Chapter Text
Long after the Founder left, Odo gazed out the window of his quarters, searching the distant stars.
There had been times, before he had learned the terrible truth of his people and chosen his colleagues on Deep Space Nine, when this station had felt impossibly constricting. Once, it had been an escape from Bajor. A way out of Dr. Mora’s laboratory. But any place in the Solid world was the same. He was still, inevitably, alone.
That old sensation stirred within him now. The sense of the station’s hull locked around him, constraining him. The niggling feeling that belonging and acceptance were just beyond his reach. That he could only find what he searched for among all those distant stars.
He knew now, though, that it wasn’t the stars that drew him.
It was the Link.
That was the only place he could ever truly belong.
So lost was he among those stars that he almost missed his door chime. A second delayed, he called, “Come in.”
The door slid open and shut, barely on the edge of his awareness.
“Odo?”
Kira.
As he looked into her face, he could almost believe that he could find what he needed here, too. That she could be enough. That his love wouldn’t cost him too much.
He wanted it to be enough.
“Nerys,” he said.
“I dropped by your office and Damar told me you were here,” Kira said. “With her.”
“She was here,” Odo said. “But she’s gone now.”
“You alright?” Tentatively, Kira walked toward him. “What did she want?”
“She didn’t want anything.”
“Then…what was she doing here?”
Odo let out a patient sigh. “I know how you feel about her, Major. But there’s no reason to be concerned.”
“You don’t know how much I wish I could believe that,” Kira said. “You didn’t Link with her, did you?”
Odo bristled slightly. He folded his arms. “Actually, I did.”
“You did?”
He nodded.
She paced before him. “What were you thinking?”
Odo wandered a few paces, shaking his head. “She didn’t find out about the resistance, if that’s why you’re worried.”
“It’s not!”
“The Link isn’t about exchanging information,” Odo said. “It’s about merging thought and form, idea and sensation.”
“That sounds like a perfect way to manipulate someone.”
Odo waved a hand in dismissal. “She’s not manipulating me.”
Kira followed him across the room. “Ever since the day you two crossed paths, she has lied to you, tricked you, stood in judgment of you. I don’t trust her. I don’t see how you can!”
“I Linked with her,” Odo said, turning to face her. “If she had any hidden motive, I would’ve sensed it. She’s just trying…to teach me about myself—about what I’m capable of becoming.”
“An intergalactic warlord, maybe?” Kira said. “Because that’s what she is.”
“Who knows?” Odo said. “By Linking with her, I might be able to make her understand that the Federation doesn’t pose a threat to her people.”
“You believe you can convince her to…call off the war?”
Kira’s voice dripped with skepticism. But Odo knew he had to be patient with her. She wasn’t a Changeling. She couldn’t know the Link. She couldn’t feel the euphoria that still rippled through his matrix, long after the Founder had gone. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t understand.
“If you could experience the Link,” he murmured, “you’d understand the effect it has on my people.” He wandered back toward the window, toward those distant stars. “You’d realize that anything is possible.” He turned, earnest. “I’m…only beginning to understand it all myself. I still have so many questions. Now that she’s here, I have a chance to find some answers.”
“Odo, this isn’t the time to go off on some personal quest,” Kira said. “There’s too much at stake! After the war is over, you—do whatever you need to do, if you feel you need to go and join the Great Link, I’m—I’m not gonna stop you. But for right now, I need you, here, focused. Please, promise me that you’re not gonna Link with her again. Not until this is over!”
Odo’s substance churned.
Did she even know what she was asking?
It probably sounded so reasonable, to her. Wait until after the war. But the Link was part of what he was.
He needed it now.
Still, as he took in the pleading look in her eyes, he couldn’t deny her.
He never could.
“Alright.” He nodded. “I won’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work.” When tension lingered in her features, he added, “I’ll see you at the resistance meeting.”
With a slight nod, Kira left, and his door slid closed behind her.
He really did have work to do. The Founder had occupied him for far longer than he’d planned—long enough that, at one time, the disruption in his schedule would have set him on edge.
Now, he only felt the lingering calm of the Link.
The Link…
No. He’d made a promise.
Damn it, Kira.
He turned back to face the window. Wasn’t there something he needed to do? A reason he’d prompted her to leave?
No matter.
His gaze drifted out to the stars.
*
He needed the Link.
Jake was saying something about bad blood between Cardassians and Jem’Hadar, but Odo couldn’t quite bring himself to focus.
There was a strange tightness spreading through his substance, steadily erasing the effects of the Link.
The Link…the Link…
“What do you think, Odo?”
Kira’s voice drew him from his thoughts. It took a moment to latch onto reality, to call his senses back to attention, to remember what she was asking him about.
Right. They were talking about Cardassians and Jem’Hadar, weren’t they?
What did he think, anyway? It seemed so immaterial.
His own words floated to the surface of his thoughts, distant, as if spoken by someone else.
“…and I said it was a bad idea…”
He could fall back on that.
