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Subject: NEW DS9: Metamorphosis 1/4 (O/K) [NC-17]
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Title: Metamorphosis
Author: C. Zdroj
Email: czb at comcast dot net
Website: http://odosgirl.tripod.com/
Series: DS9
Part: 1/4
Rating: NC-17
Codes: O/K, Dukat, Quark
Warnings: explicit sex; angst; Cardassian Occupation-era violence,
including execution, rape, and torture
Archiving: Bajorarama, ASC*. Others please ask.

SUMMARY: Kira helps Odo to survive the physical and psychological
DISCLAIMER: Paramount owns the DS9 universe and characters. No copyright
infringement is intended here.

Chronology Note: This story is an AU version of "Broken Link" and its
aftermath. It also draws on elements of "Things Past," "Necessary Evil,"
and "The Die is Cast."

~~~~

Metamorphosis
by C. Zdroj

The first step was the most difficult. His whole body, melting and
misshapen now, quivered unsteadily as he moved toward the ocean of gold
that stretched to the horizon--endless, living, fluid amber. He could no
longer recall his name or how he'd come here. His people had no names.
He knew only that he had to go to Them--to join that great communion of
bodies and minds that rippled under the darkening sky. The Link.

Part of him still resisted the idea, recoiling from it in wordless fear.
Yet the stronger part of him longed to go--to immerse himself in the
Others. The need was so strong it overpowered thought. He shut his eyes.
The humiliation of being forced back to this place, to his own kind, to
be censured and punished like an errant child--that feeling was gone
now, replaced by a haze of wearied and contradictory emotions. He knew
only that he'd been holding this shape too long, and that it hurt to
move, even a fraction. The slightest shifting of cells was an agony that
burned through his whole frame, and he longed for rest.

Yet his body, as though recalling something that he did not, refused to
let go of its solid form until he reached the Link's very edge. The
effort required to walk those few steps made him tremble, yet he kept
his back straight as he approached, wearing the shape of those he had
lived among but had never belonged to--the shape that had become his
mask and his concealment. Futile concealment, he knew--for the Others
would read all of his fears, all of his secrets, as soon as he joined
with Them. He would be able to hide nothing. He would be exposed and
shamed for his crime. It didn't matter. He wanted it known. There were
so many things inside him that he had never dared to speak of. Let them
have all of it. It didn't matter if they condemned him. It mattered only
that they knew the truth of who he was.

He seemed to feel Kira beside him, taking his hand and allowing him to
lean against her compact, strong frame. *Take your time,* she said
gently in the back of his mind. Yes. He could hear her. He smiled at the
memory of how she'd helped him walk to the infirmary, ever-mindful of
his pride. *Stupid,* he chided himself. *You should have told her. You
may not get another chance.* He set his jaw and tottered forward one
more step.

The substance of his form quivered suddenly, and he fell to his hands
and knees on the unforgiving rock. It hurt, but not as much as he
expected. Something inside him seemed to jar loose, and he looked down
to see his hands liquefying--melting and running in amber streams into
the Link, which was now mere inches away. Thick, translucent gold fluid
washed up over the rock, over his fingers, and he sighed. It felt warm.
Like a hand-clasp, it steadied and pulled him in.

*Let go,* said a soft voice in the back of his mind that was and was not
his own.

He exhaled softly as the warmth flooded his body. Yes. He had to let go
of everything. It was the only way. He looked down at his own rapidly
eroding solid form, and then slowly, fearfully, he relinquished control.
He felt himself collapse into his fluid state in a matter of heartbeats.
A heartbeat ... a unit of measure that he knew only as an abstraction,
for he had no heart. Yet, he seemed to feel a pulse within himself now,
a rhythm, a sensation never before encountered. He flowed into the
Others effortlessly, then eagerly, letting go of the humanoid
perceptions of sight and hearing. All was touch now. Body and soul knew
no separation. He was *whole.* Touch was voice, and voices in turn were
shared through touch, the touch of thousands of lives that had seen
thousands of years and endless civilizations flow past them. The touch
of those who were like himself. Had he been a humanoid, he would have
wept with joy and grief. He had come Home. The primal place that had
given him form was at last receiving him back.

Yet before he merged with the Others completely, he saw a face in his
mind's eye. A pair of eyes as dark as some starless depth of space,
gazing into his with an emotion that he could not identify. Hatred?
