Work Text:
O'BRIEN
My eleventh "goodbye" message since we were married. I'm averaging almost two a year.
DAX
Does she know you do this?
O'BRIEN
What would I tell her? "You know, honey, every time I'm about to go into battle I record a message for you and Molly telling how much I love you... just in case... "
DAX
She'd probably think it was sweet.
O'BRIEN
It would scare the hell out of her. To be honest, it scares the hell out of me. Every time I record one, I think, "This is it, this is the one she's going to wind up hearing."
[...]
Dax places the chip on the console.
DAX
I'll put it right alongside my message to my mother.
O'BRIEN
You record these, too?
DAX
(bittersweet)
Doesn't everyone?
- 4x23, To The Death
1.
“Dear Mum and Dad. If you’re listening to this, I’m probably dead.
“Oh god, that’s the product of too many holoprograms. Computer, delete all that. Dear Mum and Dad – to hell with it, death is dramatic enough an opportunity to say something like this – if you’re listening to this, I am dead. I don’t know what killed me, but - well. There’s a war on, so all bets are off.
“In our academy years, we’d learn about the Klingon wars, and the messages people left for their families if the worst happened, and we’d be think of it as some romantic adventure, something historical and far away. We'd think: it's not the 23rd century – death rates on ships are way down. Certainly for Starfleet Medical. But mainly we thought of it like that because we were young, and stupid. Even in peacetime, anything could happen. And now all my friends record and re-record them once a month, and I do too.
“Not for you, though. Certainly not for you. I have never known what to say, but I can say it now: I forgive you for what you did; I may not agree with it, but I understand why -
“Computer, delete that last sentence.
“I could tell you a comforting lie, but maybe it’s kinder to tell the truth for once: I don’t forgive you, and I don’t think I ever can. That’s that, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.
“Computer, delete back through ‘I could tell you’. What am I saying? Of course you’d rather have a comforting lie. The fact of that is proven by my existence; I’ve been a comforting lie since I was six. So there you have it: I’m sorry I left; I wish I could have reconnected with you more completely, and I forgive -
“Computer… computer, delete that, delete this entire message, I can’t do it, I can’t.”
-
“I wish I could be more like you, sometimes, Garak,” he says that evening, his hands woven together in his lap. “It should be so easy, lying to them. Just one little lie and I can ensure them a bit of peace after it happens.”
“Lying to one’s parents is different from lying to just anyone,” said Garak gently, and Julian remembers the one lie of Garak’s he thinks mattered most of all. Yes. There’s no one here but you and me. A strange intimacy for the two of them them within the space of the lie.
“It’s not as if lying as a whole is a particular struggle,” Julian says with a quiet smile, and Garak’s arms settle companionably around him. “I’ve been doing it for years. But about this - to them -”
“Here’s a bright idea, my dear,” says Garak suddenly; “don’t die, and render the question moot.”
Julian leans back into him and doesn’t respond for a long while. He wants to say “Don’t die yourself, then. Don’t leave me, please,” but what good would a request like that do? Nobody’s trying to die. It happens all the same.
At last, he whispers, “I’ll try, Garak.” He has a sense that Garak knows all his thoughts just went through, anyway.
2.
“Keiko.
“This is the fourth one this month. I’ve got a problem. Of course I always made them, but not like this.
“It wasn’t like this in the old Cardie wars - I think it’s the kids. Of course it’s the kids. Or maybe it’s that the Dominion is so huge; it feels like the bastards might be everywhere at once. We are everywhere. That’s what the Changeling told Odo.
“I’m not feeling too cheerful today.
“I know the Enterprise is liberating Betazed, not sitting pretty somewhere away from the danger. That there are no safe places anymore, but I can’t help remembering that it’s my promotion that led us to the front lines. I don’t want to think about what it’ll do to Molly, remembering this part of her childhood. It’s the twenty-fourth century, not one of Julian’s war histories. Kids shouldn’t have to grow up like this anymore.
“And if it gets me killed, I’m sorry. I’ve found a hundred ways to say it already. I don’t know if you or Molly could ever forgive me, but I’ve said it anyway. There’s nothing else I can do. I’ve begged you to go before, and you won’t. I can’t leave, either. There’s a job to be done for all of us.
“But if it kills me, don’t let it kill us. If anything happens to me, go back to Earth. Maybe it’s not safe anymore, but I still think it’s safer than here, where it all began.
“I keep thinking about that, actually. I keep thinking about how this is where it all began.”
