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Subject: NEW DS9: Metamorphosis 4/4 (O/K) [NC-17]
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Title: Metamorphosis
Author: C. Zdroj
Series: DS9
Part: 4/4
Rating: NC-17
See part 1 for Disclaimer, Codes, Warnings

Part 4

****

"Odo?" Kira murmured. She allowed her eyes to slit open a fraction, then
closed them again, curling herself back around the pillow. Lovemaking
always allowed her to sleep well, and left her pleasantly warm and hazy
on awakening, but as she burrowed herself in among the sheets, a nagging
feeling lingered at the back of her mind. An odd dream .... Something
was wrong. In the next instant she knew that she was alone. The soft
breathing of a sleeping lover was not to be heard in the stillness
around her. No one was moving about the quarters. The only sound in the
suddenly eerie silence was that of her own breath.

She turned over. "Odo?" she said, more loudly now, just to make sure,
but she wasn't expecting a reply.

"Computer, lights," she sat up irritably, pushing the hair away from her
eyes. She blinked and glanced around. As she had expected, the spartan
quarters were empty.

"Computer, locate Security Chief Odo."

The synthetic voice answered her with prim dispassion. "Security Chief
Odo is in his quarters."

"Yeah, right," Kira growled, hauling herself out of bed and collecting
her clothing from the floor in the next room. She found Odo's combadge
on the night-table, scooped it up into her hand and let her fingers curl
possessively around it. As she did so, dream images flooded her mind
--of herself with Odo, on the station as it had been ... during the
Occupation. "What the hell...?" she muttered. She recalled the dream
she'd had just before finding herself on Dukat's ship. Something very
strange was happening--something that was not quite under her own
control--and Kira hated that feeling. As soon as she looked
semi-presentable, she headed out the door and straight for the
Promenade. There was one person on the station that just might be able
to help her find Odo.

****

He stared out at the stars for a long time. He had always liked the
docking bays. They were cold and functional and stubbornly silent--they
suited so many of his off-color moods. During the days of the
Occupation, he had often come here for the quiet--and to be alone. In
the days following the executions and the purges, he'd spent hours at a
time here.

At first he barely noticed that his humanoid body wasn't quite as
impervious to cold as his changeling self had been. Such trouble, these
humanoid bodies--so fragile. The tears came into his eyes, chilling
against his face. He studied his hands--hands that now knew the curves
of a woman's body ... Nerys' body. He still could not quite believe
that. He had dreamed of being with her for so long, and yet, now that it
had finally happened, it felt almost surreal--another dream he'd had. In
this cold, certainly, it was difficult to believe in any warmth shared
between two frail bodies during some fleeting encounter in the dark. And
yet, a spark of that remembered joy remained in him yet. It made his
despair that much deeper now. How was he to explain his secret shame to
the woman he loved? The woman who had, at long last, consented to love
him back? How could she go on loving him if she knew what he truly was?
A murderer--or at best an accessory to murder. Not because of what he'd
done to his own people, but because of what he'd done to hers--to Bajor.
He'd buried the memories of those dark days inside himself for what
seemed an eternity, hoping that they would fade, that he would find some
way to redeem himself. He hadn't.

Odo put his face into his hands and sank to the floor. He let the shame
overpower him, let the sobs rack his body--and they echoed through the
coldest and emptiest part of the space station.

****

Quark automatically backed two steps away from the bar when he saw Major
Kira headed through the doors of his establishment. Pregnancy, he'd
decided long ago, did not improve the Major's disposition. At the
moment, however, she looked positively irate--disheveled, haggard, like
she'd just been roused from a sound sleep. Looking, in fact, exactly as
he'd seen Odo looking not an hour since. Kira walked straight up to the
Ferengi and fixed him with a glare. She opened  her mouth but Quark
answered her question before she asked it. "He was here about an hour
ago, in a fouler mood than usual, I might add. He had one drink, and
then left without so much as a thank you."

"You're talking about Odo?" queried Kira, clearly not knowing whether to
be astonished or irritated.

