Possession (PG-13): Written for karrenia_rune
Title: Possession
Author: DangerMouse (mouse42)
Rating: PG-13
Written for: karrenia_rune
Word Count: 2287
Summary: Takes place during "The Assignment", a take on what the Pah-wraith was thinking while it possessed Keiko O'Brien's body.
A/N: Hope you enjoy it, karrenia_rune! It was fun to write. A little twisted, but fun! Thanks to jayiin, hedigewan, and doroc_sabah for the beta read! Any mistakes found in this are all my own at this point.
She stands in front of the mirror, stolen hands on her stolen hips, looking at herself from side to side. A smile crawls across her face, like a snake about to eat a rat, a not-so-helpful voice suggests from somewhere deep inside of her. It makes her grin widen and she spins around.
Let Keiko O'Brien complain all she wants. There's nothing she can do about it, nothing her husband can do about it, and certainly nothing her husband's friends can do about it. Too bad for them.
She doesn't have a name. Such things don't matter to beings like herself. Names are for corporeal beings that can't tell each other apart otherwise. At first, she wasn't sure what she thought about the human when she sensed its presence in the Fire Caves she called home. She long looked for a host, but her enemies protected most of the Bajorans and the ones that they'd abandoned were too inept to be of any use. The Cardassians were also no good. They'd just as soon let her chosen host die before she accomplished her mission. It was their nature.
Humans, on the other hand, were much more malleable creatures. Her enemies understood that, which is why they made one their emissary to their chosen people. Easily manipulated, despite their strong beliefs in science and the logical order of things, they made the perfect choice for use as puppets. Their strong ties to one another and the value they placed on individual life helped her cause immensely.
She bided her time. What is time to her? She knew, as they all did, that the right host would come along soon enough. She was right.
Pulling her shirt tight, she smiles at herself again. Maybe these humans aren't so bad. The male certainly seems to like her, seems to like her enough to dispose of her enemies for her. All in all, it's not the worst set of circumstances imaginable.
"Mommy!"
Sighing, she rolls her eyes. The offspring is calling for her again. The offspring never seems to stop calling for her. It's really very irritating. Still, appearances must be kept, for the moment at least.
Walking into the offspring's bedroom, she puts a smile on her face that comes far too naturally.
"What's the matter, honey?" she asks, taking everything she knows from her host to keep up the front. The offspring is as easily deceived as the adults she's encountered so far, something that surprises her. Surely the human woman's offspring should know the difference, more so than the others. Strange. "Do you need help getting dressed?"
The offspring nods, still standing in her pajamas. "I want to wear my purple shoes to school. Can I wear my purple shoes to school?"
"I don't see why not. Let me help you, sweetie."
It's an easy task to get the offspring dressed. She obviously does it every day. So many rituals these corporeal beings go through - if she hadn't taken over this woman's body, she would be hard pressed to understand them.
# # # # # #
"And we're going to do water colors and finger paints because today is color day that's why I wanted to wear my purple shoes because purple is red and blue put together and..."
The offspring is still droning on about colors, as she has for the entire duration of their walk toward the school. She doesn't know how her host puts up with such prattle on a daily basis. Memories of a time before the offspring could speak drift through her stolen mind. She wishes the host had come down to the Fire Caves during that period of the offspring's life, if only to save her the aggravation.
They arrive at the school none-too-soon for her tastes. A Bajoran female is standing by the door, greeting the offspring of corporeal beings as they are dropped off by their parents. She would like to shove the offspring of her host into the room and run back down the hall, but that is not what her host would do, so she cannot.
"Keiko!" the Bajoran female says happily, reaching out to clasp her hand. "Welcome back! It's so good to see you! How are things on Bajor?"
"Oh, just wonderful," she says, keeping up the facade flawlessly. "It's lovely this time of year in the northern hemisphere. I'm in the midst of some fascinating research, but I'm so happy to be home with my family."
"I can only imagine," the female says, squeezing her hand. "We have to catch up before you go back. All the kids have been doing great. You'd be proud."
"Of course they are," she says, grinning at her and reaching out to give her a hug, since that's what her host would do. "They have a wonderful teacher."
They both laugh and it comes so easily for her. Everything is easy for her, easy to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, everything everybody expects of her. It's as simple as breathing. She doesn't know why it seems to cause so many corporeal beings so much grief.
