propaganda posters were defaced and she had seen more than one young man sharpening knives out in the open. An escalation of violence seemed almost inevitable at this point, but she had made peace with that.
It wasn’t her fault that these poor, ideologically blinded folks were going to die in their uprising. She never asked for any of this. She didn’t want to inspire some idiotic crusade against a foe that could disintegrate them from orbit. Tianya personally saw no hope in trying to oust the aliens after they had achieved absolute air superiority. If there was one thing she had learned from her previous military career then it was that...
Her mother, on the other hand, was unable to accept that.
“Darling, it is necessary! How could I live with myself if I didn’t try to join the liberation effort?”
Throwing up her hands in frustration, Tianya turned towards her father to make him reign in his wife.
“This is madness! You can’t let mother throw her life away!”
“Oh, daughter... She is not throwing it away,” he patiently explained like she was actually five or something. “On the contrary, she is dedicating it to you! You should feel honoured that-“
Honoured? Another sentient being was pointlessly running to her doom and she was supposed to feel honoured!?
“No, I feel sick!”
Maybe it was her child-like hormones assuming control, but she couldn’t stand being in the same room as those two idiots any longer. Storming out of the door, Taniya slammed her fist into the wall.
It hurt.
Predictably she also did not feel better.
Taking a deep breath, she tried to assure herself. Nothing overly terrible was going to take place. This little rebellion would be squashed and her mother would return to being a normal, quaint woman.
Even if something bad happened...
She had only known these people for a few short years, what did she care if they bit the dust!? Family was just a social construct after all. They were adults in charge of their own choices!
Agh! Why was this whole mess making her so angry!?
There was nothing she could do and thus she resolved to simply stop thinking about it. Her parents wouldn’t listen no matter what she said, so she would treat their idiocy with contemptuous silence from now on.
Only one week later did she notice the error of this decision when, after an especially long goodnight hug, her mother promised Tianya to ‘inspire her bravery’ .
She failed to return home in the morning.
A great victory they called it...
Two dozen Cardassian soldiers dead. The visiting general Crion Daima was badly wounded, possibly crippled for life.
The people cheered in front of her window.
She wanted to scream at them, but what would that accomplish?
Her father meanwhile did not weep. He didn’t cry a single tear for his wife who sacrificed herself in a pointless suicide bombing.
He just lit his damned Duranja lamp and chanted under it for hours.
Tianya couldn’t grasp how he could just accept this. Rigla, the love of his life was dead and there he sat, smiling like nothing was wrong!
On her small legs she scrambled up the stairs to the attic and dragged the big family suitcase down, hastily cramming as much of their essential clothes and valuables into it as she could. Sprinting to the kitchen she grabbed a few rations and bottles of water. After a second of deliberation she also a few pieces of her mother’s jewellery before snapping the suitcase shut.
“Father, we have to go! They’re going to come for us after they identify her! We have to leave now!”
For a few horrible seconds there was no sign of understanding in his eyes until he nodded and smiled.
“Good thinking. Let us be swift.”
She threw on a rain jacket with a hood that would hide her face and forced Tegro into a similar one before dragging him out of the door.
Unfortunately, she had been too late.
Screams started ringing out in the distance and soon unfamiliar firing noises cut them off. Those certainly weren’t the unmistakable cracks of gunshots, but they had a comparable cadence for them to be something similar.
Tugging her father’s hand she hurried in the opposite direction of the noise, yet as they rounded the corner the street was cut off by a row of armoured Cardassians holding rifles and riot shields.
Quickly she attempted to turn back only for their escape to be cut off by an attack from above. Smoke grenades rained down from high arcs in the sky, skipping over the paved streets like mischievous spirits even as they released noxious purple gas in wide trails.
The already panicked Bajorans around them scattered in fright and suddenly her hand was ripped from the grip of her father and she was sent tumbling to the ground. Her head impacted something hard and the world blacked out for a heartbeat.
Sharp, throbbing pain filled Tianya’s world as she struggled to breathe.
Why was there purple everywhere...?
Somebody called her name in the background, but she couldn’t hear them over the booming of blood in her ears.
Her eyes hurt, so she rubbed them.
Mistake! That made them burn even stronger!
Aimless and blinded she tried to orient herself, to get away from the pain, to breathe-
And that was the last she could remember.
At least until the Cardassian militia forces took her into their ‘gentle care’ and after being processed and detained in a windowless box for an unknowable amount of time, she was promptly resold as a slave to the first taker...
Sadly, this was only the first in a long line of ill-fated events that would befall her.