"Who else?"

Quark didn't have time to yelp in surprise as Kira dragged him over the
bar and almost tossed him onto one of his own bar-stools. "I'm in no
mood to play games, Quark. I want to know where he is."

"I just told you, I don't know," gasped Quark. "I don't suppose you've
tried his quarters," he added sarcastically.

"I just came from there," snapped Kira. "I woke up and he was gone."

She flushed suddenly at her own words, and Quark stared at her with new
awareness--at her disheveled, hastily drawn on garments, her barely
brushed hair, the deep red marks that were still visible on her neck.
The Ferengi's jaw dropped as he began to put two and two together.

"You mean that you two--"

"Never mind what we did. I need you to help me find him." She grabbed
the Ferengi's arm and pulled him to his feet.

"Now just a minute," Quark protested. "I've got my rights--"

"You can file a complaint with Odo, right after we find him," said Kira
briskly, hauling Quark out of the bar.

He scurried to keep up with her longer strides. "Captain Sisko will hear
about this. You can't just drag me away from my customers."

Kira's mouth twisted into a wry grimace as she looked at him. "I'm sure
they'll be broken-hearted to lose you. Now let's go."

"Fee-males," grumbled Quark under his breath. "Give them two strips of
latinum and they empty the whole account."

****

He wasn't sure just when he looked up at last--but as he did, the
starlight faded from his sight and he was standing on a windswept
plain--on Bajor, in the center of the great ring of ancient stones--the
standing stones of Belkala.

He was tired ... so tired. He put a hand out to touch the surface of the
nearest stone--such a varied, interesting surface, weathered by
thousands of years of wind and rain even before the Occupation--and yet
still it stood here, a silent keeper of Bajor's history.

He closed his eyes, let his hand caress the surface. He still ... loved
surfaces of all kinds, rough, smooth. He remembered the time when
thought alone might have allowed him to duplicate this form. "Become
rock ..." Now why had that seemed so terribly difficult before? It was
easy now, to grow cold and silent, ancient and rough-skinned, to be part
of Bajor's ancient soil. Peaceful. Yes. He knelt beside the stone and
leaned into it--to become one with the rock. Yes. The body didn't
matter. The body was only an outward expression, a form, a symbol.

There was rain falling on him, pricking his skin through the clothing.
Needles of cold. Water. Yes--that too. Liquid. The sound was so very
peaceful, like feeling the motion of the O'Brien baby still in Kira's womb.

"Mother," he whispered against the rough stone. "Where am I?"

A long while passed in a cold, gray nothingness, where the only
awarenesses were the sound of the rain falling and the cold howling of
the wind. But then, slowly--there was warmth again, the return of
sensation. A gentle hand touched his chin, raising his face.

"Why are you crying child?"

He looked into the face of a Bajoran woman, middle-aged, short, and with
a softly rounded face. She smiled as if she knew him, and he thought he
recognized her from ... somewhere.

"I'm lost," he told her.

"Are you certain of that?" She asked, looking at him keenly.

"I ... I want to go home, Mother." He wasn't certain why he addressed
her thus, only that it seemed right.

The woman smiled again. "You are of Bajor, child."

"I don't understand."

She touched his cheek. "You are of Bajor. The Prophets sent you to us."

Odo shook his head. "I've never seen the Prophets. I don't believe in them."

"That doesn't matter. You need only to believe in yourself. You're not
lost, child. You're exactly where the Prophets placed you."

He shook his head. His voice came out a whisper. "No."

"Why do you deny the connection? Bajor herself knows you, my child."

"But I have betrayed Bajor. She cannot forgive me."

"That you cannot know," came the soft reply, "... until you ask her."
	
****

They found him in docking bay seven, curled up near one of the viewports
in a fetal position, shivering uncontrollably. He didn't respond to her
touch or her voice. She reached out to feel his pulse, pausing to glare
up at the hovering figure of Quark.

"Well don't look at me," said the Ferengi sulkily, rubbing gingerly at
his arm. "I didn't send him out here. I tried to stop him."