“I’m…not sure it’s a good idea,” he said.
“Then we’ll do something else,” Kira said.
Jake protested, but Odo had already stopped listening. His cells were tightening, constricting, his matrix coiling, the calm of the Link slipping away.
Need the Link…
“Brother!”
Rom’s voice. Odo glanced up to find Quark in the doorway.
His surroundings drifted again.
All he could focus on was the tension in his substance. The tension that only the Link could ease.
Quark was complaining about…something. Odo managed a weak eye roll. That was the way he usually acted with Quark, right? When he could bring himself to care?
The others’ voices washed over him, immaterial.
“…a way to deactivate the mines…”
Odo startled.
The mines?
Rom’s mines?
That mattered.
“…field tests…”
Focus!
“…something about the station’s…defector,” Quark was saying.
Odo leaned forward. “Defector?”
“That’s impossible,” Kira said. “The only person on the station who knows anything about the mines is…”
“…me,” Rom said.
“Defector…that doesn’t sound right,” Quark said. “Maybe it was…deflector?” He paused. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. He said something about using the station’s…deflector array.”
“What do you think, Rom?” Kira asked.
“I’m glad it wasn’t me!”
“About the deflector array!”
Odo lost track of Rom’s technobabble—something about self-replication and anti-graviton beams. Then Kira’s voice penetrated the fog.
“Alright, let’s do it.”
Do what?
“But there’s no way to get to the EPS feed,” Rom said. “It’s in a secured conduit rigged with alarms.”
Ahh. The EPS feed. Security alarms. Now Odo was on board.
“Odo,” Kira said, “can you disable those alarms?”
“I can take them off-line for about five minutes if I run a security diagnostic,” he said.
“Will that give you enough time?” Kira asked Rom.
“I think so!”
“I’ll run the diagnostic as soon as I get to my office in the morning,” Odo said.
On Kira’s request, he agreed to begin the diagnostic at exactly 0800 hours. With the details hammered out, they adjourned for the evening. Odo’s matrix was already loosening.
No mayhem, no chaos, no brawls on the promenade.
This, he could do.
*
In the morning, she returned to his quarters.
But it wasn’t 0800 yet.
If he wanted to spend time with one of his people—one who could give him not only acceptance but answers—during his own free time before he went on duty, that was no one’s business but his own.
She was order. Calm. Peace. Serenity.
Clarity.
Exactly what he needed right now.
His mind was bursting with questions—all the ones he had never had the opportunity to ask before. He would have, on his homeworld three years ago. But he’d barely been there for long when he’d learned the truth. When their treatment of his friends had forced a choice, far too soon.
He lost track of time as the Founder indulged him.
Have we always been shapeshifters?
No, there was once a time when they were like the Solids—their liquid nature was an evolved form.
On the homeworld, are we always in the Link?
Sometimes, their people took Solid form, but they preferred the Link.
More and more, Odo was coming to understand just how important the Link was to his people—and what Kira was asking him to give up.
It would be like asking her not to talk to anyone. Or maybe even to avoid praying, or going to the shrine.
“How many of us are there?” he asked.
The Founder sighed, shaking her head at him. “So many questions, Odo.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But there’s still so much that isn’t clear to me yet.”
“If you Link with me again,” she said, “everything will be made clear to you.”
The Link…
His cells lurched at the temptation. At the memory of that perfect calm.
What right did Kira have to deny him clarity? To deny him such an integral part of his nature—something that she couldn’t give him?
But he’d made a promise.
A promise he was beginning to regret.
“You have to understand,” he tried, “that the Link is very overwhelming for me.” In all the best ways, but he didn’t need to voice that. “Right now, it’s easier to talk.” Easier than letting Kira down.
“But words are so clumsy!” the Founder protested. “So imprecise.”
“Even so.”
She sighed. “As you wish.”
His substance clenched. Part of him had hoped that she would press the issue, give him a reason to capitulate.
He paced around her, only to turn suddenly.
“You haven’t told me your name!” he realized.
“What use would I have for a name?”
“To differentiate yourself from the others,” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t.”
“But…you are a separate being, aren’t you?”
A cryptic nod. “In a sense.”
Curiosity rippled through Odo’s matrix. He was on the verge of something important here—he could feel it.
“When you return to the Link,” he said, “what will become of the entity I’m talking to right now?”
She spread her hands. “The drop becomes the ocean.”
“And…if you choose to take solid form again?”
She brought her hands together. “The ocean becomes a drop.”
“Ahh.” It was all crystallizing. “Yes…I think I’m beginning to understand!”
“Then you can answer your own question,” the Founder said. “How many of us are there?”
“One,” he said. “And many! It depends on how you look at it.”
“Very good!” she said. “You are beginning to understand.”
He let out a relieved sigh.
He’d spent his entire life trying to fit in amongst the Solids, learning to anticipate and mimic their behaviors, molding himself into the right shape to exist in their world. But he’d longed for nothing more than to understand why he was so different, why he was so alien.