A tiny beep sounds from the comm badge she's keeping in her pocket. Her smile falters. The male is trying to find his friends. She suspected something along those lines would happen, since Keiko O'Brien expects such things to happen. This is not the first time they've encountered a possession or unwelcome alien interference in their lives. It seems to her that problems arise far too often in the lives of these supposedly advanced humanoids.
"Something wrong?" asks the Bajoran female, apparently hearing the beep.
She fixes her smile. "Oh, just a little reminder for myself. I best get going." She leans down, hugging the offspring and placing a kiss on her cheek. "I'll see you after school, Molly. Be good."
"I will, Mommy," the offspring says cheerfully, skipping off to show her purple shoes to her classmates.
Stepping out of the classroom, she waits until the door is closed behind her before letting her smile drop once again. She looks left and right down the corridors, making sure she is alone. Raising suspicions at this point would be very, very irritating.
She pulls the comm badge out of her pocket. "Computer," she says after she squeezes it to make it beep, "locate Captain Sisko and Miles O'Brien."
"Captain Sisko is in security. Miles O'Brien is in corridor seven."
She's closer than he, which is good. It should give her time to make sure the male O'Brien understands her point once and for all. She is older than the stars themselves and not one to be trifled with.
# # # # # #
"Good morning!"
The greetings come easily as she walks along the second level of the Promenade. Many on this station know Keiko O'Brien from her short stint teaching their children. Several Bajorans and humans smile at her as she walks by. Keiko should have stayed here, away from the Fire Caves. Her fate and her husband's fate are all her own fault. She is well-liked here. It's a shame the female cannot see that.
But she cannot bother to dwell on such things. Standing by the railing, she scans the floor below, looking for the male O'Brien. He is not yet in sight. She sighs irritably, turning around and leaning back, the railing cold against her back. Odd to feel cold again.
The Celestial Temple, as the Bajorans call it, opens and closes, like an eye winking in the darkness. She frowns. Her cousins are always so showy.
Perhaps siblings is a better term than cousin, she thinks, favored siblings that gained the upper hand so far in the past that none alive now could fathom it. They cursed her, cursed her and her kind, to experience the worse kind of torture imaginable - the passage of time.
They, too, once lived outside of time, as the Bajoran 'Prophets', but their loss in the great battle between them came with a fierce price. An eternity, an eternity they could feel and understand, was cast upon them. The 'Prophets' doomed them to spend the rest of that eternity counting the seconds, minutes, hours, and eons. Nothing, not even death, could compare to that sort of torture - not that they possessed any concept of death prior to their siblings casting them out. No, death, like life, is part of a linear existence, nothing a non-linear being can understand.
Which is why she knows they will not see it coming.
The 'Prophets' do not possess a knowledge of death any more than they possess a knowledge of life. It is meaningless, as it once was for them, but her punishment will be her siblings' downfall. Her knowledge of time, of linear existence, and of life and of death, will mean their doom. Then, she and her kind will return to the home that is rightfully theirs, return to their place as the guiders of fate as it is meant to be. They will reconfigure the lines of destiny to fall back into sync with their own ideals of how the universe should behave. No more will the false Emissary stand in their presence, no more will the lives of the people in this place and places far beyond meet her siblings' standards. No, everything will be corrected, once and for all.
She winks at the hidden home of her siblings among the stars before turning around, glancing down at the first floor once again.
There is the male, walking with a kind of foolish determination so characteristic among his species. Captain Sisko and Chief Odo have emerged from the security office, seeing him and smiling their hellos. They are all fools, the male O'Brien in particular.
She can't terminate her host's life, not until the male has finished his task. This is her only opportunity. More the fool him for not understanding that simple fact. No, she will manipulate, control, do everything in her power to get her way. He likes deadlines and works well under pressure - she knows that from her host - and she gave him a fairly firm one to ensure this went as quickly and as smoothly as possible.
He loves her, a weakness she's finding she's enjoying exploiting. It's a kind of deep love and devotion she's only seen and heard from the Bajorans that proclaim their loyalty to her siblings. It's powerful, more powerful than her, in some respects, but as with every great power, there is a weakness to be found. That they are one and the same is simply a matter of happenstance.