Still frowning, Kira hit her combadge. "This is Kira to Sickbay. I have
a medical emergency. Two to transport immediately."

She hardly noticed the look of pure umbrage on Quark's face as the
transporter beam whisked her and Odo away.

****

His face was wet. He looked up into Kira's concerned eyes. Her hand
traveled gently over his chest. "Odo," she whispered, "Can you hear me?"

"I--yes.... I'm fine--I ..."

He felt her fingers lightly brushing against his face. "Shhhh... It's
okay. Just rest."

Odo closed his eyes and accepted her gesture of comfort. His body
trembled as a surge of emotion welled up from inside him. His lips would
not move, yet he had to speak. The words came with painful slowness.

"Nerys--I saw her."

"What do you mean? Who did you see?" she asked gently.

"The Kai. Kai Opaka. I saw her." A silence. Kira's dark eyes regarded
him with compassion. "You don't believe me...."

She smiled. A tender, loving smile that somehow accentuated the worry
hiding in her dark eyes. "Of course I believe you." Her fingers ran
through his hair, brushing it back fastidiously, as though it had been
mussed.* ... like before, back on Dukat's ship,* the thought drifted
through his awareness, *she touched me just that way ...* He wanted to
tell her that he was all right, but his body and mind had become
sluggish and heavy. He sensed another figure moving somewhere off to his
side. There was a soft and pleasantly soothing hissing noise as
something cold was pressed to his arm, and then his insides seemed to
grow warm and ... liquid. Within moments the dark well of sleep had
claimed his awareness.

****

Kira watched silently as Bashir administered the hypo with his usual
deft and gentle healer's touch. Odo lost consciousness almost
immediately, the tension fading slowly out of the muscles of his face,
his body sagging and resettling on the biobed. She stroked his face with
the back of her hand, noted the bruise-like shadows around his eyes and
mouth, and was stunned yet again by his fragility. He was a living,
breathing human being--susceptible to simple and mundane things like
cold. Her rage at the Founders renewed itself as she let her touch come
to rest at his cheek. "Sweetheart ... what did they *do* to you in
there?" she breathed.

"Major?" Julian Bashir, who had been watching her this while, now looked
at her questioningly.

Kira shook her head again, "Nothing. Is he going to be all right?"

"He should be fine." The doctor paused thoughtfully. "I have no idea
what brought it on, but his body went into severe shock. Partially I'd
blame the cold in those docking bays, but that really doesn't explain
the hallucinations."

Unaccountably, Kira found herself irritated. "What makes you think he
*didn't* see the Kai?"

Julian was taken aback. "It--seems unlikely, that's all. Humanoid brains
generate all sorts of electrical impulses when the body is subjected to
stress. Odo's never been exposed to any Bajoran orbs, has he?"

Kira shook her head. "I don't know. I don't think so." She paused.
"Julian ... have you ever heard of people ... sharing dreams?"

"Well certain types of telepathic races do it as a matter of course ...
Nerys, does this have anything to do with Odo's condition?"

"I don't know ... I--It's just that I've been having dreams ... about
the Occupation. They started back when I was on Dukat's ship. Odo's
always in them and it only seems to happen when we're ... asleep ...
together." She felt the flush creeping into her cheeks as she made this
last admission. "He hasn't been completely himself lately and ... oh, I
don't know--I just wondered if maybe ... I know it sounds crazy...."

Bashir seemed to ponder for a moment, "Well, when Starfleet Medical did
its tests, we did find some traces of morphogenic enzymes in his brain.
At the time we didn't really know what to make of it ... I wonder if he
could be..."

"What?"

Bashir shook his head. "It's a bit of a reach, but perhaps he's been
trying to ‘link' with you ... telepathically. But I can't know that
without some more data."

"So we *could* be sharing dreams..."

"What makes you think that Odo is having these dreams too?"

She paused before answering. "They--they don't *feel* like my dreams.
At least not completely mine." There was another silence. "Would it be
all right for me to take him back to his quarters?"

