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Jadzia Dax frowned at her console. Residual chroniton levels were within normal parameters now, so why couldn’t she shake the feeling that something was still wrong?
It didn’t help that Dr. Pilan, the Bajoran scientist who’d come to DS9 to help Dax ensure that the Orb of Time hadn’t been damaged in the recent theft attempt, agreed with her. Dr. Pilan said the readings were slightly off from what historical documents indicated they should be. As much as Dax wanted to tell her these documents might not be accurate, she didn’t want to provoke a religious argument. The documents in question were apparently regarded as semi-canonical by most Bajoran religious scholars.
Anyway, Dax’s intuition happened to agree with the religious documents in this case. Something about the orb sitting innocently in its containment case on the table before her wasn’t quite right.
The sound of footsteps behind her let Dax know someone had entered the lab, presumably Dr. Pilan returning from her lunch break.
“The readings haven’t changed,” Dax said, not turning around.
“I assume that’s a good thing,” said a voice that definitely didn’t belong to Dr. Pilan.
“Kira,” Dax said, turning toward the entrance. “I didn’t expect you.”
“You were absorbed in your work.” Kira said, smiling fondly.
“More confused by it. These readings don’t make sense.”
“Didn’t you say they looked all right earlier?”
“I thought they did, but now I’m not so sure. They’re just slightly… off. But what are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were supposed to be in Ops. Did you get off duty early, or are you spending your work hours socializing?”
Kira raised her eyebrows innocently.
“Oh, I’m still on duty. I’m here, in the science lab, on duty and checking on the progress of an important scientific project. The Orb of Time is very important to Bajor, you know.”
“Riiiight,” Dax said, drawing the word out. “You came all the way down here, in person, to ‘check on my progress’.”
“Like I said, you’re doing important scientific work for Bajor, and monitoring it is one of our highest priorities.”
“And the fact that your girlfriend is the scientist doing that work has absolutely nothing to do with it, I’m sure.”
“Really, Dax,” Kira said in mock disapproval. “You’d suggest that I’d do something as unprofessional as steal a moment to visit my girlfriend while on duty?”
“Maybe you would,” Dax said with a smile. “Anyway, Dr. Pilan just went to grab a Hasperat and will be back soon. You know how much she disapproves of unprofessional behavior.”
“All right, I’ll get out of here quickly. I have to meet Ensign Hartmann soon anyway. He’s been requesting a meeting to discuss expanding replicator options in guest quarters for the last week and I can’t keep putting it off.”
“Hartmann always has some pet idea he’s obsessed with,” Dax said, amused. She’d always liked Hartmann. “Speaking of, has he finally confessed his love to Lieutenant Ito?”
“Not that I know.”
Dax knew Hartmann had been in love with Ito for a while. She’d caught him once doodling Ito’s name in the middle of a heart on a PADD. He hadn’t been able to look Dax in the eye for a week when he realized she’d seen.
“He’d better make his move soon,” Dax said, turning briefly to ensure the readings on her console were unchanged. “He reminds me a bit of myself, you know.”
“Hartmann?” Kira said, clearly surprised.
“As a child, I had a crush on the smartest, prettiest, most perfect girl in the entire school. I obsessed over her for a year. But all that time, I was terrified of the idea of actually talking to her.”
“Did you ever work up the courage?”
“Nope! But one time, she passed me in the hall and complimented my hair clip. I didn’t take it off for a month after that, but that was the only time she ever spoke to me, and when the school year ended, I never saw her again.”
“Which host was this? Tobin?”
Dax understood why Kira would think that.
“Actually, it was Jadzia.”
“Really?” Kira said with a surprised laugh. “I have to say, I have trouble imagining you being nervous about talking to someone you like.”
In a way, it was hard for Dax herself to imagine. She remembered what it felt like to be that child, but the memories were only somewhat more vivid than the childhood memories of her past hosts. There was a haze of distance between her present self and who Jadzia had once been. Being joined didn’t erase any part of the person a host had been, but when Jadzia had chosen to become Dax, she’d chosen to abandon the parts of herself that were too small to embrace life fully. She’d had to in order to be reaccepted by the Symbiosis Commission.
“I was very different back then,” Dax said. “Before I was joined.”
“I’d like to have met her,” Kira said. “Jadzia before she was joined, I mean.”
Dax wished she hadn’t brought up this topic.
“You wouldn’t have found me very interesting,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I didn’t do much more than read books and hide in a corner whenever I was put in an unfamiliar situation. Anyway, shouldn’t you be going to learn all about Ensign Hartmann’s brilliant ideas for updating the replicators?”
Kira made a face.
“Right, I – wait, why is your console flashing?”
Dax turned to look. Sure enough, a warning had appeared.
“Residual chroniton levels are rising,” Dax said. “Only, they don’t look so residual anymore.”
“Is the orb all right?” Kira asked, hurrying to stand behind Dax.
“I don’t know,” Dax tried to say, but as she began to speak, a glow filled the room.
Dax squinted against it, toward the case that held the Orb of Time. The light was definitely coming from there, which wasn’t good. Dax’s body seemed to be frozen in place. All she could do was shut her eyes as the light became blinding.
The world shifted around her. She wobbled on her feet, dazed and dizzy, trying to catch her balance as she squinted against the receding light.
She definitely wasn’t in the same place she’d been before. The walls of the science lab were gone, replaced with a cloudy sky above and vegetation beneath her feet.
A figure stood a short distance from her. As Dax’s eyes adjusted, she made out a Bajoran with long hair tied back and a smudge of dirt across her cheek. She was instantly familiar, despite her much younger face.
It was Kira Nerys, and she was pointing a phaser directly at Dax.
Dax could only blink at her, still disoriented. Kira stepped forward, her expression hard.
“Who the hell are you?” she said.
One moment, Kira had been standing in the science lab with Dax, looking over her shoulder. The next moment, there was bright light all around her and Kira felt a familiar sensation of disorientation.