How could the Solids understand what it was like to question one’s very nature? To wonder, not who you are, but what you are?
How could Kira understand?
The Founder approached him. “But there’s so much you don’t know.”
He turned, faced her. “Tell me?”
“Oh, words are insufficient.” She offered her hands. “Link with me again. It is the only way I can give you the understanding you seek.”
He broke her gaze. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I promised Kira.”
“She is a Solid,” the Founder replied. “This has nothing to do with her. This is about you. About what you want!”
There it was.
The impetus he needed.
Besides—Kira cared about him, didn’t she? If she knew how badly he needed this, would she really deny him?
He wasn’t really breaking his word.
The Founder reached out. His hesitations melted away as his hand moved of its own accord, as his fingers met hers, as she liquefied against him, prompting his own cells to do the same.
It was even better than before.
Worlds better.
Pleasure tingled through his matrix. Light danced across his senses. Gentle waves rolled through him, over him, soothing the tension in his substance, washing his worries away. His head tipped back as euphoria more wonderful than anything he’d ever known enveloped him.
Some distant corner of his mind registered that it was probably nearing 0800, that he needed to report to his office, that Kira was depending on him.
The Link washed those thoughts away.
How could anything else matter in the face of this perfect clarity?
What need did he have to seek Kira’s approval, to brave the fire in her eyes, to stand steadfastly by her side even as she rejected his feelings, ignored his struggles, remained oblivious to his pain?
Why should he withstand her ire when he could stay here, afloat in the Link, awash in the purest pleasure he’d ever known?
Why should he be so vulnerable to her?
Why should she wield such power over him?
“Kira to Odo,” his combadge chirped. “Please respond.”
Her voice was meaningless, immaterial.
“Kira to Odo! Odo, answer me!”
His combadge melted away, and he was subsumed.
*
Awareness returned in stages.
Slowly, the Founder’s substance withdrew from his.
Don’t go, he thought he said, but he wasn’t sure his mouth formed the words.
“Major Kira is coming this way,” the Founder soothed. “I’ll join you again in a moment.”
She slipped away.
Odo’s eyes fluttered open—and his mouth opened in a silent gasp.
The world was aglow. The floor, the walls, his shapeshifting structures. Everything had a faint aura around it. Even the air itself seemed to quiver with light.
“Is it always like this?” he murmured.
“If you take your place in the Great Link,” the Founder said, from afar, “it will be.”
A contented sigh rustled through his substance. He could still feel the overwhelming pleasure of the Link washing through him, rhythmic, in and out, in and out, like smooth waves upon a beach on a clear day.
This was incredible.
His door chimed once, twice. He had little idea if he answered; then Kira stormed in, all fire and steel.
And she had an aura of her own, brighter than the rest. It was as if his love for her had taken physical form, as if the light of her existence had manifested before him.
She was beautiful.
But she was also a Solid. How could he have overlooked that before?
“What the hell happened?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you disable that alarm?”
“It’s difficult to explain,” he said.
Fury burned in her eyes. “Rom is sitting in a holding cell being interrogated! He was counting on you! I was counting on you!”
Odo nodded, indulgent. “I know.”
“You know?” she repeated. “Do you realize what you just did? You just handed the Alpha Quadrant to the Dominion!”
“I was in the Link.”
“Are you saying you forgot?”
“I didn’t forget,” he said, shaking his head. “It just…didn’t seem to matter.”
“A lot of people are going to die!” she cried. “Don’t you care?”
Her words seemed to plink lightly against him before slipping away, immaterial.
“It has nothing to do with me,” he said.
She stared at him. “How can you say that?”
He sighed. He couldn’t blame her for not understanding. “If you could experience the Link, you’d know why nothing else matters.”
“The last five years,” she said. “Your life here, our friendship—none of that matters?”
“It did, once,” he assured her. “I wish I could make you understand. But you can’t. You’re not a Changeling.”
“You’re right,” Kira said. “I’m a Solid.”
Odo nodded gently.
She withdrew from him; he watched her go, drawn to the light that surrounded her before the door to his quarters shut behind her.
Oh, this was peace.
The freedom to love her without pain.
To bask in her light without being bound to her will.
To know that only the Link mattered. To float within this paradise, freed from the pressures of the Solid world.
To enjoy his feelings for her, without being so vulnerable to her.
To abandon the internal tug-of-war that had plagued him since he’d discovered his people—to know, finally, where he belonged. To fully accept his own nature, and know that no lures from the Solid world could drive him to question it.
To know that nothing here mattered. Not the duty he had so stubbornly clung to, not his former loyalties, nothing.
The Founder’s footsteps approached behind him.
“You look troubled, Odo,” she said. “Did she upset you?”
Odo tilted his head. Once, he knew, she would have. That fire in Kira’s eyes would’ve scalded him, and he would’ve moved mountains, sacrificed anything, if it meant seeing her smile again.
But now, that pressure was absent.
“No,” he murmured. “Not really.”