"As long as you plan to keep an eye on him for a while. The medications
have taken the edge off the fever and chills. Basically he just needs
some rest. And a solid meal once he wakes up."

Kira nodded and gently took Odo's hand in her own. It seemed frail and
rather cool. She let her fingertips close around it. Glancing up at
Julian, she gave him a quick nod. "Whenever you're ready."

Within moments she found herself blinking in surprise as she stood at
Odo's bedside. The transport had been neat and precise. The biobed was
gone. Odo lay on his own bed, covered only by the thin blue hospital
gown. Kira got some blankets from the replicator and covered him. Then
she sat beside him on the bed, staring intently at his face, running the
back of her hand lightly along his cheek. There were words struggling
into her mind half-formed, emotions that she could barely articulate. So
she said nothing and sat with him quietly while time stretched
meaningless before and behind her, until it seemed she had always been
sitting in this very spot, gazing down on the still features of her friend.

At some point, Odo stirred faintly and she watched a pair of unnaturally
dark blue eyes open slowly in the dimness as the prayer she had been
speaking, murmuring really, faded off her lips in mid-word. She looked
into those eyes and felt suddenly, inexpressibly tired, weak, and
sad--as if all the sorrow of the universe had suddenly been revealed in
his expression. She placed her hand against the side of his face and his
features shifted subtly, his minimalist mask of a face somehow slipping
into a look of both sorrow and intense pleasure as he leaned, just
slightly, into her touch and closed his eyes again.

She bent down to him, feeling released from some burden as she kissed
his forehead and continued to kiss him. "I'm sorry, Nerys," he murmured
softly against her lips.

"Shhhh .... Take me with you," she whispered, laying herself beside him.
"We'll be all right as long as we're together." His fingers closed
around hers and they descended into sleep.

****

She stood in the glow cast by the sea of gold, just as before. Odo stood
in the distance, nearer to the Link, with his back to her. His body was
melting and misshapen. He paused at the edge of the living ocean and
looked over his shoulder. His plain features hardened into a look of
disapproval when he saw her.

"Nerys ... what are you doing here?"

"I followed you," she said simply. "You can't go without me."

"But ... I can't take you here. You're not a changeling. You won't survive."

"Odo--you're not a changeling either. Not anymore."

He held up his melting, ravaged hands, indicated his body, falling to
pieces as he stood there. "How do you explain this?"

She took his hands in her own. "This is a dream, Odo. Our dream--yours
and mine. The Prophets send us dreams sometimes to make us see the
truth. We can only do this together. You have to take me with you."

He looked away. "I can't. If you come here. You'll see what I am. What I
really am."

"I know who you are. I've always known."

He shook his head, helplessly.

"You have to. It's the only way. You have to take me into the Link."

A pillar of gold rose from the Great Link and formed itself into the
now-familiar shape of the female changeling.

"She is right, you know. You must allow her to enter. You must allow her
to see the truth."

"You're not interested in the truth," spat Odo.

"They may be not be," said a soft voice from the shore behind them. Kira
turned to see Kai Opaka gazing meaningfully at the two of them. "But you
are, my child. Don't be afraid of what you find within yourself."

Odo stared helplessly at Kira. She had not let go of his hands this
entire time.

"Take me, ashani. We have to go in together."

He looked at her with despairing eyes. "I love you, Nerys."

"I know you do," she replied.

She stepped with him toward the sea of gold that swirled at their feet.
She felt the essence of her being changing, shifting. Her hands lost
their shape and spilled into his, and her cry of pleasure was dissolved
by silence as her body became liquid and flowed into his open arms,
merged and blended with his body. Her hips and torso and finally all of
herself entered his essence, spilling into him. She clung to Odo with
all of herself, amazed. There was no separation, now, between the two of
them, no physical barriers to get in the way. His fear, his guilt, his
desperate love--she felt all of these directly. She wondered which
thoughts, which memories, which feelings were his and which were her
own--and if such distinctions mattered anymore. Around them, the outside
world was dim and hazy. Sight and sound did not exist. Only ... contact
... warmth ... touch. She let herself ripple and flow through him and
felt the soft gasp of release that was his surrender to her touch. It
was like making love, only ... more intimate ...	