This was how it felt to be influenced by an orb. Even as she shut her eyes against the light, she knew the Prophets were taking her somewhere, and she wasn’t afraid.
The light faded before her eyelids, and she cautiously opened her eyes. She was unsurprised to find herself no longer in the science lab.
She was in an unfamiliar room with two beds. One bed was neatly made and had a perfectly positioned stack of books on the table beside it. The other was messy, its blanket half hanging off and several articles of clothing sprawled across it.
She clearly wasn’t on Bajor. The furniture wasn’t designed in a style she was familiar with, and the gravity was slightly too light. She was probably on a planet rather than a ship or a station, though, because a small amount of sunlight filtered around the edges of a shade pulled over a window in the far wall. This was probably a Federation planet given the Federation-style replicator in the corner of the room and the Starfleet badge lying on a table.
There were two closed doors, at least one of which must lead out of this room. Kira turned to move toward one, but before she could, it slid open, revealing a small bathroom with a sonic shower and a woman in the doorway, completely naked.
Her eyes locked with Kira’s and she let out a tiny shriek.
“Dax?” Kira said, startled.
The woman was definitely Jadzia Dax. Kira recognized her face instantly, as well as… the rest of her. But she looked younger than Kira had ever known her.
The younger Dax ducked back behind the wall into the bathroom, disappearing from sight.
“I’m sorry, Dax!” Kira called. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I had no idea you were in there.”
There was a short silence.
“That’s not my name,” Dax finally said, still hidden.
“What?” Kira said blankly.
“My name isn’t Dax. Who are you and what are you doing in my room?”
Of course. This was Jadzia before she’d been joined. Kira felt silly for not realizing it immediately. But she had no idea how to explain everything to a Jadzia who’d never met her before.
“My name is Kira Nerys,” she said. “I ended up in your room accidentally, and I promise I don’t mean you any harm. This is going to sound like a weird question, but what year is it?”
There was another silence, longer this time. Then, slowly, the side of Jadzia’s head peeked around the doorway, the rest of her hidden.
“2363,” she said.
Kira frowned, calculating. It still took her longer to use Starfleet dates rather than the Bajoran calendar.
“That means I’ve travelled more than ten years back in time,” she said.
Jadzia’s eyes blinked at her from behind the doorway.
“I’ll explain,” Kira said. “I’m from a time just over a decade in the future and I was near a… time machine just before I suddenly ended up here. I don’t know why I was sent here or where exactly here is, and I definitely didn’t mean to end up in your room right as you were stepping out of the shower.”
Kira thought for a long moment that Jadzia wasn’t going to say anything. Then she finally spoke in a small voice.
“I was thinking of calling security, but if you really are from the future… I probably shouldn’t.”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t. And I’m sorry, I’d leave you alone and not drag you into this, but, well, the time machine that sent me here is called the Orb of Time. It’s sacred to my people. Its workings reflect the will of our deities – the Prophets.”
“I know about Bajoran religion,” Jadzia blurted, still only the side of her head visible. “I learned about it in my first year at the Academy in Intro to Alpha Quadrant Cultures.”
“Right,” Kira said. “Well, that’s good, then. You understand. If the Orb of Time sent me to your room, it must have been for a good reason. I guess we must be at Starfleet Academy right now. Yes, that makes sense with the year. Anyway, since the Orb of Time sent me here, I think that means I’m meant to talk to you.”
Jadzia’s head ducked back out of sight and she was quiet again for a while. Kira imagined her leaning against the bathroom wall, her mind racing, trying to decide what to do.
Kira had no idea if Jadzia would believe her. The Dax she knew would have been willing to listen to a stranger who claimed to be a time traveler. She’d have been excited by the idea, although she would have remained skeptical until she had strong evidence.
But this Jadzia wasn’t Dax. Her voice was soft and timid. She was both a decade and several centuries younger than the woman Kira loved. As much as she looked like Dax, Kira had to remember that she didn’t truly know this woman.
“If you really are a time traveler,” Jadzia finally said, eyes peeking back around the wall, “you shouldn’t be telling me any of this. I’ve taken Advanced Temporal Mechanics and the standard advice for inadvertent time travelers is to avoid changing the past in any way if possible. Interfering in past events can create time paradoxes or alternate universes. You should figure out a way back to your own time and I should forget I met you. Otherwise, you could damage the timeline.”
Jadzia’s voice had taken on a scholarly tone that the Dax Kira knew would have only used as a joke, but it was clear Jadzia was being completely sincere. Kira couldn’t help smiling.
“I’m not worried about the timeline,” she said. “The Prophets wouldn’t allow it to be damaged. They sent me here for a reason, and I think it has to do with you. I need your help.”
Jadzia just blinked at her. Kira needed to convince her to at least talk.
“I know you in the future,” she continued. “I know you’ve read every book by Klor, including the incomplete texts by their first host. I know you have a sister who has hair just like yours who was always stealing your hairbrush as a child. I know that, more than anything, you’ve always wanted to become joined.”
Jadzia stared at Kira for another moment before speaking.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see if I can help you. I don’t know if I believe everything you’re saying but… you could be telling the truth.” Jadzia audibly swallowed, clearly working past the anxiety she was feeling. “I’m going to see if I can figure out what’s going on. But first… I need to put some clothes on.”
“Uhhh,” said Dax.
It wasn’t the most intelligent thing to say when a past version of your girlfriend who hadn’t met you yet was pointing a weapon at you, but to be fair, she really hadn’t expected to be doing any time travelling today.
She slowly raised her hands, making sure not to make any sudden movements.
“I know that’s a Starfleet uniform,” Kira said. “You appeared out of nowhere, which means you must have transported from somewhere. What is Starfleet doing in the Dahkur province?”
Clearly, Dax had arrived in a time before the end of the occupation. Kira looked twenty or so, which would mean she was currently in the Bajoran Resistance and Dax had travelled about a decade into the past.
