Chapter Text
“I love you, Nerys. I’ve always loved you.”
The words were as familiar as they were foreign, spoken by a man he had never been, in a life he had never lived. And yet, he could see it all, clear as yesterday through the Link—clear as if he were seeing through his own eyes.
“Is it so hard to believe?”
Her smile was as bright as he remembered, perhaps brighter. She couldn’t possibly know what it was like to see her here, now—alive, vital.
—she lay motionless on the biobed, pale, lifeless—
“Constable?”
He almost didn’t hear the captain’s voice, fixated as he was on the body of the woman he loved. But the beckon repeated, drawing him from his spiraling panic, from the horror that shrouded his thoughts.
“What happened?” he croaked.
As the captain explained Kira’s fate—explained the crew’s fate, the Defiant’s crash—the words swirled around Odo, refusing to land, his matrix threatening to lose all cohesion.
“You appear to be on your feet,” the captain said. “I thought the barrier…”
Odo swiveled his head. “Barrier?”
“There’s an energy barrier of some kind surrounding this planet. I’m told it was interfering with your ability to take humanoid form.”
“Ah. I…seem to have managed to counteract it.”
He barely heard his own words. When the captain informed him that it had been weeks, that he’d missed Kira by a day, he stumbled and barely caught himself against the edge of the biobed.
Within the Link, time swirled; now Kira stood before him, vibrant, real.
“…Gaia is a very beautiful place. I’d love to show it to you…”
And it was beautiful—from the hills that stretched to the horizon, to the bright blue sky dotted with clouds. But to him, it was immaterial as his world collapsed around him, as all he’d ever dared to hope for faded before his eyes in a cloud of smoke.
—he gathered her in his arms, cupped her head to his chest, lowered his face so as to hide the grief that was plainly written across his unfinished features, even as his matrix itself threatened to shake apart—
Odo fought against the Link, tried to pull free from his counterpart’s mind, from the whirlwind of his thoughts—but his matrix wouldn’t respond. He was trapped, locked into the Link, forced to watch—
“…praying over your own grave. That’s gotta be a new one…”
—again and again, his shovel struck the ground as the sun set over the distant hills, as she lay motionless upon the soil, pale, lost—
The Defiant was a wreck, lost to salvage. Kira was gone. His job was over, his pursuit of justice rendered meaningless. It was a brutal irony—that he should find himself stranded in the Gamma Quadrant, on the correct side of the wormhole should he decide to return to the only Link he had left, and he had no way to so much as escape this planet’s gravity well.
—as he laid her body in its grave, as his knees pressed into the dirt and the soil stained his hands, he had never wished more fervently that he could believe in her Prophets, that he could find some meaning in it all—
Stop! Futilely, he railed against the Link. Let me go!
“…we’re all given one destiny, one path…”
And his was empty, with little choice but to resign himself to the future that stretched out before him. Upon the captain’s request, he soared over the hillsides in search of better terrain, better resources, better anything—
“…I lost you two hundred years ago…”
One by one, death and illness took the crew; he watched as a nearby valley transformed into a burial ground. The rains came and drowned the first crops. Malnutrition took its toll. Depression reigned. And through it all, the captain stood firm, the crew’s rock amidst hopelessness despite all he had lost, despite losing his son. It was for him that Odo stayed, for that last shred of duty, of obligation, of respect, of sentiment.
“…but for the other Odo, up on the ship, it changes everything…”
Seasons passed, crops grew, and hopes began to rise. The settlement survived, flourished. Still, Odo stayed, despite the monotony that slowly encroached on his life, despite the gloom that seemed to gather like fog and choke him. He withdrew, kept to himself, and few questioned it; how could they guess this was different from his usual solitary nature?
“…I had to see it again, so I could be sure…”
Dax questioned his retreat. Of course she questioned it. She saw, and she reached. But Odo couldn’t find it within himself to reach in return. He’d lost his chance with Kira. He’d been too much of a coward. To open himself up to another, when he’d already failed her, seemed wrong somehow.
“…this is where I belong. The path the Prophets laid out for me ends here…”
The captain fought him. But orders were empty, the uniform Odo still wore meaningless, his commission nothing but a distant echo from a life that would never again be his. He was drifting, even his sense of duty lost to oblivion. And a day came when he realized there was nothing left for him here but pain and loss. Nothing left but the certainty that even as the colony thrived, everyone he knew would be lost to the passage of time. But one Link remained for him—his abilities, his heritage. And, in two hundred years’ time, Kira herself would return.