There was a flare of bright light in the midst of utter darkness and the
two of them were thrust apart, reconstituted into humanoid forms. The
force of the separation was so wrenching that Kira fell to her knees,
gasping. Then she saw it--a shattered body lying on the cold floor. A
woman's body--Bajoran, frail and dark-haired, her skin as white as
bone-china, except for the ugly patch of blood-matted hair over her
right temple. Her clothing was almost luxurious--colorful, delicate
fabrics rich with embroidery--but it was brutally shredded and torn in
the same manner as her body.

Odo, standing a little in front of Kira, dropped to one knee beside the
fallen creature and allowed his fingertips to gently brush a lock of
hair away from the pale, lifeless face. He caressed the smooth cheek
with reverence. Kira managed to regain her feet, took a hesitant step
forward, then came at last to his side.

"Who is she?"

Odo's words came slowly and painfully. "Her name was Lai'ka. She was an
assistant of Dr. Mora's. She died ... years ago. Her death was my fault."

Kira tried to study Odo's features in the dark, but in the shadows, his
face was a cryptic mask that gave away so little. "What do you mean?"

"I could have stopped it from happening if I hadn't been ... so afraid.
She was protecting me from the Cardassians. They wanted to amuse
themselves with the shapeshifter. But they couldn't find me--so they
amused themselves with her instead." His voice quivered, hovering close
to tears. "I was there. I heard it all. I never moved. I was hiding as
part of the floor."

Kira knelt beside him, reached out and took his hand gently away from
the battered body, and it vanished as though it had never been. "It
wasn't your fault," she said.

Odo looked up at her. His blue eyes were desperate. She could taste how
badly he wanted to believe her. "You were a child." She squeezed his
hand between her own. "Believe me, I know ..." Her voice sank to a soft
whisper. "I know what it's like to feel helpless in the face of evil."

"Tell her about the others," commanded a stern voice. Kira looked up.
The female changeling stood at Odo's shoulder. He bowed his head in
surrender.

"What others?" asked Kira.

"The innocents killed on Terok Nor during the Occupation," said Odo, not
looking at her.

And as if by magic, the ragged figures materialized mere footsteps away
from them.  They were typical, half-starved Bajorans of the Occupation,
only their faces stared straight ahead with dead, expressionless eyes,
and their chests were blackened with gaping wounds caused by weapons
fired into the chest at close range. They stood unmoving, towering over
Odo and Kira, who still knelt on the floor.  Kira still held Odo's
hands. She gave them a squeeze, looking up into his eyes, drawing him to
his feet with her as she stood. She felt him shaking.

Odo looked into the blank eyes of each ghost in turn. Then he looked at
Kira. "I thought I could remain on the outside. I thought I could serve
justice impartially. But in trying to remain neutral, I only served the
interests of the Cardassians." He turned away from her, ashamed. "I
worked for them, Nerys." His voice was barely audible. "I might as well
have been one of them. That's who I am. That's what I tried to hide from
you."

Kira closed her eyes, and suddenly felt herself drowning, her lungs
crying for air. She reached out for Odo, but he was beyond her grasp.
Her body went fluid and formless once more. A scream was wrenched from
her as she was tossed onto a barren, rocky shore. Her body felt strange
... both solid and fluid, changing, fluctuating. Another person, a
second presence, was with her, beside her, in the deepest part of her
mind, buried in half-consciousness, a warmth, a dimly-remembered hand
clasp, the beating of a second heart. Her shadow, her self--yet not
herself. She brought her arms around it, held on and refused to let go
of the other life that she held.

"I love you," she whispered.