Dax had to think very fast. Why would a Starfleet officer be here ten years ago? She knew Starfleet had sent various diplomatic and aid missions to Bajor over the years, but those missions wouldn’t have beamed down in the middle of the Dahkur province wilderness. She had to come up with a plausible explanation for her presence that had the least likelihood of drastically shifting the timeline.
“I didn’t mean to end up here,” Dax said, keeping her voice soft and unthreatening. “My ship was damaged in the Badlands and I managed to make it to Bajor and beam to the surface before my ship burned up in the atmosphere.”
“What exactly were you doing in Bajoran space?”
Kira clearly didn’t believe her, which wasn’t surprising. It was a technically possible story, but not a very likely one.
“I was on a classified mission that had nothing to do with Bajor,” Dax said. “I promise I don’t mean your people harm.”
Kira looked unimpressed.
“Don’t move,” she said, approaching.
Dax stayed completely still. Maybe Kira’s phaser was set to stun, but maybe it wasn’t. Dax had no illusion that a younger Kira would have hesitated to take her out if she saw her as a threat.
Kira took Dax’s combadge and then her tricorder, then backed away again, her phaser never wavering. She turned the tricorder over in the hand that wasn’t holding the phaser, frowning at it.
“That’s a scientific tricorder,” Dax said. “It’s not a weapon.”
“Shut up,” Kira said, glaring at her.
Dax shut up.
“I’m taking you back to my base,” Kira said, “Shakaar will decide what to do with you.”
That wasn’t good. If Kira took Dax to Shakaar’s base, many more people in the past would be exposed to Dax, and the risk of damaging the timeline would multiply.
Dax was about to try to think of some way to escape when she noticed Kira glancing at the horizon. Dax followed her gaze and saw a wall of foreboding black clouds. A storm was fast approaching, and Dax had been too distracted by the sudden time travel to notice. Maybe this storm was exactly what she needed.
“Turn around,” Kira said.
“Huh?”
“Turn around and walk toward that hill.”
Dax turned and saw the hill Kira meant. Without any other options, she started walking.
They were both silent all the way to the hill. Dax spent the walk thinking furiously. Clearly, the Orb of Time had sent her here, but where had it sent the Kira from her time? Maybe it had only affected Dax and Kira was still back in the lab, trying to figure out where Dax had disappeared to.
The biggest problem was that Dax had no idea how to get back. The Orb of Time could send people back and forth through time, and if she’d had it with her, she might have been able to figure out how to send herself to her own time. But if it had travelled to the past with her, she had no idea where it was, and that might mean there was no way back unless the orb itself decided to bring her back.
They reached the hill and Kira directed Dax to walk toward the entrance of a small cave. Once inside, Kira told Dax to sit against one wall while Kira sat against the opposite wall five meters away, weapon braced against her knee so she could continue pointing it at Dax indefinitely.
“Is this your base?” Dax couldn’t help saying, looking around at the empty cave. “It’s kind of small.”
Kira glared at her again.
“We’ll stay here until the storm passes,” she said.
So Dax had some time, though she had a sinking feeling time wasn’t going to help her find a way out of this situation. It was all well and good for Starfleet training to advise against interfering with the past, but what were you supposed to do when the past decided to interfere with you?
“What species are you?” Kira asked, the question more of a demand.
This was an interrogation. Dax was being held prisoner and interrogated by her future girlfriend, which would have seemed an amusing situation if she wasn’t currently in the middle of it.
“Trill.”
“Is that a Federation species?”
“My planet is a Federation member.”
Dax had known, of course, that Kira would have only vague knowledge of the wider galaxy, but it was still startling to realize Kira had never heard of the Trill. Kira was going to remember meeting her. There was almost no way Dax hadn’t already drastically affected the timeline.
“What’s your name?” Kira asked.
This, Dax needed to lie about.
“Nilani Kahn.”
“You’re a Starfleet lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant commander. A lieutenant has only two pips.”
“Fascinating,” Kira said dryly. “What exactly were you doing in the Badlands before your ship was ‘damaged’?”
Kira said the words with clear disdain. She didn’t think much of Dax’s story. Okay, that was fair, but she’d had very little time to come up with it and it was probably the best she could have done given the circumstances.
“My mission is classified,” Dax repeated. “I can’t tell anyone the details.”
“That’s awfully convenient. I wonder if you’ll be saying the same thing once my people get through with you.”
Dax was pretty sure that was a bluff. Kira was just trying to scare Dax into talking. Probably.
“I truly don’t mean you any harm,” Dax said. “I didn’t mean to beam down right next to you at all. I tried to choose an uninhabited place, but my scanners must have malfunctioned.”
“Maybe you really are a Federation officer,” Kira said. “If you are, you’re no ally of ours. We don’t want you here. Or maybe… you’re a Cardassian spy.”
“Last I checked, Cardassians don’t have spots,” Dax said, gesturing to her face.
“Anyone can work for the Cardassians.”
“If I was a Cardassian spy, why would I have told you an implausible story about my ship being damaged in the Badlands?”
“So you admit it’s an implausible story.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not true. Sometimes implausible things do, in fact, happen.”
Kira gritted her teeth.
“Didn’t your ‘Starfleet’ training teach you not to annoy a person holding you captive?”
It did actually. It was a bit too easy to fall into a back and forth with Kira and forget that this wasn’t the woman Dax knew at all. Dax decided to try a different tactic.
“If I really was a Cardassian spy, why would I choose to beam down here, out in the middle of nowhere? What would I stand to gain?”
Kira frowned at this. Dax knew it must have been bothering her. Dax was hoping Kira would come to a specific conclusion.
“You could be trying to find the location of our base,” Kira said.
Good, that was what Dax had hoped for.
“But you’ll be our prisoner,” Kira continued. “I took your devices. There’s no way you’ll be able to communicate your location.”
