fic: The Ache in Every Song (Star Trek: DS9)
Title: The Ache in Every Song
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Rating: all ages
Pairing(s): Kira/Dax (could also be read as gen)
Notes: Written for shopfront for the Where No Woman Near Year Exchange. Originally posted here. Many thanks to lauriegilbert for beta reading. 1,970 words.
Summary: Early in their friendship Jadzia shares something personal with Nerys.
Jadzia Dax brought the USS Rubicon down on the bluff overlooking the bay, deploying the landing struts and powering down the engines with efficient grace. Far below, the waves swept up the beach in great foam-flecked fans of blue and green. The runabout’s sensors informed Jadzia that the air temperature outside was a delicious 26.6 degrees, with a westerly breeze blowing across the headland. She couldn’t wait to get out and strip off her jacket, to feel the sun on her shoulders and the wind in her hair. She had a sudden desire to kick off her boots as well, to roll up her pants and jump right into the surf
Grinning, Jadzia turned to her passenger. “Ready?” she asked, unbuckling her safety harness.
Kira Nerys sighed. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“You’ll love it,” Jadzia assured her. “Trust me.”
“Oh, I trust you,” Nerys replied, unbuckling her own harness and stretching her arms and legs out in front of her. “I’m just not so sure I see the point of this excursion.”
“And yet, you came.” Still grinning, Jadzia rose and went to retrieve her backpack from the storage compartment at the back of the runabout’s main cabin. Hoisting it to her shoulder, she glanced back at Nerys. “Tell me you’re not just going to sit there.”
“I don’t know,” said Nerys. Her arms, Jadzia noted, were crossed over her chest. “The view is nice.”
“It’s nicer up close. And there’s something you can’t see from where you’re sitting. Something I’m dying to show you.”
The pleading note she’d worked into her tone seemed to catch Nerys’s attention. “All right,” she sighed, unfolding her arms and pushing herself up. “Since you’ve brought me this far. Let’s see this marvel of yours.”
Jadzia curled her hands into fists and waved them in giddy excitement.
Nerys touched her fingertips to her forehead. “Please don’t do that.”
“Come on,” Jadzia said, dropping her hands and turning toward the runabout exit.
_____
Jadzia was well aware of Nerys’s reluctance to accompany her to Akaya, the Class M planet orbiting the star Chara in the constellation Canes Venatici. Nonetheless, she felt no guilt whatsoever about twisting her arm, or about enlisting Benjamin’s aid in convincing the major to take her well-earned - and likely to go unused - shore leave. As she walked along the bluff’s edge, the warm breeze caressing her bare arms, Jadzia tipped her head back so the sun’s rays fell directly on her cheeks and lowered eyelids, inhaled deeply, and paid little attention to the grunts and heavy footsteps behind her. Nerys ordinarily had the lissome grace of a Kryonian tiger, but when she was annoyed and wanted you to know it … you knew it.
Jadzia simply hoisted her backpack higher and began to hum a jaunty tune from Aktuh and Maylota. After a minute, however, she stopped. It wasn’t out of courtesy to Nerys, whom she knew was not a fan of Klingon opera and who really didn’t deserve any more needling, but out of respect for Akaya itself. The waves had a tune of their own, a sort of chant, and it was worth listening to. It reminded Jadzia of the electronic vibrations the Voyager space probes had recorded back in Earth’s twentieth century. She’d spent hours listening to those recordings, curled up in one of the overstuffed chairs in Starfleet Academy’s music library; they’d been so soothing, especially during midterms and finals.
She wondered what, if anything, Lela Dax had compared the sound of the waves to, when she’d first set foot on Akaya so many years and lifetimes ago. She wondered about Emony. And Torias. And Curzon. All the Dax hosts who had preceded her, and who held onto the memory of this world.
Chara was about thirty degrees past its zenith, and the waves were flecked with burnished gold by the time the invisible path Jadzia and Nerys walked began to slope downward toward the beach. It was then as well that Jadzia heard, above the sound of the waves, the soft wail for which she’d been listening, almost since the Rubicon had touched down hours earlier.
It was as achingly lonely as her symbiont’s collective memory had told her it would be, and she felt the bitterness of tears in the back of her throat. At the same time, like a mischievous wind, the sound seemed to lift her spirit right out of her body and hold it aloft, making her feel light as the rainbow mist above the foam.