****

There was warmth in the darkness. He lay still, letting himself be
helpless, feeling the rhythms of his body--the body that was neither
"solid" nor unchanging. It changed with an almost frightening constancy,
even as he lay unmoving. The pulse of the blood through his veins
quickened and throbbed. His breath came more sharply. He closed his eyes
and tried to breathe slowly. Tried to block out everything but the sound
of his own gasping in the stillness. He was aware of Kira, dimly at
first, and then with more surety, lying curled across his chest. His
hand moved, his fingers somehow finding their way into the softness of
her hair and combing through it slowly. The dream images flashed briefly
in memory and he shivered. She was real. Her weight shifted, the rhythm
of her breathing changed subtly--and he realized she was awake. She
stirred and raised her face to look at him.

"Nerys," he whispered, running his hand up along her cheek. Kira turned
her face into his hand so that she could kiss his palm.

For a moment there was silence as she rubbed her cheek against his hand.
"Odo," she whispered against his touch. Her lips traveled to the inside
of his wrist. He heard the tears in her voice. He hesitated, recalling
pieces of memory, fragments of dream.

"You were with me, weren't you?" he said slowly. "You saw ... you saw
everything."

She nodded.

Odo disentangled himself from her and got up carefully from the bed.
Kira made no move to stop him. He walked unsteadily to the viewport and
braced himself against its casement, staring out into the stars. He put
his hand on the transparent steel of the window, as though trying to
reach past it.

His voice was low, as though he were speaking more to himself than to
her. "I was hoping to spare you that--or maybe I was just trying to
spare myself." He bowed his head. "I've seen terrible things, Nerys.
I've done ... terrible things."

"We all did, during that time," she said quietly.

His voice was distant and toneless, his face without expression. "Did
you ... see them--?"

Kira didn't have to ask who he meant. "Yes," she said softly.

"I have no way of knowing how many ... innocent people might have died
on Terok Nor when I ran security there." His voice trembled just
slightly, but he continued. "The three men ... that you saw executed--I
found out days later ... that they had done nothing. My pride killed
them--my arrogance. I thought ... that I couldn't make a mistake. I
thought ..." He swayed unsteadily. Kira, afraid that he would fall, came
to stand behind him, put one arm around his waist while her other hand
reached up to cover his where it rested on the clear steel of the
viewport. He blinked, turned his head to look at her as though he'd been
wakened from a dream. His eyes held a look of pure devastation.
"Afterward, I vowed that I would never be responsible for such a thing
again. But I'll never know ..."

"I think you should lie down," she said softly. He didn't fight her as
she turned him away from the window and helped him to settle in among
the sheets. She pulled the crumpled blankets over him and sat at his
side, taking his hand in her own.

For a moment he looked as if he were going to fade back off into sleep,
but even as his eyes began to close, his lips moved slowly. "You were
never the coward that I was," he murmured.

"Who said you were a coward?" she challenged, her words sharp even
though her voice was pitched low.

His eyes opened. "I was never able to walk away from Dukat--from any of
them."

"You did walk away, Odo. You did walk away from them--just like you
walked away from the science center," she said.

"The lab," Odo gave a snort of half-hearted laughter. "Ironic--that's
the one cage I've managed to carry with me." His voice became bitter.
"Sometimes I wonder if I ever left. I've always been hiding--just as I
did when Lai'ka was killed ... behind the law, behind ... this face. I
can't ... I've never ... let anyone inside. I was afraid ... of what
they'd find." He paused, drawing slow, shaking breaths, "You were right
all along, you know. Everyone has to choose sides." He let his eyes close.

"You did choose," she reminded him. She let her fingertips gently trace
the shape of his forehead, travel down the bridge of his nose, and then
over his lips to his chin. "You walked away from the Founders," she
whispered. "I always thought--that took more courage than I would ever
have, to walk away from something you've wanted--dreamed about--for your
whole life."

"Do you know what ‘odo'ital' means?" he asked softly.

She drew back a little. "Odo'ital...? Is that where your name came from?"

"It *is* my name."