“Maybe I have a communication device implanted in my tooth or something. Seems like the kind of thing a Cardassian spy would have.”
Kira’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re trying to trick me,” she said. “It won’t work. If I can’t risk bringing you back to base, I’ll stun you and leave you in this cave, then bring my people here to interrogate you.”
Okay, that sounded bad. No matter what she did, it seemed Dax was going to be seen by more people in the past.
The storm was approaching. In the long silence that descended between them, Dax heard the rumbling of thunder drawing nearer. The sky visible through the mouth of the cave was dimming. In a few minutes, the rain would be upon them.
As far as Dax could tell, her only chance was to hope the Orb of Time would yank her back to the future at some point. If the Kira from Dax’s time were here, she would have believed the Prophets sent her to this time for a reason, and that they would bring her back eventually. Dax wasn’t sure what to believe. Had she been sent here on purpose by the entities in the wormhole, or was it just a glitch caused by an incredibly powerful piece of technology?
Dax was entirely at the mercy of a device she didn’t understand, trapped in a dangerous part of the past with no way to escape. She’d been trying not to think about it, but there was a good chance her symbiont would die here and eight lifetimes of knowledge would be lost. That wasn’t a pleasant thought.
She had to do something, even if it was desperate.
The rain arrived, a gentle pattering outside the cave’s entrance for the moment, but from the look of things, it wouldn’t be long until it was coming down much harder. Lightning flashed in the distance, brightening the inside of the cave for brief moments.
Dax looked at Kira sitting across from her. Her face was both impossibly familiar and impossibly young. She was only just out of childhood, a soldier in a war she’d been born into. No matter how much Dax reminded herself this was a Kira she didn’t truly know, she was still Kira.
“I lied,” Dax said.
Kira’s shoulder jerked as her fingers tightened around her phaser.
“I wasn’t in the Badlands,” Dax continued. “I didn’t beam down from a damaged ship. I really am a Starfleet officer, and I’m not a Cardassian spy, but I lied about how I got here because I didn’t think you’d believe the truth, and I thought it would be dangerous to tell you. But the more I think about it, the more I think telling you how I ended up here is my only option. I’m a time traveler from about a decade in the future. I was sent here by one of the Orbs of the Prophets – the Orb of Time.”
Kira politely turned her back as Jadzia grabbed a change of clothes before quickly ducking back into the bathroom.
Kira noted with interest that it was the neatly made bed with the carefully positioned stack of books next to it that seemed to belong to Jadzia, not the messy bed on the other side of the room. Presumably, the other bed belonged to a roommate.
Jadzia stepped out of the bathroom a minute later wearing civilian clothes. She didn’t move far out of the doorway, crossing her arms awkwardly over her chest and looking at the floor. She reminded Kira of a timid hara cat, distrustful of strangers.
“I want to determine for certain that you’re from the future,” Jadzia said, obviously attempting to hide the uncertain tremble in her voice.
“All right,” Kira said. “There must be some sort of scan you can run, right?”
“Most methods of time travel leave trace chroniton signatures. In theory, if you just arrived a few minutes ago, they should still be detectable. Unless… you didn’t come here through some sort of wormhole, did you?”
“The Orb of Time doesn’t create a wormhole as far as I know. I’m no scientist, but I know it has a chroniton signature.”
“Okay,” Jadzia said, her shoulders relaxing slightly. “I know what to do then. I’m just going to grab my scientific tricorder from my desk and use it to scan you… if that’s all right?”
“Of course.”
Jadzia went to her desk and retrieved a tricorder. Cautiously, she approached Kira, stopping a short distance away and pointing the tricorder at her.
“Very high levels of residual chronitons,” Jadzia said, studying the scan results. “Wow, I’ve only ever seen levels this high in textbooks. Okay, you’re definitely telling the truth about being a time traveler. I hope you’re not some kind of time travelling enemy agent trying to destroy the Federation in the past. But if you were, I have no idea why you’d come to visit me of all people.”
She laughed in an embarrassed sort of way.
“I’m not an enemy agent,” Kira said. “My people and yours are allies.”
“The scan said you’re definitely Bajoran,” Jadzia said. She frowned. “Although I’ve heard Cardassians can genetically alter themselves to look like other species – usually Bajorans. But why would a Cardassian spy come here?”
Jadzia was clearly out of her depth. She was a student who’d only ever thought about things like time travel and Cardassian spies as distant theoreticals. This Jadzia was young and uncertain. She shifted uncomfortably during silences, and her laugh was soft and awkward rather than full and confident.
“I’m not a Cardassian spy,” Kira said. “Or a spy at all. I’m a major in the Bajoran militia.”
“I didn’t know Bajor had a militia,” Jadzia said. “Wait, you’re from the future. That means that the Bajorans create a militia in the next ten years.”
“It was created at the end of the Cardassian occupation.”
“Wow,” Jadzia said, eyes widening. “So much must have changed in that time… But I need to focus. I need to figure out a way to help you get back to your own time. My temporal mechanics classes said that the best place to start in resolving a case like this is to identify the original source of the time displacement. So how exactly did you get here?”
Kira explained the little she knew of how the Orb of Time worked.
“The Orbs of the Prophets are complex,” she said. “Most Bajorans believe they’re impossible for us to fully understand. Generally, though, a person chooses to use them. They don’t just randomly send people back in time. There was something unusual about the orb’s chroniton signature right before I ended up here. That’s what you told me.”
Jadzia’s eyes went very wide.
“What I told you?”
“You were there, in the future,” Kira explained. “About a decade from now, you’ll be standing in that science lab with me.”
“A future version of me…” Jadzia marveled. “But wait, why did you get sent back in time and not – not future me?”
“I have no idea. For all I know, you did get sent somewhere too, though obviously not to this room.”