She thinks, watching him walk down the Promenade, if she'd given herself a little more time, she might enjoy exploring this power more fully, might enjoy understanding this fallacy of humanoid emotion that drove males to commit murder. Time, however, is not her ally. Her siblings have spies everywhere, working their will through nearly every person aboard this floating heap of space junk. If she waits, they will discover her plan and stop her. She can not and will not fail.
Still, that doesn't mean she can't have a little fun.
She releases her host from her control, at least in a limited capacity. The sound of terror in her voice makes her laugh silently. Oh, this is far too amusing.
"Miles!" she hears her host cry out.
The male stops dead, spinning around and looking at her with horror. Love is not a concept she fully understands, though she does understand its impact. The male loves this female, will do anything for her. Now she just has to make him understand he cannot betray the one in control, not now, not ever.
She pulls the voice back under her control, not particularly interested in hearing the screams. The host manages to silently speak the words, 'I love you,' the emotion so much greater than the words themselves. Even though she's maintaining her control, she knows the emotion is showing through the host's eyes despite her best efforts.
Without much more thought than that, she throws the body she's taken over the edge. The feeling of wind rushing around her is almost exhilarating in a way. What amazing sensations these corporeal beings experience! She wonders, for a brief second, if she'll miss it when she takes her rightful place in the home in the sky she helped build so long ago, but quickly dismisses the thought. She regrets nothing. She does not understand regret, only knows the word.
The male is panicked. "No!"
She twists the body so that it will not break in such a way that it cannot be repaired, pulling back just before she hits so her host can feel the impact. That's one sensation she's fairly certain she will not enjoy. The sound of bones crunching is a curious one.
The body is being touched, softly, on a broken arm. She hears Odo calling for the doctor even as she feigns unconsciousness. True, at the moment she doubts this body is capable of speech or even opening its eyes, but she is conscious. She is always conscious. She is nothing if not consciousness.
So when the male O'Brien's tears fall on her face, she feels it. She hears him whispering curses at her, even as he proclaims his love for the host she's taken over. She can smell his fear, feel his confused emotions as they wash over her, love for Keiko O'Brien overriding his anger at the 'thing' that has taken her over.
"Keiko, I'm so sorry," he whispers, even as the pounding feet of the doctor and his staff approach.
She wishes her broken jaw could smile.
*The End*
Author: DangerMouse (mouse42)
Rating: PG-13
Written for: karrenia_rune
Word Count: 2287
Summary: Takes place during "The Assignment", a take on what the Pah-wraith was thinking while it possessed Keiko O'Brien's body.
A/N: Hope you enjoy it, karrenia_rune! It was fun to write. A little twisted, but fun! Thanks to jayiin, hedigewan, and doroc_sabah for the beta read! Any mistakes found in this are all my own at this point.
She stands in front of the mirror, stolen hands on her stolen hips, looking at herself from side to side. A smile crawls across her face, like a snake about to eat a rat, a not-so-helpful voice suggests from somewhere deep inside of her. It makes her grin widen and she spins around.
Let Keiko O'Brien complain all she wants. There's nothing she can do about it, nothing her husband can do about it, and certainly nothing her husband's friends can do about it. Too bad for them.
She doesn't have a name. Such things don't matter to beings like herself. Names are for corporeal beings that can't tell each other apart otherwise. At first, she wasn't sure what she thought about the human when she sensed its presence in the Fire Caves she called home. She long looked for a host, but her enemies protected most of the Bajorans and the ones that they'd abandoned were too inept to be of any use. The Cardassians were also no good. They'd just as soon let her chosen host die before she accomplished her mission. It was their nature.
Humans, on the other hand, were much more malleable creatures. Her enemies understood that, which is why they made one their emissary to their chosen people. Easily manipulated, despite their strong beliefs in science and the logical order of things, they made the perfect choice for use as puppets. Their strong ties to one another and the value they placed on individual life helped her cause immensely.
She bided her time. What is time to her? She knew, as they all did, that the right host would come along soon enough. She was right.
Pulling her shirt tight, she smiles at herself again. Maybe these humans aren't so bad. The male certainly seems to like her, seems to like her enough to dispose of her enemies for her. All in all, it's not the worst set of circumstances imaginable.
"Mommy!"
Sighing, she rolls her eyes. The offspring is calling for her again. The offspring never seems to stop calling for her. It's really very irritating. Still, appearances must be kept, for the moment at least.
