Julian seemed to be nettled as well, though his words remained persistently sympathetic, perhaps out of habits stemming from his medical training. “You have perhaps another century of life ahead of you, Ezri. Surely the current symbiosis crunch ought to be resolved long before then.”
“How can you be so sure of that?”
“Because I intend to help any way I can,” he said in a matter-of-fact manner.
Though Julian’s words reassured her, at least somewhat, that Trill’s symbiosis problems might be resolved sooner rather than later, they did little to assuage her “survivor’s guilt,” if that was indeed what she was experiencing.
Unbidden, her thoughts drifted again to one of her previous hosts. She recalled an occasion when Julian had all but summoned Jadzia’s departed spirit during the throes of lovemaking with Ezri. Though the incident had occurred months ago—and only once—it tended to haunt Dax whenever her relationship with Julian seemed unusually strained.
When he looks at me, who does he really see? Ezri? Or Jadzia?
She tried to brush the thought aside, at least for the moment. It was time to focus on the future—and on the reports that would have to be written during the days-long voyage home that lay ahead. As she resumed moving purposefully toward one of the exits, Julian walked at a brisk pace alongside her.
Neither of them said another word until long after they had reached the runabout.
Stardate 53785.4
The runabout Rio Grande,now on course for Deep Space 9, had left Trill more than fifty hours ago.
Fifty extremelyquiet hours ago,Bashir thought, seated in one of the cockpit chairs—though not in the one closest to Ezri.
He wasn’t sure how to go about breaking the seemingly interminable silences that stretched between their shared meals, their uncomfortable, largely separate sleeping intervals, and their brief flurries of report writing, duty-related conversation, and innocuous, superficial personal chitchat. Busy now at the pilot’s console, Ezri no longer seemed to want or need to discuss her homeworld’s symbiosis moratorium or its aftermath. In fact, she seemed utterly disinterested in talking about anything.
He, on the other hand, could scarcely contain himself. There were still aspects of this messy business he had questions about. For instance, were the parasites really gone for good? Or were there more out there, somehwere beyond Federation space, waiting for the right opportunity to try again?
But now didn’t seem an appropriate time to discuss such things. Bashir remained silent, though he thought the quiet tension that had built up in the cabin over the past hour could have repelled a quantum torpedo attack.
Idled by the uncomfortable stillness in the runabout’s cockpit, his mind again wandered back to the heavy-handed manner in which Ezri had conducted the mission on Trill. Though subsequent circumstances had largely vindicated her actions, he still felt a lingering resentment about it, as livid and painful as a bone bruise.
Since she seemed unlikely to bring up this subject—or anysubject—he decided it was up to him to do it.
“Ezri, we have to talk.”
She continued staring straight ahead at the ever-shifting star field for several seconds before noticing that he’d spoken. “Hmmm?”
“Ezri, I want to talk to you about the mission.”
She turned her pilot’s chair so that she faced him. “You’re right. I suppose we could append a few more details to the initial reports we sent to Kira.” She started to rise from her chair.
He laid a hand on her arm, gently preventing her from getting to her feet. “DS9 is less than half a day away. I wanted to talk to you before we get back and end up getting swept into yet another crisis.”
She nodded. “You want to talk about the mission?” As reticent as she still obviously was about rehashing her world’s history with him, Bashir thought she was hoping she wouldn’t have to discuss anything else.
“Only peripherally. It’s really about, ah, the way you handled certain aspects of the mission.”
She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms in front of her in a classic display of defensiveness. Her dazzling blue eyes narrowed. “Trill was attacked by a clandestine global terror network, Julian. Under the circumstances, it seems to me that the mission was as successful as anybody could have hoped.”
“I can’t argue with that, at least in retrospect.” Feeling she was beginning to tie him in knots, he decided he’d better simply come out with his point. “But I think you may have been a bit…high-handed when you went off to Mak’ala.”
Judging from the puzzled look on her face, he might have just sprouted a second head. “ ‘High-handed,’ ” she repeated.
“When I tried to point out that it was a risky thing to do, you simply brushed me off.”
“Going diving at Mak’ala wasrisky, Julian. You didn’t have to tell me that. But it turned out to be the right thing to do.”
He nodded. “Yes, but only in retrospect. At the time, it was as though you had no regard whatsoever for my input.”
It was her turn to nod. “Ah. So this isn’t really about the mission. It’s about your evaluation of my command style.”
His frustration finally boiling over, he rose from his chair and stepped to the rear of the cockpit before turning once again to face her. “Dammit, Ezri! Don’t trivialize this! I’m not trying to defend my delicate ego. Each of us took wholly opposite approaches to the crisis. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Not especially, Julian. It was my call, and I made it.” She paused thoughtfully for a moment before continuing. “And maybe that’swhat’s really bothering you—that I’ve stepped into a role you’re not comfortable with.”
“That’s not true,” he said, waving his hands dismissively. “I’ve always supported your decision to switch over to a command-track career.”
“Even though it came as a bit of a shock, at least at first.”
He felt a small smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “I prefer to think of it as a surprise, and Daxes are nothing if not surprising. But again, this isn’t about your becoming a command officer.”
Ezri, however, wasn’t smiling. “Then is it about me being yourcommanding officer on this particular mission?”
“Ezri, you were above me in the Defiant’s chain of command all those weeks we spent exploring the Gamma Quadrant. That wasn’t a problem for me then, and it isn’t now.”
She sighed wearily. “Then what exactly isthis about, Julian?”
As he paused for a moment to compose his thoughts, he began to realize how difficult a question she had posed. “It’s about whether or not my expertise is important to you. My judgment. My advice. My experience, even though I admit I don’t have a backlog of eight other lifetimes of memories to tap into.” He hesitated a beat before plunging on to the real crux of his complaint. “It’s about whether or not I’mimportant to you.”
All of the exasperation abruptly drained from her face, and she looked stricken. “And you think you’ve become less important to me since I started wearing this red collar.”
His response was nearly a whisper. “It seems that way, yes. At least sometimes.”
She rose from her chair, put her arms around him, and buried her face in his shoulder. He returned the embrace, which seemed fueled more by regret than by passion.
They stood that way for a long time, in silence, while the runabout’s autopilot carried them inexorably homeward.
“Jadzia,” Ezri said finally, her head lying against his chest.
He partially disengaged himself from the embrace so that he could see her face. Unshed tears stood in her wide, cerulean eyes.
“Sorry?” he said.
She finished dismantling their embrace, then resumed her place in the pilot’s seat. She stared straight ahead at the shifting star field as she spoke. “You were in love with Jadzia.”