Despair? Disappointment? He reached for her, and was swallowed in the
all-surrounding embrace of the Link. His last coherent thoughts were
despairing. *Dear Prophets, Nerys ... what have I done?*

****

She wasn't certain if she was awake or sleeping, whether she was alive
or dead. Her breathing came in strong, regular rhythm, and she could
feel her own heartbeat, but she was not certain that this meant
anything. The Prophets were strange beings, after all. Who knew what it
might be like to meet them after death? She lay on her back, wanting to
move her hands down to her swollen belly and feel her baby kicking. She
knew she was still pregnant, even though she could not turn her head to
look down at her body, could not feel the child stirring inside her. In
the pit of her stomach there was no sensation except for that of cold
heaviness, as though there were a rock inside her. Panic surged through
her nerves but could find no expression in her body. *What have they
done to me?* She closed her eyes as a wave of something vaguely like
nausea swept through her.

She breathed, trying to focus her thoughts, to steady herself. Images
flitted across her mind's eye. Erratic. Scattered like the half-dreams
that one sees before falling into true sleep. She saw thin, fragile
limbs and pale skin bruised against rough stone--then precise, masterful
arcs of gray metal in a distinctly Cardassian design pattern. She
remembered now. She had fallen asleep staring at the ceiling of the
O'Briens' quarters. She forced her eyes open and saw ... nothing.
Nothing that matched any recognized pattern. Mottled, rough-textured
gray and brown and black filled her unfocused vision. She squinted in
the dim light.

"Do you know why you're here?"

The faces moved into her line of sight, blurred and indistinct, simple
and mask-like--humanoid--but not, revealing nothing to her except
perhaps her own fear.

"Where's Odo?" she asked, not sure where the words came from. It seemed
very odd to her that the changeling faces gazing down at her should be
so blank and expressionless. Had they wished it, these beings could
assume flawless humanoid forms. She knew of their abilities, had seen
them demonstrated. Yet they chose these "half-finished" faces, perhaps
to remind her of her friend, perhaps seeking to intimidate her subtly
with their hostile, "alien" appearance. She thought of Odo, the
abandoned and rejected offspring of those who now gazed on her in the
unbearable silence. Odo could not imitate the humanoid body with
anything approaching their ease and accuracy, and yet he had a face
that, even at its most cryptic, was more expressive, more ... real than
these cold counterfeits.

"And why should you care what happens to a changeling?" asked a harsh,
disembodied voice.

She could move neither her arms nor her legs. Fury coursed through her
and found no outlet other than her voice. She turned the question back
on them. "Why should you care what I think?"

There was a protracted silence. Kira waited with closed eyes and
clenched nerves. "This is a waste of time," announced a third voice,
deeper and heavier than the two that had spoken before. "It does not
reason or feel, any more than a Jem'Hadar does."

"And do not the Jem'Hadar serve our purpose?" came the reply, cold and
calculating, subtly shifting the consensus. Manipulating. Kira
recognized the softer, more "feminine" tones of the female changeling
that she had met only once--the first time that Odo had found his people
in the Gamma Quadrant. The Founder advanced and stared down at Kira with
eyes that were clear and bright and ageless. Eyes that betrayed no
emotion. Eyes that sought the truth. Blue, like Odo's eyes. *No*--she
gritted her teeth. *Not like his eyes.* There was no emotion in the face
that now gazed down at her, except possibly hatred, but even that was a
hatred that had become cold lifetimes ago, centuries before Kira was
ever born.

She willed the child inside her to lie still, as if that stillness might
somehow conceal its presence from the piercing gazes that surrounded her.

The female changeling cocked her head to one side in mock curiosity. Or
perhaps her interest was genuine. Kira could not have said. "Tell me
Major," she asked, "What is Odo to you?"

*What is he to me? How long have you got to listen?* said the sharply
ironic voice inside her own head. Aloud she replied: "He's a friend. One
of the most honorable men I know."

"Is he indeed?" queried the changeling. "And what does your limited
species know about honor? Or perhaps you think it ‘honorable' to kill
one's own kind? I understand that you've killed many of your own
people--perhaps you have even enjoyed it."

After all these years, the surge of her own guilt was still a shock.
"You don't know anything about my life," Kira whispered.

"We know more than you realize--and all that is required."

*"How much do you know about me, Odo?"*

*"More than you probably realize ...."*

The echo was painful in her mind, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying
to close it out.

It might have been days or merely moments later when she opened her eyes
again.

"Major, it is time for you to leave us now."

The clear, direct voice pierced her awareness, and she saw the face of
the female changeling confronting her in the dimness. Kira was
shivering, her body cramped with the cold. She was awake enough to note
a female Vorta, elaborately dressed in pale robes of silk, standing a
little behind and to the right of the Founder. When the changeling
nodded, the Vorta advanced to Kira's side and leaned in, pushing back
the sleeve of her thin nightgown and pressing a hypospray against her
bare arm. There was a soft hiss in the stillness, and sudden warmth
flooded Kira's body and senses, making her momentarily weak and dizzy.
For an instant her muscle and bone felt as fluid as that of any
shapeshifter, and then her vision cleared and she could move again. She
flexed her fingers slowly, feeling the circulation return.