He slipped away in broad daylight. No one looked twice at the snake that slithered away in the underbrush; no one guessed that it wasn’t a snake at all.
Within the Link, Odo’s substance trembled as his counterpart’s thoughts snapped into agonizing focus. Kira stood before his eyes, real as yesterday—real as if the sight of her lying in her grave weren’t burned irrevocably into his memory.
“This isn’t about me. This is about the eight thousand people down on that planet, their children and their grandchildren.”
How was it that every cell of his being reached for her, even as her words shattered him? How was it that even as she insisted upon her own death, the ferocity in her eyes made him fall in love with her all over again?
He clutched her hands in his, as he had never dared before. “If you’d known how I felt about you—if I’d said something years ago—do you think things might have been different?”
It was the look in her eyes as she answered—that wonder for a future that could never be. Or maybe it was the way her fingers squeezed his, or her earnest tone, or that bittersweet kiss he’d never dared imagine he’d feel against his lips. Or maybe it was the way all his years of cynicism and doubt and his reluctance to hope and his certainty that she could never love him evaporated in the face of one word—
“Maybe.”
*
Stardate: 50815.7
“There’s something you should know.”
It would have been easier to sweep it all away. To let them both forget about what had happened on the planet. But she was alive now, and still a part of his life. He couldn’t build forward on a lie. And the fact of the matter was, he couldn’t forget.
He had no choice but to inform her of his Link with his counterpart.
“Now…I know everything that happened.”
He could see the confusion and grief that swam within her, despite the brave, steady front that made him love her even more. It made him wish he had any other option than to stand here before her, once again the bearer of her pain. But honor demanded that she know the truth.
The whole truth.
“There’s something else the other Odo wanted you to know.”
She straightened, bracing herself, and he forced the confession past his lips.
“He was responsible for changing the Defiant’s flight plan.”
He watched, helpless, as that steady front gave way to horror, as she begged of him— “Why?”
“So that you wouldn’t have to die.”
He could see the exact moment her horror turned on him. The moment he and his counterpart became one and the same in her eyes.
But…were they truly separate?
Could he argue that he was any better—when he found himself defending his counterpart’s actions?
When he himself struggled to see the current timeline as wrong?
How could he feel anything but relief, when he had watched as the crew died, when the sight of Kira lying in her grave had haunted him for two hundred years?
She was alive. How could that be anything but good?
In some corner of his mind, he knew it was the epitome of selfishness—that the world didn’t revolve around her, and there was no reality where one life was worth eight thousand. And even if it were, the fire in her eyes was answer enough. He had disregarded her faith and her wishes. Had he saved her life out of love…or for himself?
Still—he needed her to understand. Needed her to see him—see his counterpart?—as something other than a monster.
“He did it for you, Nerys. He loved you.”
“That makes it right?”
“I don’t know.” He should have, but he didn’t. “He thought so.”
How hope still unfurled within him, even as he retreated from her quarters, he’d never know. But somehow, despite knowing he could get no clearer a rejection, some traitorous part of him still believed.
She was angry with him. He’d broken her trust. But she was alive.
And in the future his other self had aborted—the future where she lay, deathly cold, in a grave—she certainly couldn’t love him.
Her last word to him—to the other him—fueled him.
“Maybe.”
*
Stardate: 50817.2
Surreptitiously, Odo glanced up from his PADD, surveying the promenade beyond his office doors.
No sign of Kira.
Yet.
The day was still young.
He returned his eyes to his PADD.
He could avoid her, if he wanted. He was perfectly capable of filling up his schedule and making himself unavailable. He’d done so more than a year ago, when her relationship with Shakaar was still a fresh wound. But that wasn’t what he wanted.
That single word still rang in his mind, lingering from the Link—
“Maybe.”
He’d already canceled his briefing with the new head of Starfleet’s security attachment, who had overseen things in his absence. He could just as easily catch up on what he’d missed from the week’s criminal activities report.
Not that he was currently absorbing a word.
*
Stardate: 50820.7
Day after day, he waited.
They needed time, he’d said. He’d even believed himself when he’d said it. Believed in that word that had become fainter in his memory with each passing hour—
“Maybe.”