Nerys’s voice, close by her ear, brought her back to earth. “Okay, what is that?” She didn’t sound annoyed this time, only … uncertain, and a little awed.
“You didn’t do your research,” Jadzia chided gently.
“You only said we were going camping on a planet with a beautiful beach. So long as it wasn’t Risa, what was there to research? I said I trust you.”
“So, you’ve never heard of the Uralausu.” It wasn’t a question.
“Nope,” said Nerys, “not a word.”
“Well, that’s what you’re hearing.”
“Some kind of creature is making that sound?”
“Mmm, not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” said Jadzia, “that you’ll just have to keep trusting me.” She gave Nerys her most mysterious - Benjamin called it catlike - smile. “And you’ll see. Come on.”
As Chara dipped toward the horizon and the slope began to steepen, Jadzia had to pay more attention to where she placed her feet, and less to the eerie sounds rising around them. By the time her boot heels sank into soft sand, the last rays of sunlight were streaking low across the ocean. Jadzia felt their warmth on her cheek; she had to shield her eyes with her hand when she turned to look at the waves.
Behind her, Nerys said, “We’re going to need our flashlights soon. Good thing I charged them up on the runabout.”
“We’re almost there, anyway.” Jadzia pointed up the beach. “Follow my finger. Do you see them?”
“I see something. Are those the…?”
“Uralausu. Sort of.”
Nerys put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. In the ruddy light, her eyes were dark as polished onyx, her hair fiery red. “You know, any time you want to stop being enigmatic…”
“You’re not enjoying the suspense?”
“I don’t enjoy being strung along.”
“Nerys.” Jadzia reached out and grasped her shoulder. The muscles beneath her hand tensed. “Trust me. It’s just a little farther.”
“We couldn’t have landed the runabout a little closer?”
“Nope. Anyway, I thought you would’ve liked the chance to stretch your legs out in the open. No metal walls or ceiling. No controlled climate. No flashing lights informing you that climate control is malfunctioning again. No computers chirping at you while you’re in the bathroom. No Ferengi bartenders hitting on--”
“All right, all right.” For the first time since leaving Deep Space Nine, Nerys’s lips curved upward slightly. “It’s good to be off the station for a little while. Though, I have to say, it’s a little bit disconcerting being out in the open, even if we’re the only ones on this planet.”
“Well,” Jadzia, touched by the unexpected admission, assured her, “we won’t be out in the open for very much longer.”
They continued along the beach, and gradually the shapes Jadzia had pointed out loomed large in front of them. At first glance, they appeared to be manmade structures half-embedded in the cliff face; their surfaces were so smooth, so gracefully curved. They could have topped the spires of a Betazoid temple. Closer inspection revealed them to be giant shells, similar in shape to Earth’s nautilus. At midday, they would have been blindingly white, but in the afterglow of sunset they gleamed rose-gold. The breeze moving across their empty, open mouths produced the lonely wailing Jadzia and Nerys had heard earlier. Up close, it was more resonant; it thrummed in Jadzia’s blood and the marrow of her bones. She closed her eyes and rested her palms against the smooth shell, as Lela, Emony, Torias, and Curzon had done before her.
“The Uralausu?” Nerys said. Her voice was low, her tone respectful.
“Mmm, what they left behind, anyway. These shells have been abandoned for thousands of years. No one has ever found any trace of their former occupants. It’s one of the great mysteries of the galaxy. The Vulcans who first discovered this planet came up with the name Uralausu. It means singer. These are the Singers of Akaya.”
Nerys gathered her breath and Jadzia wondered if she was going to make a tart remark. Singers? That’s stretching it a little bit. Jadzia kept her eyes closed and told herself not to be disappointed, though she already felt a pang beneath her ribs. Nerys was so much younger in certain ways, and had already faced enough heartache for several lifetimes; if she was too jaded for a bunch of singing seashells, it was understandable.
But then she felt Nerys’s hand cover her own, and she opened her eyes to find Nerys smiling at her - a real smile this time, with genuine warmth. “They’re beautiful,” she said softly. “Thank you for bringing me here and showing them to me.”