"It will take some moments before your mobility is fully restored," the
changeling told her neutrally. Kira waited a moment or two, then managed
to sit up slowly, awkwardly, shutting her eyes and feeling the baby kick
irritably inside her at long last. Her hand moved to her belly and she
breathed deeply, exhaling in a sigh of relief and not caring who heard
it. *Easy little one,* she ran her hand soothingly over her abdomen,
seeking to quiet both the child and her own jangled nerves. Reaching up
and behind, she rubbed at the nape of her neck and then tried to massage
some feeling back into it. She glared at the Founder and her entourage
as they stood silently by, waiting, but without any hint of impatience.
In addition to the Vorta, the changeling was flanked by a pair of the
reptilian Jem'Hadar guards. The soldiers were silent and
expressionless--unless predatory watchfulness counted as expression.
Kira's eyes were drawn uncomfortably to the strange, tooth-like
projections along their jawlines, and the feeding tubes genetically
embedded in their throats. She tried not to let her discomfort slip
across her face. The forbidding seriousness with which they all watched
her--unwieldy and heavily pregnant as she was --made her want to laugh
and cry at the same time.

It was, of course, the Founder who made the decision. She looked
straight at Kira. "You will come with us." She waited while Kira stood,
bracing herself against the rough stone wall. She found, much to her own
surprise, that her legs would indeed bear her weight. Apparently
satisfied that Kira was in no danger of collapse, the changeling waved
the Vorta away, and then turned to leave herself. The Jem'Hadar stood
deferentially aside for the Founder as they had not for the Vorta, then
nodded curtly at Kira to tell her she should follow. Kira took several
hesitant steps forward before settling into a surer rhythm, following
the changeling, with the two Jem'Hadar striding behind her like some
sort of dubious honor guard.

They wound their way through some interminable cavern of rock, the
Founder gliding calmly ahead while Kira followed awkwardly. As they
emerged beneath a vast, enigmatic black sky, the changeling suddenly
turned about, regarding Kira and her extra girth with undisguised repulsion.

"You are here for the one you call Odo?" she asked, her tone
ritualistically formal, as if Kira had come here of her own volition,
rather than being abducted and brought by the Jem'Hadar. Yet she knew
the answer to the Founder's question.

"I am."

"Very well."  The Founder nodded and turned away once more, and Kira
followed her over the rock-strewn landscape, suppressing any gasps or
groans that might reveal her mental and physical fatigue. The child
inside her, under no obligation to save face, complained loudly by
kicking with extra force, and Kira, not for the first time, longed to
put her hands around the neck of Julian Bashir and wring the life out of
him.

Eventually she was led to the edge of what looked like a sea of thick,
satiny liquid, translucent, with a vaguely golden sheen. It stretched as
far as she could see--an ocean of changelings. Its surface was eerily
calm and peaceful. Kira wondered absently how many beings--how many
intelligences--existed in that sea. For a fleeting moment she was oddly
tranquil, and the next overwhelmed at the thought of so many changelings
in one place.

She was distracted by a sudden disturbance in the amber sea. It was
illuminated from within until it looked like molten gold under the dark
sky. It glowed with a frightening otherworldly beauty, casting odd
shadows on the rock formation where she stood. She was reminded of an
old Bajoran story about the end of the world. "And the sea shall become
as fire ..." The Link began to roil and churn ominously,  lapping at the
shore. Kira stood frozen as its  depths stirred and moved--a living,
sentient sea. Its waves leapt to cresting points. Its golden light
fragmented into sparks. She stared, transfixed, and waited for the
judgement that she knew would follow.

****

It looked like a Cardassian courtroom. He wasn't sure why it should
look that way, but he recognized it well enough. The minimal lighting,
the grand, sweeping, angular planes of the architecture. And the cold.
Yes, it was the cold above all else that felt familiar. It was not a
physical coldness, but an emotional one. Warm feelings were not possible
here. He stood in the center, in the dark, alone. A harsh light found
and separated him from the Others, singling him out. He sensed the other
changelings peering at him from the edges of the light, but could not
see them. He looked at his hands, turned them over carefully, noting
their shape. He was in humanoid form, it seemed, but he was not
conscious of having to hold the shape through his own effort. He ran his
hands down the front of his chest and found that he was wearing the
dark, ragged clothing typical of Bajoran workers during the Cardassian
Occupation.

The light changed around him. Instead of white brilliance, he was now
bathed in a pulsating blue glow ... of the sort given off by a
Federation starship warp core. He knew where this was. He was back on
the Defiant. He looked up to find another changeling extending its arms,
tendrils of golden light that snaked out toward him, seizing his tunic,
burning into the substance of his being like white-hot metal. He gasped
and fell to his knees.