-
O’Brien is walking briskly from his quarters to the Defiant at the same time as Kira emerges from the security office, looking harrowed. There was once a time where he would never have asked her what was wrong in reaction to an expression on her face. Bajoran women, he’d have thought. Always angry about something. Here and now, though, he stops and quietly says, “Everything all right, Major?”
She blinks at him a few times. “An old friend from the Resistance,” she said slowly. “He joined the Starfleet initiative at Betazed.” She doesn’t need to say the rest.
It’s not the norm for Bajorans to take their military efforts so far from home, but they’re more common with every day now that Cardassia has joined the Dominion. The battle-hardened ones, those who lost everything in the Resistance and then found Cardassia’s pride rearing up and seeking revenge for the loss of the planet they helped free - what could come easier than a new rank to fight under, old tricks to teach others and new tricks to think of?
All this flashes through Miles’s head, along with a sick sort of recognition. A piece of paper could end a war, but could it end the wars in people’s minds?
“I’m sorry, Nerys.” There is nothing else to say, not anymore. They all check the casualty lists once a week; they all recognize names. And she nods back. Some sort of understanding, Miles thinks, passes between them. Neither of them are strangers to the sort of war this is.
But she has no family to leave messages for before every major engagement. As they walk side by side, he remembers that both her parents are dead; that although she’s had her share of entanglements on this station, that of course she’s got friends back home and on here, the closest she’s had to a family in years is, in fact, her months of living with him and Keiko.
“Nerys -” he starts, at the same time as starts to say something and then stops and starts again. “Take care.”
She nods. “The same to you, Miles.”
She sounds wistful, almost, as he says it. He wonders if she, like him, is wondering if it’s better to have somebody to fight tooth and nail for, or nobody to leave behind.
But she’s got people, he reminds himself. She’s got all of us.
3.
“This has precedent, doesn’t it? It’s a shame I can’t sing you an aria. Lukara’s farewell would do well, wouldn’t it? Never fails to bring tears to my eyes. Did I tell you Kurzon saw -
“Maybe not the time, though. Hi, Worf. I might die. We all might die, but we’re talking about me.
“And this isn’t - this isn’t the one where I remind you I love you, that if I die in this war I’ll be nothing but grateful to have spent the last two years of my life with you. You know that already. We’ve talked about it already. This is about the other thing.
“I’m a Trill, Worf. Of course you know this. You’ll say that the multiple levels of me, the echoes of ages, how I - for a certain value of I - have seen more centuries pass than even the oldest Klingon elders - you’ll say you love it. And I know you do. I do. I tend to find everyone worth knowing does.
“But if the worst happens, and us Daxes have always been unpredictable enough for it to happen - as much as I’ll work to remember the lesson Torias left me with, to stay alive for your sake and for mine and everyone else’s - you might suddenly love it less. And Klingons live longer than Trill anyway - at least in the way you’d think of who an individual Trill is - so maybe I need to say this anyway.”
“Because - well, I don’t know if you’d meet the next host. But if you do, I’ve seen how this thing goes from both sides of the equation. It’s the strangest mixed blessing, it’s relief and resentment. Whoever they are, you might see traces of me in them, or you might be disappointed by how little of me there is. You might love them, you might find - and this is more likely - that you can’t stand to be around them at first.
“I doubt you’d have to work in close quarters with them, but either way, they’d remember you. They’d remember loving you, and they’ll care for you because I do. So I have a request. No, an order, really. If you meet this new Trill, you have to look out for them. Because that was me once. Young and terrified. Absolutely convinced there was nobody in my corner.
“But you’d be in this one’s corner. You have to be, Worf. There’s a war going on, and I was lucky to have Ben. I hope the next one, if it has to be now, will have Ben too. But I get this horrible feeling sometimes, thinking about what would happen, about how much is uncertain. Please. If you’re hearing this, it’s happened; and if it’s happened, look out for my next host. They’ll need all the help they can get.”
-
Worf’s distant hostility had been strange to watch.
And Ezri wouldn’t have needed to be a therapist to know why it exists. She wouldn’t have, she thinks, needed to be a Trill to know why it exists, but being a Trill helps. Idly, she wonders if one day the centuries of voices and life experiences jostling for a place in her head will help her in her chosen career.
From where she stands, she can barely imagine staying sane long enough.
Here and now, he’s standing in front of her, and she sees him through eight eyes at once; Curzon, wondering where in the galaxy you’d find a Klingon looking this sheepish; then Jadzia, loving Worf intensely, missing him with all her heart, and then the interlocking, overlapping voices of everyone else - and Ezri, lost somewhere in there, with barely enough voice left to think anything at all.