“You’re welcome. I’ve known about them for as long as I’ve been joined. Lela Dax came here as a guest of the Vulcans over a century ago. It made a strong impression on her, and she passed those feelings down. Not every host of the Dax symbiont made it here, but I’ve wanted to for a long time.”
“Has much changed since she was here?” Nerys’s curiosity delighted Jadzia.
“No. Groups have occasionally petitioned the Federation to allow colonization, but no one’s been granted permission so far. I had to jump through a few hoops just to be allowed to visit here. That’s why I had to land the runabout so far back. Oh, I’m sure there’s been some erosion, but right now … I feel so close to the hosts who came before me. Almost as close as I did the day I was joined.” She inhaled deeply and leaned back, as if she were about to fall into a welcoming embrace.
“That’s nice,” Nerys said, letting her hand fall to her side. “I really mean that. I envy you sometimes. Not that I’m completely comfortable with the idea of some future Bajoran inheriting my memories. I wouldn’t inflict them on anyone.” Her laugh was brief and bitter. “But … you’re probably the least lonely person I’ve ever met in my life, and sometimes I envy you.”
Jadzia straightened and frowned at Nerys. “But you have the Prophets…”
“That’s not the same. I trust in them, but they can be pretty quiet. All too often, in fact. I know they exist. I even know where their temple is, but sometimes, when I could really use a little guidance, or even just an encouraging word … they’re pretty quiet.”
Jadzia grabbed Nerys’s hand and held it tightly. “Well, you’re here with me.”
_____
One of the Uralausu was large enough for Jadzia and Nerys to crawl inside and curl up together, which they did as the night deepened and the temperature dropped. Jadzia knew when the larger of Akaya’s two moons rose because the inside of the shell began to glow with a soft, pearly light. She stroked the smooth, hard surface with her fingertips and felt close to her ancestors - and to Nerys, whose warmth she could feel all along her back, and whose soft breath tickled her neck.
As the night wore on, the wind died down, and the strange, sad song of the Uralausu died with it. But Jadzia could still feel it inside her, and as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, she knew that she would dream about it.
1/2/2011
_____
Notes: The word uralausu comes from the Vulcan-English Dictionary. I did not make it up.
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Rating: all ages
Pairing(s): Kira/Dax (could also be read as gen)
Notes: Written for shopfront for the Where No Woman Near Year Exchange. Originally posted here. Many thanks to lauriegilbert for beta reading. 1,970 words.
Summary: Early in their friendship Jadzia shares something personal with Nerys.
Jadzia Dax brought the USS Rubicon down on the bluff overlooking the bay, deploying the landing struts and powering down the engines with efficient grace. Far below, the waves swept up the beach in great foam-flecked fans of blue and green. The runabout’s sensors informed Jadzia that the air temperature outside was a delicious 26.6 degrees, with a westerly breeze blowing across the headland. She couldn’t wait to get out and strip off her jacket, to feel the sun on her shoulders and the wind in her hair. She had a sudden desire to kick off her boots as well, to roll up her pants and jump right into the surf
Grinning, Jadzia turned to her passenger. “Ready?” she asked, unbuckling her safety harness.
Kira Nerys sighed. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“You’ll love it,” Jadzia assured her. “Trust me.”
“Oh, I trust you,” Nerys replied, unbuckling her own harness and stretching her arms and legs out in front of her. “I’m just not so sure I see the point of this excursion.”
“And yet, you came.” Still grinning, Jadzia rose and went to retrieve her backpack from the storage compartment at the back of the runabout’s main cabin. Hoisting it to her shoulder, she glanced back at Nerys. “Tell me you’re not just going to sit there.”
“I don’t know,” said Nerys. Her arms, Jadzia noted, were crossed over her chest. “The view is nice.”
“It’s nicer up close. And there’s something you can’t see from where you’re sitting. Something I’m dying to show you.”
The pleading note she’d worked into her tone seemed to catch Nerys’s attention. “All right,” she sighed, unfolding her arms and pushing herself up. “Since you’ve brought me this far. Let’s see this marvel of yours.”
Jadzia curled her hands into fists and waved them in giddy excitement.
Nerys touched her fingertips to her forehead. “Please don’t do that.”
“Come on,” Jadzia said, dropping her hands and turning toward the runabout exit.