"Link with me, Odo," whispered the other changeling, in  a voice that
was almost sensuously tempting. "You and I don't need to stay among
these solids. We can leave this place together." The voice became even
lower, as though it would insinuate itself into his very skin. "Join
your people ... become one with us ... You know that's what you want to do."

Odo struggled back to his feet and pulled away, clawing at the other
changeling's substance now embedded in his chest. "No ... I ... can't,"
he grated, straining against the force of the joining with every ounce
of his will. The other changeling grappled with him, and they spun
across the narrow room, slamming into consoles, stumbling over
equipment. Odo gave his attacker a shove, felt a stab of pain as the
link snapped and the other changeling went spinning across the open
space ... and into the lethal blue fire of the warp core.

Odo collapsed, closing his eyes as the changeling's dying screams
vibrated through his entire body. He stayed crouched on the floor for
some interminable length of time, shivering as he listened. The sound of
the other changeling's death gripped him and would not let him go.

Then there was silence.

He opened his eyes and climbed to his feet slowly, still shaking. He
reached out to grasp a steel railing and steady himself. That was when
he noticed where he was ....

He gazed around in shock. The other changeling was gone. He was no
longer on the Defiant, but back on the station. Yet this was not the DS9
he knew, at least not over the past five years. This place was dark and
... dirty. It made him *feel* dirty.

There was no one about. No sound. No movement. The station was a hollow
thing. Dead. The stars shone coldly through the viewports, surrounding
him with the chilling vastness of space.

"Why have you brought me here?" he said to the air. There was no answer
but his own voice echoing through the emptiness. "Why have you brought
me here?" he repeated, his words rising to a shout, taking on an edge of
panic.

At that moment, two figures materialized on the other side of the upper
level. A thin, ragged man with hollow cheeks and a face drained of all
color. Bound at the wrists, he was forced to kneel as the other figure,
a heavily-built Cardassian guard, approached and leveled a disruptor.
Odo watched helplessly as the guard fired--and his Bajoran victim
crumpled to the floor, face frozen in a grimace of pain, eyes suddenly
blank and expressionless. He hadn't even cried out. For a long moment,
Odo could not take his eyes from the dead man's face. When he was able
to look up at last, he no longer saw a Cardassian standing over the
ragged heap of flesh and bone. He saw instead the mirror image of
himself, young and grimly expressionless, wearing a Cardassian
uniform--and a  disruptor at his hip.

Odo's breath came harsh and fast. He felt an unfamiliar pain in his
chest. It hadn't happened that way. He knew it. He had never picked up
and fired a weapon.

*But you might as well have done it yourself,* said the unforgiving
voice in his mind. *You gave him to the Cardassians, didn't you? You
gave them all to the Cardassians.* He gripped the railing as his legs
tried to give way beneath him. He trembled but managed to keep his feet.

"You said I was to be judged--and here I am," he rasped into the
silence. "So why don't you just do whatever you intend to do? Why are
you putting me through this charade? Does it amuse you?"

An ancient, ageless voice came out of the darkness. "We haven't
*brought* you anywhere. I told you that you would have to open yourself
to us within the Link--and you have. You have brought *us* to this
place." One of the floor panels a few steps away to his right began to
glow and liquefy. Odo stepped back and watched as the silver liquid
became amber and slowly assumed a humanoid form that he had come to
recognize. The female changeling that he had spoken to on so many
occasions--she who had taught him what it meant to link with one of his
own kind--stood before him once again. He saw the deep disappointment in
her eyes, heard it in her low, ironic, and yet not unkind voice. "It
seems that you feel guiltier about what you have done to the solids than
what you have done to us," she observed.

"I should never have worked for the Cardassians," whispered Odo. "They
slaughtered the innocent along with the guilty. And I helped them." He
dared to look up at her. "Don't you understand how wrong that is?"

The gaze of the female changeling remained dispassionate. "We are
concerned only with the changeling that you killed."

Odo drew himself straight, realizing that he was being manipulated, he
forced himself to speak with more decisive tones. He met the Founder's
gaze evenly. "That was self-defense."

"No doubt. As Major Kira's terrorist activities were self-defense," said
the female changeling, clearly enjoying the irony of her own suggestion.

Odo said nothing.

"So you feel no remorse?" she asked calmly, in her inquisitor's voice.

"I never said I didn't feel remorse."

"But you would do the same thing again?" pressed the voice of the female
changeling. "You would kill others of your kind to shield these solids
from harm?" Odo could no longer see her. He could see nothing but a haze
of purplish black closing him in.

"Yes," he whispered. His body was slowly disintegrating as he stood
there. He felt as though every cell of his being was on fire. He fell,
clutching at his head, feeling his fingers  cracking and crumbling to
dust. He was burning. The pain escalated unbelievably until he wanted to
scream--but the vocal chords had melted out of his throat.