Walking into the offspring's bedroom, she puts a smile on her face that comes far too naturally.
"What's the matter, honey?" she asks, taking everything she knows from her host to keep up the front. The offspring is as easily deceived as the adults she's encountered so far, something that surprises her. Surely the human woman's offspring should know the difference, more so than the others. Strange. "Do you need help getting dressed?"
The offspring nods, still standing in her pajamas. "I want to wear my purple shoes to school. Can I wear my purple shoes to school?"
"I don't see why not. Let me help you, sweetie."
It's an easy task to get the offspring dressed. She obviously does it every day. So many rituals these corporeal beings go through - if she hadn't taken over this woman's body, she would be hard pressed to understand them.
# # # # # #
"And we're going to do water colors and finger paints because today is color day that's why I wanted to wear my purple shoes because purple is red and blue put together and..."
The offspring is still droning on about colors, as she has for the entire duration of their walk toward the school. She doesn't know how her host puts up with such prattle on a daily basis. Memories of a time before the offspring could speak drift through her stolen mind. She wishes the host had come down to the Fire Caves during that period of the offspring's life, if only to save her the aggravation.
They arrive at the school none-too-soon for her tastes. A Bajoran female is standing by the door, greeting the offspring of corporeal beings as they are dropped off by their parents. She would like to shove the offspring of her host into the room and run back down the hall, but that is not what her host would do, so she cannot.
"Keiko!" the Bajoran female says happily, reaching out to clasp her hand. "Welcome back! It's so good to see you! How are things on Bajor?"
"Oh, just wonderful," she says, keeping up the facade flawlessly. "It's lovely this time of year in the northern hemisphere. I'm in the midst of some fascinating research, but I'm so happy to be home with my family."
"I can only imagine," the female says, squeezing her hand. "We have to catch up before you go back. All the kids have been doing great. You'd be proud."
"Of course they are," she says, grinning at her and reaching out to give her a hug, since that's what her host would do. "They have a wonderful teacher."
They both laugh and it comes so easily for her. Everything is easy for her, easy to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, everything everybody expects of her. It's as simple as breathing. She doesn't know why it seems to cause so many corporeal beings so much grief.
A tiny beep sounds from the comm badge she's keeping in her pocket. Her smile falters. The male is trying to find his friends. She suspected something along those lines would happen, since Keiko O'Brien expects such things to happen. This is not the first time they've encountered a possession or unwelcome alien interference in their lives. It seems to her that problems arise far too often in the lives of these supposedly advanced humanoids.
"Something wrong?" asks the Bajoran female, apparently hearing the beep.
She fixes her smile. "Oh, just a little reminder for myself. I best get going." She leans down, hugging the offspring and placing a kiss on her cheek. "I'll see you after school, Molly. Be good."
"I will, Mommy," the offspring says cheerfully, skipping off to show her purple shoes to her classmates.
Stepping out of the classroom, she waits until the door is closed behind her before letting her smile drop once again. She looks left and right down the corridors, making sure she is alone. Raising suspicions at this point would be very, very irritating.
She pulls the comm badge out of her pocket. "Computer," she says after she squeezes it to make it beep, "locate Captain Sisko and Miles O'Brien."
"Captain Sisko is in security. Miles O'Brien is in corridor seven."
She's closer than he, which is good. It should give her time to make sure the male O'Brien understands her point once and for all. She is older than the stars themselves and not one to be trifled with.
# # # # # #
"Good morning!"
The greetings come easily as she walks along the second level of the Promenade. Many on this station know Keiko O'Brien from her short stint teaching their children. Several Bajorans and humans smile at her as she walks by. Keiko should have stayed here, away from the Fire Caves. Her fate and her husband's fate are all her own fault. She is well-liked here. It's a shame the female cannot see that.
But she cannot bother to dwell on such things. Standing by the railing, she scans the floor below, looking for the male O'Brien. He is not yet in sight. She sighs irritably, turning around and leaning back, the railing cold against her back. Odd to feel cold again.
The Celestial Temple, as the Bajorans call it, opens and closes, like an eye winking in the darkness. She frowns. Her cousins are always so showy.
Perhaps siblings is a better term than cousin, she thinks, favored siblings that gained the upper hand so far in the past that none alive now could fathom it. They cursed her, cursed her and her kind, to experience the worse kind of torture imaginable - the passage of time.