Cardassian for "nothing." Her sharply indrawn breath told him that she
recognized the word and knew its meaning. Of course. She was a child of
the Occupation. She would know some basic Cardassian vocabulary. Most
Bajorans who had survived the Occupation did. He should have known the
Founder who  had once impersonated Kira for the fraud that she was as
soon as she failed to recognize the meaning of "odo'ital". How lax of
him, he reflected almost idly.

Kira's voice was sober. "Dr. Mora called you that?" she asked, carefully.

"It was a ... joke that stuck."

He was surprised as she leaned down to kiss his cheek. There was a
sudden fierceness in her voice. "I'm sorry, Odo." Her voice wavered
slightly, as though she were crying--or trying to keep herself from crying.

Odo shut his eyes tightly to blink back his own tears. "Oh gods, Nerys
... how can you not hate me?"

"Because I love you," she said quietly. "Why won't you believe that?
I've been thinking about it for days now, and I finally realized that
I've always loved you. I just didn't know how much until I saw you lying
there on that cold rock--how they'd just ... left you there."

"You pity me ..."

"No! Damn you!" It was a cry of protest. "Blessed Prophets, why do you
hate yourself so much?" She drew a deep breath. "When I saw what the
Founders had done to you, I realized then how much I need you, how much
I've always needed you--and how empty my life would be if I lost you. Do
you think you're the only person to come out of the Occupation with
blood on your hands? Don't you know ..." She raised her hand to his
cheek, brushed away the hot wetness of his tears. "Don't you know that I
have always measured my own worth by the way that *you* see me?"

He looked straight at her, his voice becoming low and almost hostile. "I
don't want to be on anyone's pedestal, Nerys. I don't want to be the
arbiter of anyone's conscience but my own. Don't you see? I'm not
perfect. I can't be that--I never have been. I don't want to be your
role model ... I want --"

He looked away, and the last words came out in a resigned sigh. "I want
to be your lover ... that's all."

"What did you think you were?" she asked softly, bringing her forehead
to rest against his.

"I don't know--I ... so much has happened. I'm still trying to make
sense of it all."

"So let me help."

His eyes were full of urgency. As Kira studied his features, she
recognized something that she had not been able to name before. She knew
what it was now: a look of starvation that had always haunted his
features, a look of never knowing what it was to be full--to be
satisfied. His need was a sharp ache, an emptiness and desperate longing
that emanated from his whole body. She spoke to him in a low, soothing
voice. "In the infirmary, you said you saw Kai Opaka --"

"It was ... a dream ..."

"Dreams are a form of truth. I'm going to tell you something that Opaka
told me once. She said that the Prophets wait for us to forgive ourselves."

"I don't believe in the Prophets."

"That doesn't matter."

"Funny," he managed a soft little snort of almost laughter. "I seem to
remember her telling me the same thing."

"So why don't you--forgive yourself?"

Odo hesitated. When he finally spoke, his voice quivered with emotion.
"Because I need to know--if you can forgive me." The expression on his
face had become one of deep anxiety.

Kira took his hands into her own and held them tightly. "In case I
didn't make this clear before--if the Prophets can forgive me ... how
can I *not* forgive you?"

She kissed him then, slowly and deliberately. Her tongue gently opened
his mouth and caressed its inner contours, gentle and thorough in its
exploration. When she had finished, he pulled her close, wrapped his
arms around her. For a long moments the silence expanded as he pressed
his face into her shoulder.

"Odo'ital ..." she whispered against his neck, the soft reverence in her
voice changing the once-hated name into something else--something that
was lovingly intimate. "The best part of who I am has always been you.
Don't you know that?"

Odo felt the tears running down his face unchecked. Kira wound herself
around him and reached up to kiss them away. He held her tight and
closed his eyes.

****

The monastery was high in the mountain region. Its caved-in rooftops,
still visible in the rose-colored light of Bajor's setting sun, were
golden--from various angles almost blinding. Kira--almost fully returned
to her trim and athletic figure after giving birth to the O'Brien
baby--extended her hand to Odo, who let himself be pulled up one more
step into the wind and sunlight. He found himself looking down on the
monastery, down on the rolling, scarred green hills of Dakhur province,
from the top of the rocky outcropping. Behind them, the mountains rose
ever higher. Odo smiled faintly as he watched Kira close her eyes and
turn her face up toward the light.

