Work Text:
"I know you, I know you well
My people, my people
Chasing heaven, made your own hell
My people, my people
Giving up is not your way
You're not doomed, not today
My people"
- Written by Andreas Nowak, Johannes Stolle, Stefanie Kloß & Thomas Stolle (translated by @lauraschiller)
/
It started in a bathroom at Mak’ala Hospital, of all places.
Illa had, of course, looked in the mirror a few times since Joining with the Dax symbiont, but only as long as it took to fix her hair. Something about seeing her face unintentionally as she looked up from washing her hands - something about the harsh lighting that brought out a grayish tint in her brown skin, or maybe just a memory shaken loose in the Joining process that even the Guardians only half understood, must have caught her with her guard down.
All of a sudden, she looked up and her face was a stranger’s.
Fear grabbed her by the throat.
Those ridges around her eyes and mouth. That oval shape on her forehead. That was a Cardassian on the other side of the mirror.
A Cardassian had killed her.
/
She was in the Bajoran Temple on Deep Space Nine, praying, the intricately decorated box that held the Orb shining in the candlelight as brightly as her hopes. She hadn’t even noticed anyone behind her until the hiss of weapons fire, followed by a searing pain in her back. She whirled around, but it was too late to defend herself - too late to do anything but recognize the ridged, gray, arrogant face of Gul Dukat. She fell helplessly to the floor as he stole the Orb and transported himself out.
Gods, it hurt.
Her back, her whole body, was screaming at her. She couldn’t breathe. Where was Worf? If she was dying, she had to at least say goodbye …
/
“Are you okay?”
The unfamiliar voice behind her made her whirl around, arms up in a defensive position trained over several lifetimes. She could move; that helped. She wasn’t dying. The pain along her spine faded into memory, but her heart still thundered in her ears. Her breath came in shallow gasps. Dax wriggled in its pouch, making her still-healing surgical scars twinge. Memories of the Dominion War flooded in thick and fast. She dodged through them like a pilot through an asteroid field, the stranger’s voice a distant signal by which she set her course.
“Easy there,” they said. “It’s just me … not gonna hurt you … deep breaths, okay? Deep breaths.”
Illa blinked furiously to clear her eyes. The person in front of her was small and slim, some years younger than she was, dressed in the yellow robe of a Guardian in training. He spoke to her in Trill, not Federation Standard. His grammar was that of an Unjoined male. Dark eyes under a thick fringe of hair looked up at her with concern.
“I’m Gray. What’s your name?”
Jadzia - no, Ezri - no … “Illa,” she gasped out. “Illa Pa’Dar - no. Illa Dax.”
Gray’s eyes widened a bit at the name of her famous (or infamous) symbiont, but he soon blinked that look away.
“Nice to meet you, Illa Dax.” He held out a hand to shake. She recoiled on instinct. He held up both hands instead in a gesture of reassurance. “Now, can you tell me five things you see?”
“Wh … what?”
“Five things you see,” he repeated, with a nod and a wave of his hand around the bathroom. “Right here. Right now. Not wherever your host was. You’re not back there, okay? You’re here. You’re safe.”
Illa drew in one unsteady breath after another, deliberately trying to slow down. On one level, she felt ridiculous - of course she wasn’t actually on a space station eight hundred years ago; she’d been warned a million times about host memories, she’d trained for this, she ought to be able to handle it - but her body hadn’t gotten the message yet. It was still shaking from head to foot.
Five things she could see. In a hospital bathroom. The blandest space imaginable.
“Uh … white walls? Toilet stalls? Mirrors? Sinks? And, uh … hey, cool earring.”
“Thanks!” Gray wore a long chain earring that almost reached his shoulder. He flicked it to make it swing and sparkle. “How about four things you can hear?”
“The air conditioning … that cart … ” An automated cleaning cart was whirring past down the corridor outside, followed by … “Footsteps? Talk about a squeaky clean floor … ” She laughed rather awkwardly at her bad pun, but Gray smiled. “And … your accent? You’re not from here either, are you?”
There was a rough-and-ready quality to his speech that reminded her of the colony on which she had grown up, founded by refugees escaping the chaos after the Burn. Translators had been an energy drain they couldn’t always afford, and so their language had evolved. Homeworld Trill now sounded prim and cold to Illa’s ears. She’d been hearing it from doctors, Guardians and instructors for years, ever since she’d started her Initiate training. Compared to that, Gray’s accent sounded like home.