_____
Jadzia was well aware of Nerys’s reluctance to accompany her to Akaya, the Class M planet orbiting the star Chara in the constellation Canes Venatici. Nonetheless, she felt no guilt whatsoever about twisting her arm, or about enlisting Benjamin’s aid in convincing the major to take her well-earned - and likely to go unused - shore leave. As she walked along the bluff’s edge, the warm breeze caressing her bare arms, Jadzia tipped her head back so the sun’s rays fell directly on her cheeks and lowered eyelids, inhaled deeply, and paid little attention to the grunts and heavy footsteps behind her. Nerys ordinarily had the lissome grace of a Kryonian tiger, but when she was annoyed and wanted you to know it … you knew it.
Jadzia simply hoisted her backpack higher and began to hum a jaunty tune from Aktuh and Maylota. After a minute, however, she stopped. It wasn’t out of courtesy to Nerys, whom she knew was not a fan of Klingon opera and who really didn’t deserve any more needling, but out of respect for Akaya itself. The waves had a tune of their own, a sort of chant, and it was worth listening to. It reminded Jadzia of the electronic vibrations the Voyager space probes had recorded back in Earth’s twentieth century. She’d spent hours listening to those recordings, curled up in one of the overstuffed chairs in Starfleet Academy’s music library; they’d been so soothing, especially during midterms and finals.
She wondered what, if anything, Lela Dax had compared the sound of the waves to, when she’d first set foot on Akaya so many years and lifetimes ago. She wondered about Emony. And Torias. And Curzon. All the Dax hosts who had preceded her, and who held onto the memory of this world.
Chara was about thirty degrees past its zenith, and the waves were flecked with burnished gold by the time the invisible path Jadzia and Nerys walked began to slope downward toward the beach. It was then as well that Jadzia heard, above the sound of the waves, the soft wail for which she’d been listening, almost since the Rubicon had touched down hours earlier.
It was as achingly lonely as her symbiont’s collective memory had told her it would be, and she felt the bitterness of tears in the back of her throat. At the same time, like a mischievous wind, the sound seemed to lift her spirit right out of her body and hold it aloft, making her feel light as the rainbow mist above the foam.
Nerys’s voice, close by her ear, brought her back to earth. “Okay, what is that?” She didn’t sound annoyed this time, only … uncertain, and a little awed.
“You didn’t do your research,” Jadzia chided gently.
“You only said we were going camping on a planet with a beautiful beach. So long as it wasn’t Risa, what was there to research? I said I trust you.”
“So, you’ve never heard of the Uralausu.” It wasn’t a question.
“Nope,” said Nerys, “not a word.”
“Well, that’s what you’re hearing.”
“Some kind of creature is making that sound?”
“Mmm, not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” said Jadzia, “that you’ll just have to keep trusting me.” She gave Nerys her most mysterious - Benjamin called it catlike - smile. “And you’ll see. Come on.”
As Chara dipped toward the horizon and the slope began to steepen, Jadzia had to pay more attention to where she placed her feet, and less to the eerie sounds rising around them. By the time her boot heels sank into soft sand, the last rays of sunlight were streaking low across the ocean. Jadzia felt their warmth on her cheek; she had to shield her eyes with her hand when she turned to look at the waves.
Behind her, Nerys said, “We’re going to need our flashlights soon. Good thing I charged them up on the runabout.”
“We’re almost there, anyway.” Jadzia pointed up the beach. “Follow my finger. Do you see them?”
“I see something. Are those the…?”
“Uralausu. Sort of.”
Nerys put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. In the ruddy light, her eyes were dark as polished onyx, her hair fiery red. “You know, any time you want to stop being enigmatic…”
“You’re not enjoying the suspense?”
“I don’t enjoy being strung along.”
“Nerys.” Jadzia reached out and grasped her shoulder. The muscles beneath her hand tensed. “Trust me. It’s just a little farther.”
“We couldn’t have landed the runabout a little closer?”
“Nope. Anyway, I thought you would’ve liked the chance to stretch your legs out in the open. No metal walls or ceiling. No controlled climate. No flashing lights informing you that climate control is malfunctioning again. No computers chirping at you while you’re in the bathroom. No Ferengi bartenders hitting on--”
“All right, all right.” For the first time since leaving Deep Space Nine, Nerys’s lips curved upward slightly. “It’s good to be off the station for a little while. Though, I have to say, it’s a little bit disconcerting being out in the open, even if we’re the only ones on this planet.”