"This is it?" he asked, a little breathlessly.

"This is it."

"So explain this ritual of yours to me."

"This is where you discard your old self--your ‘sins' if you're a
traditionalist."

"I see--though I don't understand why we had to come all the way here to
do that."

"Because it takes effort--and because it's *symbolic,*" said Kira
patiently. She knew that Odo was teasing. His gruff sarcasm had been
delivered with unusual gentleness. He still looked at little weary,
faintly haunted, around the eyes. But the climb had done him good. There
was color in his cheeks.

"So what do I do?" he queried, his voice almost shy.

Kira slipped off the shoulder-straps of the pack she carried and
crouched down to open it up. Odo, looking doubtful but also curious,
crouched beside her. She pulled out something very carefully wrapped in
white paper.

"Bread?" Odo raised his brows in surprise.

"Homemade," Kira assured him. She broke off a little piece and handed it
to him. "Eat."

Odo put the bread into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully while Kira
broke off another piece for herself. When she had swallowed it she
offered him some water, and then drank herself. Then she stood up and
gave him a smile. "This is the good part," she assured him.

Taking the remainder of the loaf in her hands, she broke it in half,
handing one half to him. "Now what you do is, you crumble it up, and you
let the wind carry away the crumbs."  	She demonstrated, squeezing and
tearing the bread in her hands until it looked like rough meal. Odo
copied her action, feeling vaguely silly, and then mimicked her again as
lifted her cupped hands up in front of herself, and the wind tore the
fragments of bread away from her, carrying it off to Prophets knew
where. Odo watched as the crumbs were blown out of his own hands,
between his own fingers, scattered away into oblivion like so much dust.
"Those are your sins," said Kira softly.

Odo was strangely quiet for a moment. Kira glanced at him over her
shoulder. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Me--I'm fine." He smiled a little. "I feel much better."

"In the old days, people would sometimes bring live birds up here in
cages and release them--usually on holy days. Makes the ritual a little
more dramatic. But I like keeping things simple." She colored a little
bit. "So --" she put an arm around his waist. "You ready to climb back
down?"

Odo returned the embrace. "Not just yet. I can almost remember what it
was like to be a bird from up here." His voice was wistful, full of
remembrance.

"Well don't get carried away," she told him, her grip tightening around
him ever so slightly.

"I'm not that desperate," he murmured, "Not any more." He bent his head
down to kiss her, a long, slow kiss. He drew away and studied her face.
"I've almost gotten used to this body--though I think I must have pulled
some muscles on the way up." He grimaced.

Kira smiled at him mischievously. "I'll bet I know the cure for that."	

Odo looked distant. "Have you ever felt completely safe," he asked
quietly, "even for a few moments?"

"Only when I'm with you--and when my mother held me as a child. I can
barely remember her. A touch. A word. But--I carried those ... pieces of
memory all through the Resistance--all those times when I felt anything
but safe--I would remember her being close."

She reached up and kissed his cheek. Odo drew a deep breath. "When I
went into the Link ... it was like forgetting that I had ever been
different. I can't even begin to tell you--the sense of peace that I
had. The--sense of loss when it was just--ripped away. Do you see? The
Others ... are part of me somehow, even now, whatever they've done. I
suppose I feel guilty for that too. A part of me ... *wants* to go back
to them. I ... lost part of myself somehow when they made me this. I'll
never get it back and this body--the only time it's not a cage is when
I'm with you."

She looked at him curiously. "Why do you love me so much? I've never
done anything to deserve it."

Odo touched her cheek. "You made me realize that I wasn't nothing," he
whispered. "How could I not love you after that?"

Her lips found his in a tender, reassuring kiss. "Guess you'll have to
keep me around, then," she ventured softly.

Odo managed a smile for her. "I'll do that," he whispered.


~The End~


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