“Okay,” Jadzia said, shaking her head slightly. “I have to focus. Um, solutions to temporal displacement. I got an A+ on that paper. The easiest thing to do would be to find the device that caused you to time travel, but I don’t see a glowing orb anywhere, so unless we can find it or access its residual signature somehow, we’ll need to find an alternate way to send you back to your time. There are a few options, but they’re all kind of complicated and would involve resources I don’t have access to as a student. They don’t exactly want us building time machines in our spare time.”
“I’m not too worried about getting back,” Kira said.
Jadzia stared at her.
“You’re not?”
“Like I said, the Prophets must have sent me here for a reason, and they’ll send me back when I’ve done whatever it is I need to do. That’s how the Orb of Time works in the ancient scriptures, anyway.”
Jadzia looked skeptical. That was one thing she shared with the Dax Kira knew.
“I understand that doesn’t make sense to you,” Kira continued. “You’ve never been comfortable with decisions made based on faith. But I think you’re the key to discovering why I was sent here, and that’s the way I’ll get home.”
Jadzia sank down to sit on the edge of her neatly made bed.
“You must know me pretty well in the future,” she said.
“I’ve known you for five years.”
Jadzia swallowed, unable once again to look directly at Kira.
“I know I probably shouldn’t ask this,” she said hesitantly. “We’re not supposed to know things about the future. That’s important for protecting the timeline. But I already know so much, so… How exactly do we know each other? Who am I to you?”
Kira felt a strong intuition that she needed to tell Jadzia everything.
“We work together,” Kira said. “We both serve on the space station Deep Space Nine, which is jointly controlled by Starfleet and the Bajoran government. Sort of. It’s a complicated arrangement.”
“So, we’re co-workers,” Jadzia said slowly. “And also… friends?”
She said the word hesitantly, like she was afraid of the answer.
“We are friends,” Kira said. “You’re one of my best friends. And you’re also my girlfriend.”
“Do you really expect me to believe something like that?” younger Kira asked. “That you came here from the future?”
But Dax could hear a kernel of doubt in her voice. Maybe it was Dax’s mention of the Orbs of the Prophets, but Kira found this story slightly more convincing than Dax’s previous one. This story, of course, had the benefit of being true, but that was no guarantee Dax could convince Kira of it.
“I’m from about ten years in the future,” Dax said.
“I’ve heard stories of the Orb of Time,” Kira said. “The Vedeks say it could send people to the past. But it was lost – taken by the Cardassians.”
“It’s not lost anymore – not in the time I’m from.”
Kira shifted, switching the phaser to her non-dominant hand to rest her other arm. Dax could have tried to take advantage of the moment to attack and make her escape. She thought there were good odds she could beat twenty-year-old Kira in a fair fight, but even if she’d wanted to, Kira was the one with the phaser, and the only one of them willing to kill.
“Let’s say you’re telling the truth,” Kira said. “You’re saying that in the future, Starfleet has our Orb of Time? Did the Cardassians give it to you?”
“Not exactly,” Dax said, trying to figure out the best way to explain. “The Bajorans have the Orb of Time, not Starfleet. We were just helping you study it.”
What Dax was telling Kira was either going to irrevocably alter the future or it wasn’t. She was taking the gamble that this was the right choice. She might as well gamble all the way.
“Where I come from in the future,” she continued, “the Federation and Bajor are allies. We have an agreement to share control of the space station Deep Space Nine, formerly known as Terok Nor.”
Kira’s expression darkened at that name. Then the rest of Dax’s words sunk in.
“The Federation on Terok Nor. That means… that means the Cardassians are gone.”
“The Cardassian occupation of Bajor ends in approximately five years,” Dax confirmed. “I don’t know in exactly how long since I don’t know what year we’re in now, but I think that’s a fair estimate.”
For a moment, there was a fierce glow of hope in Kira’s eyes. She wanted to believe Dax. Of course she did. Who wouldn’t want to believe everything they’d fought for all their life would soon be accomplished?
Then Kira’s expression hardened again.
“I’m not sure I like this supposed future,” she said. “The Cardassians might be gone, but it sounds like the Federation takes over where they left off.”
“Bajor is independent,” Dax said. “As of my time, you haven’t joined the Federation. It’s only the space station that we jointly control – your planet and your government are yours. In just a few years, the Cardassians will be gone and Bajor will be free. You’ll grow stronger and begin to regain what the occupation took from you. You’ll bring native plants and animals of Bajor back to health, revitalizing your planet’s ecosystems. You’ll revive open practicing of religious rituals banned under the occupation. And you’ll find the Orbs of the Prophets and bring them home.”
“You speak pretty words, Nilani Kahn,” Kira said. “If that’s really your name.”
“It isn’t,” Dax said. “Sorry, I lied about that too, but I was worried you’d remember it in the future. It doesn’t matter now, though. In a way, it was too late the moment you saw my face. My real name is Jadzia Dax, and I think you’re the only person who can help me get back to my own time.”
“Help you?” Kira said with an incredulous laugh. “Maybe you Starfleet types aren’t very bright. You’re my prisoner.”
“You’re still my best hope. Look, I don’t know why the Orb of Time sent me here or if there even was a reason, but you’d believe there was, wouldn’t you Kira?”
Kira stiffened.
“You know my name.”
Dax was playing a dangerous game, but her heart pounded with excitement as well as fear. There was something exhilarating about telling Kira all of this.
“I know you,” Dax said. “In the future, we know each other very well. We work together on Deep Space Nine. I’m the science officer, and you’re the first officer. I liked you from the day I met you. You were angry that day – angry at the Federation for being there and your government for allowing it. But even though the situation was far from perfect and it was never one you asked for, you did what you could to help your people. You help to rebuild Bajor, Kira. You help to shape its future as a free world. You’re one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met – with an unbendable moral compass and a determination to fight for what’s right that never leaves you, even when the fighting is done with words and diplomacy instead of phasers. You’re going to be such a wonderful person – one of the people I trust and love most in the galaxy.”