“Oh, I’m from all over the galaxy,” said Gray, with a shrug. “Now, what was the next step … ? Oh, right. Three things you can smell.”
“In a bathroom? Nuh-uh. You don’t want me to answer that.”
“Yeah, maybe not.” He chuckled. “Humor’s a good sign.”
She could smell the soap she’d just used, though, and it was oddly calming. If there was anything you could rely on, it was that cleaning products in hospitals really did their jobs. There was no scent to the host memories, she realized. At least not anymore.
“How do you feel now, Illa?”
“Better … sort of.” Her pulse was slowing down, her chest felt less tight, and Dax had stopped moving as if he wanted to rip his way out of her. She leaned on the sink counter, both hands flat against the cool smooth surface. “It’s just … ”
He waited so quietly for her to finish that unfinished sentence that she decided to take the leap. He was a novice Guardian, after all. Listening to this sort of thing was, or soon would be, his job.
“Did you ever look in the mirror and not even recognize yourself?”
“Hm … ” Gray’s wry, knowing smile made him look suddenly older than his years. “Let’s just say the body I’m in right now isn’t the one I was born into. I’m more of a custom build. So … yeah. You could say that.”
She’d figured he was trans because of his voice, but that wasn’t unusual. The way he phrased this, though, seemed to hint at a different and far rarer story. Not that it was any of her business, but it did help a little not to be the only one who’d ever had trouble with mirrors. Still, it was a little bit humiliating to be talked through a breakdown by a total stranger.
“I mean, it’s not like they didn’t warn me,” she burst out. “My field docent, the examiners, everyone - they told me over and over again that Joining comes with risk, especially as a hybrid. And my dad’s a teacher, so it’s not like I didn’t know our history. Only … I’ve never had to live through it before.”
“Your father’s a teacher - is he your Cardassian side?”
Illa nodded.
“Cool,” said Gray, so calmly that she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
Cool. Just like that. When had being a Cardassian-Trill ever been that simple?
/
“Mom? What’s it like in the Caves of Mak’ala?”
Mom’s hands were strong and gentle as she massaged oil into Illa’s hair to make it easier to brush. It smelled like liquid sunshine. Mom’s hair was just the same, so she knew exactly how it felt.
She spoke softly of how quiet the pools were, how warm the water fed by the hot springs, how it felt to step inside and speak to minds that were older than warp flight. Shivers of awe ran along Illa’s spine.
“Can we go there?”
“You might someday, but I can’t. I was exiled three hosts ago. I haven’t been back since.”
“Exiled? But … why?”
All Mother would say, in a small sad voice that didn’t sound like her at all, was: “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
/
She was twelve when her history class covered the events leading to the Dominion War, starting with the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. The recordings from the liberation of Gallitep seared themselves into Illa’s memory. Grainy as the footage was, she would never forget the skeletal bodies of the people who had been imprisoned there, or how one old man tried to raise a cheer for their rescuers and broke down coughing instead.
She watched her classmates from the corners of her eyes. Some were crying, others scowling. “What kind of people would do this?” came a hiss from the back of the classroom.
My people, that’s who, thought Illa, hiding her face in her hands.
/
“Why do you really want to be Joined, Ms. Pa’Dar?” Admiral Senna Tal, the Starfleet officer assigned to be Illa’s field docent, eyed her sternly over the rim of his Earth whiskey glass. “And don’t give me that rigmarole about new skills and expanding your horizons. That’s what all the Initiates say. Are you doing this to prove yourself? Show that you’re Trill enough? Because I can tell you right now, that won’t fly with the Board.”
Arguments rose up in Illa’s throat until they choked her.
“Symbionts aren’t a cure for identity issues. Hmph! If anything, they tend to make them worse.” He took a hearty swig and put down his glass on the bar counter. “So if you’re going to be Joined, young lady, you’d better know darn well beforehand who you are.”
/
“What are they called, your parents?” asked Gray, cutting off the flood of bitter memories.
“Why?”
“Just another meditation exercise.” His earring swung from a self-deprecating tilt of his head. “If you’re not fed up with them yet.”
“Corim Pa’Dar and Zera Nox.” Just saying their names made her feel a little steadier on her feet. If they were here right now, one or both of them would be holding her.
“Good.” Gray held out both hands to her. “Now, repeat after me … ”
She placed her hands in his. His grip was strong and steady.
“I am Illa.”
“I am Illa.”
“Daughter of Corim and Zera.”
“Daughter of Corim and Zera.”