*Then ... you are a murderer,* accused the voice in his mind, a low,
savage whisper.

*No...* He tried to shield himself with the denial, but the accusation
only became more insistent.

*You are a murderer.*

He had no control over his form. His body would not obey his will. His
vision blurred again, went to black, and he was lost utterly. He was
invaded, cell by cell, felt himself mingling with the Others. His
thoughts, his feelings--his guilt--seeped away into the substance of the
Link, and he gasped. Release. Blessed release after all this time. His
form rippled, blending into Them. Their minds merged with his own,
opening him, spreading him wide, pouring into him with sudden force. He
was torn open and spilling out. He twisted in pleasure, in agony both as
the Others entered and became him with no barriers.

The images came and went in a frightening barrage. Changelings tortured,
killed in horrible ways. He felt their agony. His own body pulsed with
pain. Slammed against a forcefield, torn through with electrical energy.
Memories from centuries of persecution.

*This is what they do to us. Yet still you wish to be like them...*

He was unable to answer the charge.

*Do you deny you caused the death?*

*No.*

*Then you must accept the judgement....*	

The pain was so intense that by now there was only one priority
left--making it stop.

*I ... accept... *

He heard the sound of heavy-booted feet. Saw gray uniforms in the
dimness. Heard voices from a long-buried past. "So--exactly what tricks
does this pet of yours do, Mora?" A rough, scaly hand whipped out and
grasped his chin, jerking Odo's gaze upward. It didn't hurt--but it felt
like ... a violation. He met the cold-eyed, reptilian stare
unflinchingly, and then firmly turned away, out of the Cardassian's grip.

"Does the thing speak? Or is it a half-wit?" Odo wanted to melt into the
floor, but didn't dare to.

"We're waiting for an answer, Bajoran."

"Of course he speaks. He simply doesn't respond well to rough handling."

"I don't think it knows what rough handling is ... any more than you do ..."

The fire came again--pain burning through every cell like acid poured on
his skin. He raised a lacerated hand as though to touch his face, but
stopped and--suddenly found himself gazing into a mirror at a face
unrecognizable, charred and disfigured, blackened around the eyes, the
hair grayed and falling out of a rotting scalp. He shuddered and turned
his face to the wall, eyes tightly shut. He was trembling with
exhaustion and unbroken pain.

The Cardassian standing over him spoke with the calmest and most
urbane air.	

"I know you're keeping something from me, Constable. Why don't we just
end this now? You want to tell me ... don't you?" The voice was
wheedling, inexorably gentle, almost pleading. "All you have to do is
tell me your darkest fear, your most closely guarded secret--and the
pain will end, I promise you. I'll let you go back to your liquid state
and rest."

Odo wrapped his arms around himself, huddled against the bulkhead,
watching while little bits of himself broke from his hands and face and
fell to the floor. He clenched his teeth. Speech was difficult through
his ruined, blackened lips, but he spat the words out vehemently.

"Leave me alone."

There was a sudden, bright flash of phaser fire, and the Cardassian's
body went taut before collapsing into a lifeless heap.

A light footstep crossed the threshold--and then he saw her. His
rescuer. A trim, red-haired woman in a red uniform, wearing boots of
burnished leather. Her eyes were dark, but they burned with an inner
fire. She seemed, somehow, to be made of fire--her movements were quick,
alert and fluidly graceful. An avenging angel. "Nerys," he whispered.

"Yes," said the voice of the female changeling, with barely concealed
scorn. "She is here. This creature you profess to love." 	

Kira Nerys entered the room with her phaser clutched at the ready.
Seeing the motionless body of the felled Cardassian, she holstered the
weapon at her hip. A frown twisted her delicate features. "Bastard," she
said tightly, and as she knelt and reached out to touch the corpse, it
suddenly collapsed into a heap of black ash. Kira lifted her face to
look directly at Odo. Her dark eyes widened.

"You," she whispered. Her voice held stark disbelief. "What are you
doing here? You're not one of them." Her eyes narrowed a little. "Are you?"

Odo shook his head. There was, he seemed to recall, something that he
desperately wanted to tell her. But the pain was ... blurring his
thoughts. Her eyes were filled with tears as he looked at her. "I knew
you worked for them. I just never thought you could become like them. I
thought ... you were different." Her hand reached out as though to touch
him, and paused a hair's breadth away from his cheek. He turned away,
ashamed of his ravaged face, of the deep unspoken guilt that he had
carried for so long.

"You should have told me," she whispered.

Pain made his voice crack. "How ... could I? I wanted to forget. To make
it right.

"Forgive me," he whispered, "I never meant to love you."