It’s been a week since they talked, since he carefully told her that he hadn’t been treating her the way Jadzia would have intended. This is their fist time talking since then. Just a meaningless exchange over altered security protocols, and it’s still got her wanting to run for cover; not even from Worf, but from all the voices in her head.
“Thank you, Worf,” said Ezri numbly. And then a little bit of her - she hopes it’s Ezri, she wonders if it’s a little bit Jadzia, too - says, “You know something?”
“What is it,” says Worf, looking puzzled.
“You know this isn’t what Jadzia wanted. You listened to the message, didn’t you? I know it’s in the past. And I understand why, I don’t blame you. But don’t pretend you don’t know.”
His face freezes, and for a moment she knows he’s angry, but she’s not frightened. It’s not her, after all, that he’s angry at.
“I didn’t listen because I thought it was better for both of us,” said Worf, “if you weren’t here.”
“Nevertheless,” says Ezri, miserably. The bravado has drained out of her.
“You don’t need to tell me I’ve failed her,” says Worf roughly. “I already know that.”
“Worf -” she starts, but he’s curtly shut the door of the office behind him before she can say a thing. And the brief confidence vanishes, and she wishes as much as she’s sure Worf does, if not more, that this set of memories had been inherited by anybody else at all.
4.
“Jake.
“You don’t know how difficult it is to record this for you. Because this is my worst fear. Or second-worst. Because if you’re listening to this, I’ve left you alone.
“I know that Dax will look after you, that everyone else will too. And you know that if this has happened I’ve done everything in my power to stop it from happening. But I have something else to say. Something I’d only tell you if I needed it to convince you of what I need to convince you.
“Back when you were seventeen, right after Worf came on the station, I was trapped in an alternate universe.
“Another day in Starfleet, right? And it was a universe where I died, or disappeared at least, and you - well, you kept going. You had so much going for you - you were young, and brilliant, you published a book - a successful book, one that resonated with so many people.
“But you didn’t go on. Because I was - reappearing in your life, every so often, every couple of decades. And you kept hoping I would again, and you put a stop to all your writing, everything you could have been, and I -
“Well. I found my way back eventually. But I’m terrified of this, Jake. Even before your mom died, of course I knew having you meant that my biggest responsibility was staying alive for your sake. And after she died, it increased, twofold. And after I saw what could have happened to you had I left? Well, after that, I knew I would have to record this one day.
“So know that for my sake, you have to keep going. You have to be the brilliant, creative person that you are in the way that I know this comes naturally, you have to surround yourself with people who love you, because so many people do. Kassidy knows this. Major Kira knows this, to a point. Because wherever I will be, whatever happens, there's nothing I want more than your own full and happy life.
“I’m sorry, Jake. Because if you’re hearing this, everything I’ve tried my whole life to make certain for you has fallen through again. But I love you. And one last time, I am asking you to listen to your old dad."
-
The stars outside the viewport are brilliant and expansive as ever; Jake knows Nog always says he’ll never get tired of the sight. And he won’t, Jake knows; the way Nog looks at them, even as his hands move with practiced competence over the runabout’s controls, tells him everything he needs to know.
Jake’s not looking at the stars, though, nor is he looking at Nog. He’s watching the wormhole open, trying to keep his face carefully blank instead of letting anger, or longing, or single-minded fixation shows on his face. As a writer, he knows this sort of thing would be expected from someone in his situation. As a human being, he knows he feels it.
He also knows he’s gotten quite good at fooling people into thinking he’s more okay than he is, or at least into giving him the dignity of pretending. But Nog is his best friend. Not much can get past him.
“If he said he would get back, he’ll be back,” says Nog levelly. He doesn’t need to preface it with anything.
If it were anyone else, Jake’s mind would be alive with counterpoints. And why didn’t he come back yet if he can come back at any point in time? And why did he talk to Kassidy instead of me? If he has all the time in the world, what have the last two months been?
But it’s Nog, and there’s a reason they function so well; his practical solidity acts in counterpoint to Jake’s racing mess of thoughts and feelings. And so when Jake says this thing that a hundred people have said to him before, he believes it. He remembers that he knows his father and that he wouldn’t lie, either. There’s a measure of trust there.
He sits and looks at the stars. His hand goes, instinctively, to the isolinear rod Kassidy had given him the day after it had all happened.
“Jake,” says Nog, “maybe you should listen to it.”
But even Nog can’t shake him on this front. Whatever Dad had to say, he can say it to Jake’s face when he comes back. And whether it takes months or years or (and Jake bites his lip in fear) decades, he will come back.
“He’s not dead,” says Jake firmly. “It’s not the time.”