They had hugged her so tightly when she left. They’d told her any self-respecting symbiont would be lucky to receive her memories.
“I am also Dax.”
“I … I am also Dax.”
“My past is not my present.”
“My past is … ”
/
“Pathetic!” Elim Garak’s face - the same face that would one day be carved into monuments all over Cardassian space - twisted into a snarl. “Jadzia was vital, alive, she owned herself! You don’t even know who you are!”
But once she’d sobbed herself out on the Temple floor, Ezri’s mind became clear. No one fought like that unless they were in pain … and there was no pain like that of turning against one’s beloved homeworld, even to save it.
/
“My past is not my present,” Illa forced out, squeezing the Guardian’s hands, holding on to the present for dear life.
“I will learn from it … ”
“I will learn from it … ”
It was getting easier - well, more or less - to tell the host memories apart from her own. They were frayed around the edges, like an old handmade blanket one chose not to recycle. Although, seriously - one of her hosts had been Elim Garak’s therapist? If the man hadn’t been so terrifying, it would be a historian’s dream come true.
“ … But not let it control me.”
“ … But not let it control me.”
Gray smiled at her with pride, held up their linked hands, and let go.
“Now,” he said. “Are you up for another look in the mirror?”
By way of answer, she lifted her chin and turned to look her reflection squarely in the face.
She saw … herself.
Not Dukat this time, not Garak, no ghosts from Dax’s past. Just her own face, the way she’d seen it countless times before. Her father’s ridges, his square jaw and tall frame. Her mother’s spots, brown skin and curly hair. Eyes wide and alert, hands braced against the counter. Mouth set in a determined line.
She was not afraid.
/
She came home one afternoon to the sound of her mother crying over a newsfeed from Trillius Prime.
“What’s wrong?” she started to ask, but Mom held up a hand for her to be quiet and listen. On the holo-display, First Minister Kahn’s earrings sparkled in the light of a dozen camera flashes as she led a press conference about the new bill that had just been passed.
“Minister! How do you respond to claims that making reassociation legal will only encourage it?”
“I’d say that sending people into exile only encourages other dangers,” said Kahn, without missing a beat. “Like leaving the transfer surgery to doctors who don’t know what they’re doing, or losing the symbiont because there’s no new host available. We lost too many lives during the Burn to risk any more if it can be prevented.”
Tears were streaming from Zera Nox’s eyes, but she was smiling. The face they shared had never looked so beautiful.
“Do you know what this means? … I can go home again!”
“Now will you tell me how you got exiled?”
They were up talking half the night.
/
“For my son,” said the recording of Gul Dukat, looking solemnly into the camera as he declared war. “For all our sons.”
“Do you hear what he did there?” Dad - or Mr. Pa’Dar, rather, as he always was in class - paused the recording and pointed at the long-dead speaker’s face. “How he appealed to his listeners’ emotions? How he took all their fear, all their anger, and gave them a convenient enemy to channel it? These are the rhetorical devices leaders use when they want to manipulate their people.”
His voice was as quiet as ever, but the class was so silent that no one missed a word. His blue eyes burned with restrained intensity in his gray Cardassian face.
“I need you all to listen carefully,” he said. “So that you know it when you hear it … and so that it doesn't work on you.”
/
Illa knocked back her own shot of bright pink Fanalian toddy and looked Tal right in the eye.
“With all due respect, sir,” she said. “I don’t care if I’m Trill enough, for you or anyone else. I want to be Joined because I’m a historian. All my life, I grew up hearing stories about how our past informs our present. I want to live those stories for myself.”
The Admiral smiled wryly and lifted up his glass in a silent toast.
She had the strangest feeling that this was exactly what he’d been provoking her to say all along.
/
All things considered, Illa thought, she rather liked this woman in the mirror. No doubt she’d feel differently again the next time a host memory knocked her sideways, but at least now she had a method for how to handle it.
“Where did you learn all … this?” She waved a hand between herself and Gray to refer to the meditation exercise he’d just coached her through. “Is it a Guardian thing?”
“I, uh … ” Gray scratched the back of his head and smiled sheepishly. “I’m still a novice, remember? I kind of made it up on the spot.”
They caught each other’s eye and burst out laughing.
“Made up or not, thank you,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You’re going to be a great Guardian someday.”
Gray ducked his head, pleased. “And you,” he said, “Are going to be great. Full stop.”
As her reflection smiled at her over her new friend’s shoulder, she dared to believe him.
She was, after all, Illa Dax.