There was a long silence. Kira’s hand on her phaser was still steady, but her other hand looped a strand of her hair restlessly around her fingers, twisting it around and around.
“It’s more likely that you’re a Cardassian spy,” Kira said finally, but much of the hardness had gone from her voice.
“You don’t really believe that,” Dax said. “You feel that what I’m telling you is true.”
“I want it to be true,” Kira admitted. “And that means that I don’t think I can trust anything I feel.”
“I’m your girlfriend?” Jadzia squeaked, her expression one of complete shock.
“We’ve been together for a few months now,” Kira explained, amused by her reaction.
Jadzia’s cheeks turned slightly pink.
“You’re not joking,” she said. “We actually are… together.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Wow. I mean, it’s just hard to imagine that someone like you would be interested in someone like me. You’re so confident and, uh… well, I’m just me…”
She trailed off and glanced away, her face reddening even further.
Kira remembered Dax telling her about the girl she’d liked in school who she’d never had the courage to approach. It was easy to imagine this Jadzia doing something like that.
“You change a lot in the upcoming years,” Kira said. “The Dax I know is one of the most confident people I’ve met. You were the one who asked me out, actually. I was ranting to you about something a politician had said to me – I don’t remember what it was, but I was livid about it at the time – and you were just listening and nodding and making supportive remarks about how I was totally right and this politician was an idiot, and then when I finally ran out of steam, you asked me if I wanted to go on a date. I was a bit stunned. But I said yes, and you took me to a nice restaurant on the Promenade, and that was how it all started.”
“You called me Dax again,” Jadzia said quietly.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
“I know about Curzon Dax,” Jadzia continued. “He’s a famous ambassador joined with a symbiont. You said I change a lot in the coming years. Could that mean…”
“You’re going to end up joined with Dax,” Kira said.
Jadzia jumped to her feet. She walked over to the far wall and stared at it for a moment. Then she paced the length of her room three times before finally turning back to Kira, eyes bright.
“I really, really hope you’re telling the truth and not playing some kind of trick on me,” she said.
“No trick,” Kira said. “You’re going to become Jadzia Dax.”
Jadzia took several deep breaths, evidently trying to calm herself.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “It’s just, I can hardly believe it. I just sent an application to the Symbiosis Commission. I’ve been waiting for a response, but I wasn’t sure… Being joined is what I’ve wanted all my life. But you know that. You know everything about me.”
“Not everything,” said Kira, charmed by Jadzia’s sincere reaction.
“I don’t know for sure if you’re who you say you are. And I have no proof the future you describe is real… but now I have to believe it is. I have to.”
It was at that moment that the door of the room they were in opened without warning and a human man about Jadzia’s age stepped inside.
Everyone stood frozen for a moment. Kira, Jadzia, and the new arrival all stared at each other.
“Um, Jadzia?” the human said. “Who is this?”
“She’s, uh, Kora!” Jadzia blurted, her voice too loud. “Um, she’s just an old friend of mine who stopped by to catch up. Kora, this is my roommate Tim.”
“Hi, Tim,” Kira said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Tim echoed, though it sounded more like a question. “Um, are you wearing a… military uniform?”
Kira looked down at her uniform. The Bajoran militia didn’t exist in this time period, so Tim wouldn’t recognize it.
“She’s – she’s in a play!” Jadzia said quickly. “About, uh, the Bajoran resistance.”
It was a terrible explanation. Evidently this younger version of Jadzia was a lot less adept at thinking on her feet than the Dax Kira knew.
“It’s a historical re-enactment of the Tamulna massacre,” Kira said, taking over the story. “This uniform was worn by a branch of the Bajoran resistance that was wiped out in the massacre. My aunt died in that battle, leaving her three children orphans. Me and a few others are performing a historical re-enactment for a group of Starfleet admirals to remind them of Bajor’s situation.”
“Oh,” said Tim faintly, adopting a slightly panicked expression. “Um, I’m sorry. About your aunt, I mean. It’s, uh, good that you’re doing that? Um, I just needed to grab something.”
He hurried into the room, grabbed a book from the table beside his bed that had been lying with its pages messily opened. He waved awkwardly as he ducked back out the door and shut it behind him.
Kira and Jadzia were both quiet for a long moment.
“Was that true?” Jadzia finally asked. “About your aunt, I mean.”
“Everything except the part about the uniform.”
“I’m sorry,” Jadzia said softly.
She couldn’t look at Kira, the same awkwardness in her voice that had been in Tim’s. Neither knew how to react to the life Kira had lived.
“I’m sorry,” Jadzia said again. “I can’t even look at you properly.” She looked up, evidently forcing herself to meet Kira’s gaze. “I’m not… I’m not very good at conversations. I spend more of my time reading than actually talking to people. That’s… well, that’s the main reason I’m afraid the Symbiosis Commission won’t pick me. I might be at the top of all my classes, but when it comes to actually doing things out in the real world, I’m useless.”
Jadzia looked so forlorn that Kira couldn’t help going over to put a hand on her shoulder. To her relief, Jadzia didn’t seem frightened by her proximity, though her cheeks reddened a little.
“I know what it’s like to measure yourself against other people and feel inadequate,” Kira told her. “When I first met you, I spent months wishing I could be more like you. At that time, I was very uncertain about who I was and what I was doing. You were so confident, and you seemed to always know what to say in any situation. I admired you.”
“You admired me?” Jadzia said incredulously. “Wow, I must change completely when I – when I become joined.”
“You do change. But everyone changes as they get older. Believe me, I’m a very different person now than I was at your age. At the same time, parts of that past self are still inside me. Growing older means becoming new people all the time, but the old people are still there. The Jadzia Dax I know is compassionate and intelligent and open-minded, but these weren’t only things she got from the symbiont. She got them from you too. I’m glad to have met you, Jadzia.”
Jadzia looked overwhelmed but happy. Then her expression changed to one of confusion.