“Well,” Jadzia, touched by the unexpected admission, assured her, “we won’t be out in the open for very much longer.”
They continued along the beach, and gradually the shapes Jadzia had pointed out loomed large in front of them. At first glance, they appeared to be manmade structures half-embedded in the cliff face; their surfaces were so smooth, so gracefully curved. They could have topped the spires of a Betazoid temple. Closer inspection revealed them to be giant shells, similar in shape to Earth’s nautilus. At midday, they would have been blindingly white, but in the afterglow of sunset they gleamed rose-gold. The breeze moving across their empty, open mouths produced the lonely wailing Jadzia and Nerys had heard earlier. Up close, it was more resonant; it thrummed in Jadzia’s blood and the marrow of her bones. She closed her eyes and rested her palms against the smooth shell, as Lela, Emony, Torias, and Curzon had done before her.
“The Uralausu?” Nerys said. Her voice was low, her tone respectful.
“Mmm, what they left behind, anyway. These shells have been abandoned for thousands of years. No one has ever found any trace of their former occupants. It’s one of the great mysteries of the galaxy. The Vulcans who first discovered this planet came up with the name Uralausu. It means singer. These are the Singers of Akaya.”
Nerys gathered her breath and Jadzia wondered if she was going to make a tart remark. Singers? That’s stretching it a little bit. Jadzia kept her eyes closed and told herself not to be disappointed, though she already felt a pang beneath her ribs. Nerys was so much younger in certain ways, and had already faced enough heartache for several lifetimes; if she was too jaded for a bunch of singing seashells, it was understandable.
But then she felt Nerys’s hand cover her own, and she opened her eyes to find Nerys smiling at her - a real smile this time, with genuine warmth. “They’re beautiful,” she said softly. “Thank you for bringing me here and showing them to me.”
“You’re welcome. I’ve known about them for as long as I’ve been joined. Lela Dax came here as a guest of the Vulcans over a century ago. It made a strong impression on her, and she passed those feelings down. Not every host of the Dax symbiont made it here, but I’ve wanted to for a long time.”
“Has much changed since she was here?” Nerys’s curiosity delighted Jadzia.
“No. Groups have occasionally petitioned the Federation to allow colonization, but no one’s been granted permission so far. I had to jump through a few hoops just to be allowed to visit here. That’s why I had to land the runabout so far back. Oh, I’m sure there’s been some erosion, but right now … I feel so close to the hosts who came before me. Almost as close as I did the day I was joined.” She inhaled deeply and leaned back, as if she were about to fall into a welcoming embrace.
“That’s nice,” Nerys said, letting her hand fall to her side. “I really mean that. I envy you sometimes. Not that I’m completely comfortable with the idea of some future Bajoran inheriting my memories. I wouldn’t inflict them on anyone.” Her laugh was brief and bitter. “But … you’re probably the least lonely person I’ve ever met in my life, and sometimes I envy you.”
Jadzia straightened and frowned at Nerys. “But you have the Prophets…”
“That’s not the same. I trust in them, but they can be pretty quiet. All too often, in fact. I know they exist. I even know where their temple is, but sometimes, when I could really use a little guidance, or even just an encouraging word … they’re pretty quiet.”
Jadzia grabbed Nerys’s hand and held it tightly. “Well, you’re here with me.”
_____
One of the Uralausu was large enough for Jadzia and Nerys to crawl inside and curl up together, which they did as the night deepened and the temperature dropped. Jadzia knew when the larger of Akaya’s two moons rose because the inside of the shell began to glow with a soft, pearly light. She stroked the smooth, hard surface with her fingertips and felt close to her ancestors - and to Nerys, whose warmth she could feel all along her back, and whose soft breath tickled her neck.
As the night wore on, the wind died down, and the strange, sad song of the Uralausu died with it. But Jadzia could still feel it inside her, and as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, she knew that she would dream about it.
1/2/2011
_____
Notes: The word uralausu comes from the Vulcan-English Dictionary. I did not make it up.