There was a roaring inside his head. The voices of the Others mingled
and merged into a chaotic blur of sound--and he tried to pull away in
fear. No escape. He was enmeshed. His body was twisted without his
consent. He felt the others withdrawing touch as his form changed,
becoming ... something foreign. His back arched in agony as his
changeling senses were suddenly and brutally ripped away and his
physical self was confined, trapped. He needed to breathe. His chest was
going to burst. He was on fire. The living tide of the Link converged on
him and forced him into a shape that was not his own. He tried to scream
... but there was no air for his lungs. There was a frantic throbbing in
his chest as the tide of the Link pushed him to the surface to gulp the
cold air. He screamed once before consciousness was torn away.

****

Kira heard a cry of pure agony.

A golden wave flashed up along the harsh, rocky shore, and carried on
its force she thought she had a fleeting glimpse of something that
looked ... humanoid.

The amber tide swirled briefly around her feet. When the next wave
surged over the rock and sand, it carried the familiar frail shape with
it. For one horrible moment, Kira was reminded of the emaciated, naked
bodies of those who had died in the Cardassian labor camps. The solitary
being was washed ashore like unwanted refuse, limp and pale and
unmoving. It lay gasping on the cold, rough stone, utterly abandoned.
Kira began climbing determinedly, frantically, over the rocks, ignoring
the burden of her extra weight, sinking at last to her knees beside the
shivering life that lay sprawled at the edge of the Link, its smooth
curves of flesh pale silver in the moonlight, a tangle of fear and
fragile limbs. Unseeing blue eyes stared back into her own. "Odo ..."
she gasped, taking one of his hands and pressing it against her belly,
thinking somehow to waken his senses, to reassure him with the life that
moved inside her. His fingers were unnaturally cold, seemingly too numb
to interlace with her own. His free hand hovered vaguely over his chest,
fingertips shaking as they traced its surface. 	

*He's afraid ...* The too-obvious thought whispered through Kira's mind,
sinister and impossible. Dear *Prophets ... he's afraid.* His
inarticulate panic seemed to flow into her own awareness as though
transmitted through his skin. She recalled, with sudden, shocking
vividness, the image of a wounded fa'al-dove that she and her brothers
had discovered as children living in the refugee camps. The bird's wing
had been charred and twisted by a Cardassian phaser blast. The panicked
creature, not comprehending its sudden loss of flight, had struggled
against their efforts to nurse it. Kira remembered holding the fragile
thing in her hands--the slightness of its warm, feathered body, its
rapidly fluttering heartbeat. It had died in her hands, within an hour
of their finding it.

She pressed Odo's cold, stiff fingers more tightly against her body,
staring fixedly into the depths of his eyes--eyes that had steadied her
own flailing emotions so many times with their ironic gravity and
perceptiveness. Those same eyes were now dark oceans of confusion. He
turned his head slightly, looking at her and through her, as though he
could feel her presence but could not see her. After a moment, Kira
realized that Odo was trying to look past her--to the Founder that
suddenly loomed over the two of them.

The female changeling dropped to one knee and regarded Kira intently.
"You are distressed," she noted, with the barest hint of surprise in her
voice. Or was it irony? The Founder extended her hand with some uncanny
authority that made Kira relinquish her hold on Odo, allowing the
changeling to take his hand. The other shapeshifter stroked Odo's arm in
seeming consolation, the way that a parent might comfort a sick child.
"Poor Odo," she said softly. "Perhaps we should have killed you. It
would have been far less cruel."

At that moment, Kira felt an emotion swell up from her chest that she
had not felt in a very long time--a feeling that she thought she had
killed with her prayers and her fasting after Bareil had died.

Rage.

Murderous, unbridled rage. The only thing that kept it in check was her
own vague sense that somehow the Founders had staged this display of
Odo's judgement, had chosen this setting and these words, precisely in
order to provoke a reaction from her, to confirm their view that she was
a lower, "solid" lifeform. They had brought her here, after
all--Prophets only knew why. Yet Kira felt certain that giving in to her
anger would be playing into their hands. If Odo had taught her nothing
else, he had taught her the value of mastering one's feelings--or at
least trying to.

Kira reached out and silently reclaimed Odo's hand. The Founder
relinquished her grasp without protest. Kira met her cryptic, alien gaze
without flinching. "You made him a humanoid. Why?"

The Founder appeared to study Kira's face a moment longer, her eyes
assessing. "It is an appropriate punishment for his actions," she said
simply. She looked down upon Odo with an expression that was almost
compassionate, and yet lacking in any real warmth. Odo reached the thin
fingers of his free hand toward her, a futile gesture of inarticulate
need. Kira thought she saw regret in the Founder's eyes and posture for
one brief second.