She was hurting. He knew that. Once again, he’d brought her pain—just as he had when it was his duty to report the deaths of her Resistance cell members. But this time, it was different. This time, they were in this together. He was reeling as much as she was, stuck playing the images from the Link on repeat.
—again and again, his shovel struck the ground—
Hissing in a breath, he shook himself, forced himself to focus on the PADD in front of him.
—his knees pressed into the dirt as he laid her body in its grave—
He growled under his breath and jolted, spinning to face the console behind his desk, rapidly tapping at the panels as he called up the day’s schedules and communiques and reports.
Work. Focus on work.
Why wouldn’t she come to him? She always had before.
He might even take the opportunity to open up in return. After all, she knew of his feelings. He had nothing to hide from her anymore.
*
Stardate: 50822.5
Odo was certain that, to the station’s inhabitants, nothing seemed amiss.
If there was one thing he excelled at—more so than he even had a choice in, thanks to his unfinished face—it was putting on a mask.
He hadn’t faltered in his duty. But beneath his form’s thin veneer, his very substance trembled.
“…this is where I belong. The path the Prophets laid out for me ends here…”
Kira’s faith was everything to her.
How had his counterpart forgotten that?
It was bad enough that he had disregarded her wishes, practically spat in the face of her faith. It wasn’t an act of love. It was a desperate act of—of possession. A moment of arrogance Odo would never have thought himself capable of.
But his crime was worse than that. He’d erased eight thousand lives.
Where was the justice in that?
Worse—was that potential still a part of him?
He’d made that choice in another life, a life that had never been. But he was still teasing apart his voice from that of his counterpart, still sifting through the Link, still wondering, over and over, what had driven him to defend that choice.
“He did it for you, Nerys. He loved you.”
“That makes it right?”
“I don’t know. He thought so.”
How had he believed, even for a moment, that his counterpart had been in the right?
A shudder passed through his form, visible only in the shaky breath that rustled through his facsimile lungs.
It was no wonder Kira had yet to come to him.
*
Stardate: 50824.5
Odo could remember the way his mind had worked as a Solid—just as distractible as it was focused, so easily sidetracked by hunger or exhaustion or, Prophets forbid, memories.
Thank goodness he wasn’t a Solid now. He wouldn’t stand a chance at his job.
—the soil of her grave stained his hands—
His substance churned, and he sucked in a deep breath; his eyes briefly fluttered closed.
When he’d found his homeworld and experienced the Link for the first time, it had been the most incredible sensation he’d ever known. So…relaxing. Comforting. Pleasurable, in a way he hadn’t realized he could experience. And he’d thought, then, that that was the way the Link was.
Then, a year later, one of his people had commandeered the Defiant. All too clearly, he could recall the moment the other Changeling had plunged his arm into Odo’s substance, shaking his matrix from the ground up.
That had been anything but relaxing.
Now, his counterpart’s memories hounded him, swirling through his form, persistent, invasive. His cells tightened and churned. His matrix itself trembled.
The other Odo hadn’t meant for that to be a simple memory transfer. Hardly just a sharing of thought and form, idea and sensation.
No, that was meant to hurt.
To burrow into him.
To consume him.
To change him.
To remake him from the ground up—to discard his doubts and hesitations and leave him with nothing but resolve. To overtake his fundamental respect for Kira and rebrand it as an excuse not to pursue her. To transform him, all in the name of that single word—
“Maybe.”
He had never wished more fervently that she would come to him. Not to pursue her, but to bask in her light, in that undying fire in her eyes that never ceased to inspire him. To take comfort in her strength and her determination.
All he wanted was to be her friend again.
Then his combadge chirped.
“Neyen to Odo.”
One of his deputies. He straightened. “Here.”
“There’s been a disturbance in Quark’s…”
*
Odo strode into the infirmary, Kira at his back.
“Did you catch him?” Quark asked.
“We caught him,” Odo said. “Or rather, I should say Major Kira caught him.”
In that moment, Odo didn’t care that Quark was whining about getting hit with a barstool. He didn’t care why Morn had fled into the Bajoran shrine, stark-naked, crying out to the Prophets for protection. And he didn’t dare think about why Kira had been there, meditating—didn’t dare wonder if Gaia had induced a crisis of faith.
All he cared about was that Kira was standing at his side, giving Quark hell. So he threw himself into his usual part—anything to support her, to reclaim their old rhythm.
And still, a traitorous part of his mind whispered—
Maybe.