“Uh, what’s that?” she asked, looking over Kira’s shoulder.
Kira turned to find a glowing light had filled the corner behind her, increasing in intensity even as she watched. In the center of the light, she glimpsed the shape of an orb.
“It’s the Orb of Time,” Kira said, smiling. “It’s calling me back to my own time.”
“Oh,” said Jadzia, and she sounded crestfallen.
Kira looked back at Jadzia who obviously didn’t want Kira to leave.
“We’ll meet again,” Kira assured her. “We’ll meet so many more times. This is only goodbye for now.”
“Okay,” Jadzia said, managing a smile. “I’m really glad to have met you, and I hope you haven’t contaminated the timeline irrevocably by telling me all this because the future you told me about sounds pretty great!”
Kira hadn’t told Jadzia everything. She hadn’t told her that she would first be rejected by the Symbiosis Commission and have to re-apply. She hadn’t told her about the ways being joined would be difficult – the unexpected murderous past hosts and people from past lives returning to haunt her.
But hope for the future was important. Kira knew that better than anyone.
“See you soon,” Kira said.
She turned and stepped into the light.
Rain pounded the ground outside the cave. It came down in sheets from the dark clouds above. Lightning flashed every now and then, accompanied by booms of thunder.
Dax shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. The temperature had dropped. She glanced at Kira every now and then, always to find that Kira was still watching her. They’d both been quiet for a while, listening to the roaring of the rain.
In the silence of the storm, there was nothing to stop Dax from contemplating what it meant to be stuck in this time period. Not only would she have to worry about changing the timeline, it would also be years until the end of the occupation, and she was stuck in the middle of it. She’d heard Kira speak about the occupation so many times – the scarcity of food, the horrors the Cardassians inflicted. Dax wasn’t Bajoran, but that didn’t really improve her situation. If the Cardassians caught her, they’d think she was a Federation spy.
Her only option was to gain the trust of Kira and the resistance. She knew most of their group survived the occupation. She could help them, maybe prove herself a valuable asset. This would drastically alter the timeline in unknown ways, but she couldn’t see any other way out.
“You told me about the occupation,” Dax said out loud.
Kira shifted slightly but said nothing.
“You’ve talked about it so many times,” Dax continued. “Your childhood, joining the resistance at a young age, proving yourself to them. You told me about being hungry, never knowing when you’d get your next scrap of food. You told me about fear and grief over those you’d lost, and pushing it all down to keep fighting. You told me about all of this and I listened and I knew I could never entirely understand, but I still thought… I still thought I grasped some essential part of it. But now I’m not sure I ever did. It was always distant to me – so far from my life it may as well have been another universe, even though it was the recent past for you and you were sitting there beside me.
“I’ve lived a long time, even though it might not look like it. Trill sometimes join with what we call symbionts – a long-lived lifeform we bind ourselves too. Jadzia was a woman with a lifespan much like yours, but then I was joined with Dax, a symbiont who’d already lived many lives. And now those past lives are mine and I am Dax. That probably doesn’t make much sense, but what it means is that I’ve seen a lot. I’ve been a lot of different people. I’ve experienced suffering and I’ve fought in battles and I’ve lost people I loved, but I’ve never been in a position like yours – of total desperation.
“And now here I am, in the occupation with you. I don’t know if I’ll survive this. I don’t know if I can. My symbiont… it can live a long time, but its connection with the host body is fragile. Being trapped here in the past, far from any other Trill or anyone who might know how to help if that connection is damaged or my host body dies… it means Dax could die permanently, and all my lifetimes of knowledge would be gone.”
Kira looked unimpressed.
“So you’re just as mortal as the rest of us now,” she said.
Dax laughed without humor.
“I’ve always been mortal,” she said. “Dax has always been mortal. But I try to avoid thinking about that, usually. That won’t be so easy here.”
Kira gazed at Dax with something that might have been contempt.
“This is my life you’re talking about,” Kira said. “When you talk about the occupation as – as a historical event… This is my life. Everything I’ve ever known.”
“I’m sorry,” Dax said. “I shouldn’t have phrased it like it wasn’t still happening.”
Kira shook her head.
“You don’t understand what I mean,” she said. “If you really are a time traveler… if you really are from a future where Bajor is free and the occupation has ended… I don’t know how to imagine a world like that. This life is all I’ve ever lived. I don’t have past lives with different experiences like you say you do. I have only me, and only this life that’s, like you said, a desperate fight for survival. And as much as I’ve fought all my life to end the occupation and free my people, I have so little concept of what life might be like after it ends. This shining, wonderful future you tell me about, I want to believe in it so badly, but I can’t truly see beyond the only way of living I know.”
Dax realized it hadn’t been contempt in Kira’s expression at all. They were from two different worlds, and yet they both now experienced the terrible ache of being unable to imagine beyond the lives they’d lived.
The rain wasn’t falling quite so heavily now. Dax could see snatches of the sky through it. The storm would pass soon, and choices would have to be made.
“You’re going to do it anyway,” Dax said. “Even if you can’t imagine winning, it’s going to happen. The Cardassians are going to leave and you’re going to be free and you’re going to build a new life.”
Kira’s lips curled up ever so slightly in the ghost of a smile.
“Who am I to you exactly?” she asked. “In this future you speak of, I mean.”
There was only the pounding of the rain for several moments.
“You’re my partner,” Dax finally said. “We’re together.”
Kira nodded as if she wasn’t surprised.
“I thought so,” she said. “The way you look at me…”
Dax’s breath caught in her throat. She wanted to move toward Kira, to reach for her across the divide between them. But this wasn’t her Kira. Not yet.
“So you believe me?” Dax said. “That I’m from the future?”
“I think I do,” Kira said slowly, glancing down at the phaser she held. Then, nodding once, she set it on the ground beside her, letting go. “I think… I think the Prophets really did send you here, and I think I know why. I’ve felt uncertain lately. The fire I used to feel inside me, that drive to keep fighting… it doesn’t burn so brightly anymore. I’ve been afraid. More afraid than I wanted to admit.”