They, too, once lived outside of time, as the Bajoran 'Prophets', but their loss in the great battle between them came with a fierce price. An eternity, an eternity they could feel and understand, was cast upon them. The 'Prophets' doomed them to spend the rest of that eternity counting the seconds, minutes, hours, and eons. Nothing, not even death, could compare to that sort of torture - not that they possessed any concept of death prior to their siblings casting them out. No, death, like life, is part of a linear existence, nothing a non-linear being can understand.
Which is why she knows they will not see it coming.
The 'Prophets' do not possess a knowledge of death any more than they possess a knowledge of life. It is meaningless, as it once was for them, but her punishment will be her siblings' downfall. Her knowledge of time, of linear existence, and of life and of death, will mean their doom. Then, she and her kind will return to the home that is rightfully theirs, return to their place as the guiders of fate as it is meant to be. They will reconfigure the lines of destiny to fall back into sync with their own ideals of how the universe should behave. No more will the false Emissary stand in their presence, no more will the lives of the people in this place and places far beyond meet her siblings' standards. No, everything will be corrected, once and for all.
She winks at the hidden home of her siblings among the stars before turning around, glancing down at the first floor once again.
There is the male, walking with a kind of foolish determination so characteristic among his species. Captain Sisko and Chief Odo have emerged from the security office, seeing him and smiling their hellos. They are all fools, the male O'Brien in particular.
She can't terminate her host's life, not until the male has finished his task. This is her only opportunity. More the fool him for not understanding that simple fact. No, she will manipulate, control, do everything in her power to get her way. He likes deadlines and works well under pressure - she knows that from her host - and she gave him a fairly firm one to ensure this went as quickly and as smoothly as possible.
He loves her, a weakness she's finding she's enjoying exploiting. It's a kind of deep love and devotion she's only seen and heard from the Bajorans that proclaim their loyalty to her siblings. It's powerful, more powerful than her, in some respects, but as with every great power, there is a weakness to be found. That they are one and the same is simply a matter of happenstance.
She thinks, watching him walk down the Promenade, if she'd given herself a little more time, she might enjoy exploring this power more fully, might enjoy understanding this fallacy of humanoid emotion that drove males to commit murder. Time, however, is not her ally. Her siblings have spies everywhere, working their will through nearly every person aboard this floating heap of space junk. If she waits, they will discover her plan and stop her. She can not and will not fail.
Still, that doesn't mean she can't have a little fun.
She releases her host from her control, at least in a limited capacity. The sound of terror in her voice makes her laugh silently. Oh, this is far too amusing.
"Miles!" she hears her host cry out.
The male stops dead, spinning around and looking at her with horror. Love is not a concept she fully understands, though she does understand its impact. The male loves this female, will do anything for her. Now she just has to make him understand he cannot betray the one in control, not now, not ever.
She pulls the voice back under her control, not particularly interested in hearing the screams. The host manages to silently speak the words, 'I love you,' the emotion so much greater than the words themselves. Even though she's maintaining her control, she knows the emotion is showing through the host's eyes despite her best efforts.
Without much more thought than that, she throws the body she's taken over the edge. The feeling of wind rushing around her is almost exhilarating in a way. What amazing sensations these corporeal beings experience! She wonders, for a brief second, if she'll miss it when she takes her rightful place in the home in the sky she helped build so long ago, but quickly dismisses the thought. She regrets nothing. She does not understand regret, only knows the word.
The male is panicked. "No!"
She twists the body so that it will not break in such a way that it cannot be repaired, pulling back just before she hits so her host can feel the impact. That's one sensation she's fairly certain she will not enjoy. The sound of bones crunching is a curious one.
The body is being touched, softly, on a broken arm. She hears Odo calling for the doctor even as she feigns unconsciousness. True, at the moment she doubts this body is capable of speech or even opening its eyes, but she is conscious. She is always conscious. She is nothing if not consciousness.
So when the male O'Brien's tears fall on her face, she feels it. She hears him whispering curses at her, even as he proclaims his love for the host she's taken over. She can smell his fear, feel his confused emotions as they wash over her, love for Keiko O'Brien overriding his anger at the 'thing' that has taken her over.
"Keiko, I'm so sorry," he whispers, even as the pounding feet of the doctor and his staff approach.
She wishes her broken jaw could smile.
*The End*