Then she stood, all cold formality once again. "We have arranged for you
to return to your people. You will leave this place." Her gaze lingered
sadly on Odo just before she turned away. Her form shimmered and
dissolved to a pillar of gold that liquefied and poured over the rock
and back into the amber sea, joining  the other changelings where Odo
could no longer follow. Kira's lips moved to formulate some sort of
protest, to demand a clearer explanation, but before thought could shape
itself into words, she felt the sudden whirl of disorientation that she
always associated with being snatched away by a transporter. She could
do little but grip Odo's hand as the two of them were swept away together.

The sea of living amber was the last thing that she saw.

****

They re-materialized in a place that was all gray stone and swirling
clouds of gritty sand. They might have been halfway across the galaxy or
on the other side of the same planet. There was no way to know. The wind
went howling through the rock formations that rose up all around
them--jagged, indistinct shapes in the waning sunlight. Kira still held
Odo's hand, still knelt beside his unmoving form. She bent to him,
shouted his name over the roar of the wind, but he lay silent and
unmoving. She crouched over him, seeking to protect his body from the
harsh wind, bringing her face close to his. "I'm here, ashani," she
whispered against his ear. "Stay with me. It won't be long now, I promise."

He stirred briefly beneath her hands, and Kira was shocked at how weak
he felt--like a newborn harocat. His eyelids fluttered briefly without
quite opening. His lips moved, but no sound emerged from them. She felt
tears stinging her eyes, shut them and lay her cheek against his hair.
*Damn, fucking, prejudiced shapeshifters,* the thought scalded her mind
in a sudden burst of anger. Odo. Her rock--her refuge. Her island of
rational certainty in a sea of wrongs and contradictions. He shivered
against her, frail and defenseless as any mortal being held together
with blood and bone.

The wind continued to shriek through the stones around her, and she was
reminded, somehow, of the plains of Belkala--one of the few places on
her homeworld left untouched by the Cardassians. The stone circle of
Belkala was Bajor's earliest temple to the Prophets, and the silent
witness to most of its history--including the horrors of the Occupation.
She kept her eyes closed and began to pray, her lips moving slowly to
form words that had been worn into smooth patterns centuries before her
own birth, repeated by countless generations of her people. The words,
after a time, blurred together in the comforting way that she knew from
long experience, shaping a web of sound, casting delicate threads out of
herself, toward the Celestial Temple, catching at stray bits of thought
and memory. The words lulled her into a hazy, half-conscious state, and
before long, the howling of the wind had gone still, as she retreated
into herself.

****

He was somewhere below the surface of consciousness, as though trapped
beneath a sheet of ice. He could move--barely, but the labor required
even to twitch a finger was an effort of the whole body. In the end, he
gave it up and simply lay there inert. The pain had faded to a level of
general numbness--or perhaps he had simply grown used to it. There were
bruised flashes of lucid memory--the feel of rough stone against his
back, of cold air clawing at his lungs. Somewhere in his chest there was
a faint kernel of warmth, faded like his awareness --a flicker like a
candle-flame inside him, ever in danger of being extinguished. The
whisper of heat spread through his body with painful slowness. He was
not sure he wanted feeling restored. He fought it at first, tried to
remain *odo'ital*--"nothing." For being nothing meant feeling nothing,
and for a time that was all he wanted.

But then he seemed to feel her heartbeat--or perhaps it was his own--a
pulse from deep inside him that grew gradually stronger, bringing
tingling sensation back to his numbed limbs and fingertips and the ends
of his toes. His eyes slitted open very slowly. For a several moments he
lay still--except for the shivering that he could not control. He hurt
everywhere. Every cell, every nerve-ending pulsed with pain. He was
vaguely aware that he was clinging to someone, unable, in fact, to let
go. She murmured softly against his bare skin--words that washed over
him like the warmth infusing his body. Bajoran words. He knew them from
the time he'd spent in the camps. He recalled suddenly the image of a
boy, perhaps five years old, tripping and falling in the dust of some
long-ago labor camp where he had stayed after fleeing the lab. The young
Odo had watched furtively as the distressed Bajoran mother tried to
soothe her child, but his wistful, curious gaze had been turned away by
the cold shoulder of suspicion. "Ent'ak Vol'asha!" the woman had spat,
glaring at him. Filthy off-worlder. The words stung even now. * I never
had a mother,* he thought absently. Yet in his need and aloneness he had
memorized their words. Their social structures. Their ways of calling
things ... * Mother. Child. Lover.* His body closed more snugly around
the warmth of whoever it was that huddled against him--that prayed over
him. He let himself fall into her, reaching for her with mind and will,
letting his thoughts settle as he felt the rhythms of her body ... her
breathing ... her heartbeat ... becoming one with his own somehow, like
streams of liquid flowing together ... merging .... He needed
desperately to link with another, to be no longer alone. He saw her
standing ahead of him down a dark corridor ... and reached out ...