In Dax’s own time, Kira had told Dax this before – that she’d been afraid and doubted herself many times. But Dax was still startled by the intense vulnerability in Kira’s words as she spoke the deepest truth of her heart to a stranger who knew her as completely as another person could.
“But then you told me the future,” Kira said. “And you spoke about it with such certainty. You don’t have to imagine it because for you, it’s already real. And for the first time in a long time, when I heard your words, I felt almost like I could picture it – a future where Bajor was free and I could live a life that wasn’t consumed by violence. Maybe the Prophets sent you here for me – to give me the hope to go on.”
Dax didn’t know if she believed that, but she still felt a glow of warmth at Kira’s words. In the same instant, the cave seemed to brighten, and for a confused moment, Dax thought the clouds had suddenly parted.
But the glow came from somewhere else. In the far corner of the cave, an otherworldly light was growing in intensity.
“That looks like the light of the Orb of Time,” Dax said, jumping to her feet.
Kira scrambled to stand as well, her phaser still on the ground where she’d left it.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, bowing her head toward the light.
Dax cautiously approached it.
“It’s calling you back,” Kira murmured, wary of approaching the light herself, which was probably wise. “You’ve done what you were meant to do, and now it’s time for you to return to your own time.”
“I think you might be right,” said Dax, though she still wasn’t sure.
But she had to take the risk. She had to step into the light and hope it took her back to her own time. It was her only chance.
“Take these,” Kira said, holding out Dax’s combadge and tricorder. “They don’t belong here.”
Dax took both, and then returned to the light, squinting against it. She could just glimpse the shape of the orb at its center.
She looked back at Kira who still watched with wide eyes.
“Goodbye,” Dax said. “See you in the future.”
“Goodbye,” Kira said, smiling a true smile for the first time. “I can’t wait to meet you.”
Dax turned and stepped into the light.
The world disappeared around her and for a long moment she was nowhere. And then her feet were on solid ground again, and she blinked against the receding light to find herself back in the science lab on DS9.
“Dax!” said a voice, and it belonged to Kira whose arms were suddenly around her.
And Dax knew that this was her Kira, and that she was back home.
As much as Kira had enjoyed meeting younger Jadzia, she was glad to be back in her own time.
After Dax confirmed with the computer that they’d been absent only a few seconds, returned to the exact time they’d left, and that the orb’s chroniton readings had returned to normal, Kira and Dax told each other what they’d experienced.
“So we both ended up in each other’s pasts,” Dax said. “Except I don’t have any memory of meeting a Bajoran claiming to be from the future who told me I was going to be joined with Dax.”
“And I don’t have any memory of meeting you,” Kira said.
“Nothing we did in the past had any effect. Maybe we didn’t actually travel back in time, and it was all some kind of hallucination.”
“I don’t think so,” Kira said. “I’m no Vedek, but from what I understand, the Orb of Time doesn’t behave that way. I think we actually did go to the past, but the Prophets didn’t allow that to alter the timeline.”
“Hmm,” Dax said skeptically. “I suppose we could have interacted with versions of each other from a slightly different parallel universe before being returned to our own universe.”
“We’ll need to write reports about this,” Kira said, sighing.
“At least mine will be interesting,” Dax said with a grin. “It’s not every day you’re held prisoner by your future girlfriend.”
Kira wouldn’t have expected her younger self to act differently, but still, she felt a bit bad about it.
“Sorry about that.”
“Oh, don’t apologize,” Dax said airily. “It was fun. In retrospect, anyway.”
Dax’s tone was convincingly blasé, but Kira looked at her more closely, uncertain after meeting her younger self how much she was concealing more vulnerable emotions. Still, Kira didn’t want to pry.
“You were wrong about one thing,” Kira said instead.
“Oh?” said Dax, raising her eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“You said I wouldn’t like Jadzia before she was joined – that I’d find her boring. But I didn’t.”
“Really? It sounds like I talked your ear off about Starfleet procedures for inadvertent time travelers.”
Kira smiled fondly.
“You did. But honestly, it was pretty cute.”
Dax grinned, but Kira felt that she was distant from the conversation, her mind elsewhere.
“I guess I’d better go,” Kira said reluctantly. “I’m still supposed to meet Ensign Hartmann.”
She turned toward the door, but stopped when Dax said, “Kira, wait.”
Dax hesitated uncharacteristically before speaking.
“When I went to your past,” she said finally, “I experienced something I never really expected to face. I didn’t know if I’d be able to get back. I thought I might have to live through the last years of the occupation. I don’t think I’ve ever truly understood what it was like for you. All these lives I’ve lived, and I still can’t comprehend something until I face it myself. And not even now. Not really.”
Kira walked back to Dax and placed a hand on her shoulder, just as she had with a younger Jadzia what felt like minutes ago but had in reality been a decade in the past.
“I know,” Kira said. “I know you can’t understand the life I’ve lived, just like I can’t truly understand all the lives you’ve lived, and that’s all right. Sometimes I think it’s impossible for anyone to completely understand other people, no matter how hard they try. But that doesn’t mean that trying means nothing.”
“You’re right,” Dax said. “Of course you’re right.”
They were both quiet for a moment, just looking at each other.
“What do you think we would have thought of each other if we’d met at that age?” Kira asked.
“I would have been intimidated by you,” Dax said. “Terrified, really.”
“That’s funny, because I’d have been intimidated by you,” Kira said. “With all your fancy Starfleet Academy knowledge.”
They both laughed at the thought of their younger selves meeting.
“We were even more different back then than we are now,” Dax said. “And we’re still pretty different now.”
“It’s a wonder we get along so well.”
“Maybe we met each other at exactly the right time.”
“Maybe we did,” Kira said, and she pulled Dax toward her and pressed a kiss to her lips.