Chapter Text
The transport's cabin smelled faintly of scorched metal and something sweeter underneath. Klingon air recycling ran hotter than Federation standard, and the difference sat at the back of the throat like the inside of a forge. Through the viewport, Qo'noS turned beneath them: green-grey continents under a sky bruised toward red at its edges, the great northern arc of the capital catching the light in hard angles.
Julian sat very straight in the too-narrow seat, both hands resting flat on his thighs. He had been quiet for several minutes.
EZRI: You've gone still.
JULIAN: I'm cataloguing.
EZRI: Of what?
JULIAN: Everything I know about House gatherings. It's a short catalogue. That's the problem.
Ezri shifted to face him, drawing one knee up onto the seat. The motion was easy, unhurried.
EZRI: Tell me the catalogue.
JULIAN: I know that when Worf and Jadzia married, there was a preliminary event. I was told it would be a celebration.
He said celebration the way another man might report a diagnosis he intended to fight.
EZRI: Oh, no.
JULIAN: The kal'Hyah. The path of clarity. And I want to be precise about this, because precision is the only thing I brought back from it intact: four days. Four days, no food. Six trials. And here is the part I cannot get past, even now: each trial is named. Someone sat down, in advance, and named them. Deprivation. Blood. Pain. Sacrifice. Anguish.
He stopped. His index finger pressed once against his thumb.
JULIAN: And death. The sixth one is death, Ezri. I kept waiting through the first five for someone to lean over and tell me the last one was symbolic. No one did. I went into the trial of death genuinely uncertain whether I would be coming out of it, and the Klingons around me found my uncertainty charming.
The laugh got up behind Ezri's teeth and she pressed two fingers to her mouth to hold it, and didn't, quite.
EZRI: You survived all six.
JULIAN: I survived them hungry. That's the detail the recruitment materials omit. You are doing the trial of pain… and the trial of pain is exactly as literal as the name promises… on day three of no food. Worf was luminous throughout. I have never seen a man so fulfilled. He kept clapping me on the shoulder during the agony portions to tell me this was the truest expression of friendship available to mortal beings.
EZRI: And Miles?
Julian turned to her, sitting up off the seat-back, eyes bright.
JULIAN: Miles wept. Real tears, Ezri. And Worf was delighted, because to Worf weeping under torment is high poetry, so the worse Miles did, the more honored Miles became, which meant the only way out was further in. At one point I leaned over to Miles… mid-trial, both of us past the limits of reasonable endurance… and told him, with total sincerity, that I was going to kill Worf the moment I could feel my arms again. He said he'd help. It was the warmest moment of the entire four days. He still brings it up. He'll be telling Yoshi about it in twenty years.
Ezri let the laugh out fully now, bright and short, her hand dropping.
EZRI: So your working model of a Klingon social occasion is…
JULIAN: Is that it is a kal'Hyah which has not yet revealed itself as a kal'Hyah. Yes. That's the whole catalogue. Every Klingon gathering in the subsequent years, some part of me has been quietly checking the exits and rationing my breakfast.
She reached over and put her hand over his where it lay flat on his thigh. Not a grab; she set it down, the way you'd settle a needle into a groove.
EZRI: It's a feast and a conversation. That's all. There's no fasting. There's the opposite of fasting. You should pace yourself early or the qeth'ra will end you before the politics does.
JULIAN: The…
EZRI: Bloodwine. The Ketha vintage, regional. Stronger than the station stuff. Don't let Sirella refill you out of politeness; she will, and she'll watch you drink it. There's no trial. No pain sticks. Nobody is going to perforate you to mark the occasion.
His shoulders came down a fraction. She felt it under her hand more than saw it.
JULIAN: A loud conversation, you said.
EZRI: Very loud. Klingons argue the way other people breathe. It's not a sign anything's wrong. If the table goes quiet, that's when you worry.
JULIAN: Quiet is bad. Loud is normal. That's… that's genuinely useful, that inversion, I can hold onto that.
He turned his hand over under hers so their palms met, and looked back out at the planet coming up to meet them. The capital's hard geometry had resolved into individual structures now, dark towers and the long low sprawl of older districts beyond. But the stillness hadn't entirely left him.
JULIAN: There's going to be a great deal happening in that room that I won't see.
He said it as inventory.
EZRI: What do you mean?
JULIAN: Klingons say a great deal without speaking. I've never been fluent in the part that isn't words.
Ezri was quiet a moment. Outside, the transport tipped into its descent angle, the red edge of the sky tilting up across the viewport.
EZRI: Then I'll be your room. You read the situation, I'll read the rest, and we'll compare notes.
JULIAN: You have standing of your own in there. You can't spend the night narrating Klingon posture to your husband in a corner.
EZRI: Martok says I'm still in the House. That means I get to do exactly as I please at his table. Including the corner, if I want it.
She said it lightly. Julian looked at her, and kept looking.
JULIAN: All right. (a beat) Loud is good. Quiet is bad. Pace the qeth'ra. And don't…
EZRI: Don't compliment the food before the host does.
JULIAN: I was going to say don't propose any toasts. But now I have a second thing.
The descent thrusters caught, a low shudder running up through the deck plates, and Qo'noS filled the viewport, close enough now that the towers had shadows.