Chapter 1
"Doctor Bashir. The time is oh-five-hundred."
At least he wasn't alone.
"Right..." Oh, how he hated the garlicky voice of that computer in the morning.
The light hurt his eyes.
"Julian...we have to get up."
A much nicer voice. Julian Bashir shifted his arm to cuddle mode as Ezri Dax maneuvered herself closer. "Are you sure?" he asked.
"It's a big day," she told him. There was a faint dose of fearful anticipation in her voice. A week ago, he wouldn't have noticed it, but things changed here every day lately.
"It was a big night," he countered. "It cleared up a lot of questions."
She turned her pixie-like face up to him. A childlike face, framed in boyish short-clipped black hair, a permanent flicker of uncertainty always passing through it.
"Such as?" she asked.
He brushed his hand along the trail of melanin spots on the side of her face, the subtle markings that identified her as one of the most elegantly unique creatures of the known galaxy. "How far those spots go down, for one thing."
She smiled, but not without a sparkle of embarrassment. "I suppose you're going to want to tell Miles."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because you tell him everything?"
Without saying that today they'd all have other things on their minds, Bashir pushed away the rush of possible answers -- she was right, he did tell Miles O'Brien everything -- and how did she know that about the two men already? She was wrong, and he knew when things between a man and a woman, or a man and a Trill, or a somebody and a somebody else were better kept private.
Rather than blurting what he was thinking -- my God, you're so young! -- he admitted, "True, but this time, I'll make an exception."
"Good." Ezri murmured. She didn't believe him, he was sure of that. "Now, we really should get up. We don't want the Defiant leaving without us."
"You know," Bashir mentioned, "I've never gone into battle with someone I've slept with."
She smiled. "There's a first time for everything."
Not making any move to get up, Bashir added, "Now that we're finally together, it'd be a shame if anything happened to one of us."
Another twist came into her expression, and she didn't say any more, but Bashir picked up her thoughts as if he had suddenly become clairvoyant. She had been so lonely, so unsure of herself since having seven lifetimes of memories thrust upon her from another person, and another and another...her own identity had abruptly been put on hold, and she was now responsible for a cache of thoughts and knowledge that she hadn't absorbed. Not all Trill prepared all their lives to have a squirmy receptacle thrust into their bodies and then take over their existence. She was, as far as anyone knew, the only Trill never to be prepared for joining. That made her very special.
Bashir tried to empathize, but how could he? He was one man, inside one body, with one lifetime to worry about. Yet he admired and pitied Ezri Dax in the same moment, and he questioned his own reasons for wanting the comfort of her touch in these troubled times in deep space.
"Let's make a pact," she said. "We both come home alive. "
A handshake -- simple, but potent.
He took the hand. "You've got yourself a deal!"
She smiled. "I'm going to hold you to that!"
No, no, this wouldn't do. He leaned toward her, and she met his kiss thankfully, with welcome in her eyes. But then it was over, and before anything else could set in they had rolled out of bed on opposite sides and might as well have landed at opposite ends of a football field.
Ezri drew her uniform on very quickly, as if the blankets had been her protector and now she couldn't be unprotected. And Bashir, ridiculously, had yanked on his trousers quite faster than usual -- now how was that a way for a grown man and physician to behave? As if he were dressing in front of a...all right, she was very young, never mind that she was three hundred years old.
The medical wonder of Trilldom struck him again -- certainly this girl was no three hundred years old, yet the eight accumulated lifetimes and those of eight hosts all stored within her unprepared mind reached back all those centuries, racking her with confusions he could only guess toward. Sixteen lives bottled up inside that girl over there, who yet was pitiful in her isolation.
As were they all, upon this turning wonder. As were they all....
"Miles! You're late! You have to report in fifteen minutes."
"Coming, dear."
Oh, yes, the joy and fulfillment of having his family with him finally! If only there weren't a war. Every beginning of watch was like this now -- the laughter of his children, the humming of his wife, the clatter of family life -- and he knew too well how quickly that paradise could crash and bum. He'd seen it before, the war coming out of nowhere to Deep Space Nine and rushing the station with all the complex agonies and strife caught UP in those three little letters...w, a, r....
Thank the Lord the baby couldn't spell yet. But Molly could, and she understood.
That caused pain to Miles O'Brien, as he stepped from his bedroom, pretending there was no care in the universe that could shatter him today. It was only for the children. He couldn't fool Keiko.
"Now, remember," he told his wife as she turned to him while feeding the baby, "Kirayoshi has his checkup tomorrow morning at oh-nine-hundred."
She nodded, and he felt silly for having pretended she didn't remember. By reminding her, he was also putting a spotlight on the fact that he wouldn't be here tomorrow He was leaving, and asking her to go on with family life as if nothing were wrong, nothing were happening.
"I've already confirmed the appointment with Nurse Bandee," she said courageously. "One more bite...."
"And try to get some rest," O'Brien pressed on, "and don't stay up too late writing that paper on whatever those trees are called -- "
"They're called Arfillian blossoms and they're not trees, they're shrubs."
He sighed. "All right...anyway, be sure to get some sleep and...oh, yeah, and -- "
"Miles," Keiko scolded gently, "stop worrying. We're going to be fine."
Fine, she said so easily. Back here on the station, tryIng to play house on the edge of a war zone, living in a pretty little cottage made of alien metal, just barely managing to keep out the inhospitableness of space with bulkheads that could be so easily ruptured by enemy fire. Just a few light-years from the front -- was this a place to raise a family? He had thought being together would make up for all the risks, for the tortures of knowing where he would be for the coming days.
He'd been wrong.
"I know," he said anyway, and leaned over for a kiss.
"Just you be careful," Keiko told him.
"I always am -- Molly, don't touch that!"
His daughter recalled her hand just before it would've violated the sacred space around the model he and Bashir had so lovingly built. Then she realized her hand had come away with one of the miniature US Army soldiers. Quickly she reassigned the soldier within the Alamo walls.
Only as his little girl's ivory hand dipped over the adobe stone partition did O'Brien realize how very large the model had grown. Now taking up a significant portion of the room, the Alamo seemed very real and consequential to him, its soldiers like shipmates. He and Julian had committed many hours to this historical problem of siege and conflict, supply and isolation. One needn't be a scholar to see the symbolism, and how close he felt to those trapped men and women, struggling to hold out against impossible odds --
"I let you play with my toys, " Molly complained.
"It's not a toy," he insisted. "It's a model."
Keiko's doll-like eyes teased him as she continued feeding the baby. "Then maybe it belongs in a m