****

Kira stood at a juncture between two corridors. She waited for Odo to
catch up with her. He looked thinner than usual, and like her, he was
wearing dark, drab colors. She reached back for his hand. "You should
try to stay closer," she whispered. "This isn't the safest place in the
world." Together they walked through the darkened station--or rather,
crept through it. The ill-lit corridors were familiar but hardly
reassuring. The sound of harsh laughter rang out from somewhere in the
distance, sending tension through Kira's body. She didn't need to look
around to recognize the source of the levity. Only Cardassians had such
brutal-sounding laughter--and in a place like this, they were the only
ones who ever laughed.

Odo started unexpectedly at nothing that Kira could see. He gasped and
then stumbled, collapsing to his knees as though he'd  been hit in the
stomach, pulling her down to the cold metal floor with him. She stared
at him in consternation. He was shaking all over. She leaned forward,
touching his face. He tried to avoid her eyes. "What is it?" she asked.

"We shouldn't be here ... this ... this isn't right. It doesn't make sense."

"I have a feeling that we're not actually here," she replied softly.
"Not in the way we seem to be." She reached down to pat her abdomen,
which was smooth and flat. Definitely not the belly of a pregnant woman.
Odo noted this, but didn't seem reassured by it. Impulsively, Kira
pulled him into her arms, winding her body around his with an enthusiasm
that surprised even her. His body was solid and invitingly warm. Her
lips sought his without apology or explanation, and she kissed him
slowly, felt his tension melt away under her hands.

"Nerys...."

Before she realized what she was doing, she was unfastening the waist of
his trousers with agile, eager fingers. Sliding her hands up under his
shirt, over the warmth of his smooth chest. Odo's resistance gave way,
and he leaned back against the wall with a gasp, arching himself against
her touch. She felt his soft abdomen, his ribcage, the small, perfect
nipples that hardened under the pressure of her fingers. "You really are
humanoid, aren't you?" she whispered. He could only nod and gasp in
reply. She continued to massage his chest slowly, up and down, while
kissing him with increasing fervor.

His hands found their way inside the back of her shirt, and kneaded her
shoulders, drawing her against him, then traveled lower, drawing down
her trousers while she wriggled determinedly out of them. There was a
long moment of kissing and mutual silent exploration. A slow and gentle
escalation of pleasure. She felt his fingertips moving cautiously
between her thighs, seeking out the sensitive places with a delicate and
unerring touch. Wrapping her arms around his torso, she began to move
against him, until they were both gasping softly. She buried her face
against his neck to stifle her own outcry, heard the soft, ecstatic
little whimpers of pleasure that escaped his throat. She took him into
herself slowly, gently, holding still against him for a moment, feeling
his ragged breathing and the pounding of his heart against her own,
feeling him fill her. Her lips sought the pulse in his throat her as her
pelvis rocked against him. It took all of three thrusts to send them
both into orgasm.

For a long moment she remained leaning against his chest, her arms
wrapped around him, while the rhythms of their bodies slowed back to
normal. Odo's fingertips ran delicately along her back and she pressed
closer to him, sensing his need for reassurance.	

"So," she whispered at last. "Do you know why we're here?"

Before he could reply, a long shadow fell over the two of them.  Kira
felt a chill, and then gasped as she was knocked sprawling by a sudden,
sharp blow to her ribs. The force of it tore her out of Odo's grasp, and
she landed on  her back on the chill floor. Familiar, harsh laughter
sounded again, filling the suddenly cramped and darkened space around
her. As she pulled her clothing back on and tried to scramble to her
feet, Odo moved to protect her, hovering over her in a half-crouch.
Looking up, Kira was not surprised to find the leering visage of Gul
Dukat gazing down at the two of them, bony-ridged brow shadowing his
eyes. Somehow she had known he would be here. That he would find them.

"Well, Shapeshifter," smiled Dukat. "I'm proud of you. I always thought
you had no taste for the more ... messy aspects of humanoid
relationships. This is a pleasant surprise. And such a lovely Bajoran,
too. I am impressed. You must have some interesting talents." The
Cardassian paused ominously, eyeing the two of them. "But I'll bet she
doesn't know about all your little secrets--does she?"

Kira noted that Odo was again trembling visibly, but he hunched himself
down over her protectively, blocking Dukat's view of her with his own
body. "Stay away from her," he growled. There was a panting and
breathless quality to his voice. His shoulders quivered with pent-up
anxiety. He closed his eyes and bowed his head. "You're not ... touching
her."

Dukat grinned ferally. "You can't hide it forever, you know. You're one
of us, Odo. So cold and calculating--practically a Cardassian yourself."

"No." Odo sank down over Kira's body, burying his face against her
shoulder. "No."

Dukat smiled, and then turned his back, vanishing into the shadows from
which he'd emerged.

****

(to be continued in Part 2)


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