Archive of Our Own ^beta

    The crowd of Bajorans spilled out of the temple and onto the Promenade. Julian wandered nearby, not wanting to get far enough from the infirmary that he couldn’t see if someone arrived. He had assured his nurses that he would cover the infirmary so that they could all go to Kai Opaka’s funeral—though Julian himself had truly liked Opaka, she hadn’t been his religious leader. 

    There were prylars stationed periodically along the Promenade, standing on small raised platforms so they could be seen over the crowd. As more people gathered, there would be a swish of orange through the crowd, and then another prylar would set up at the back edge. Though Julian had met many people on the station, it was difficult to identify any of the Bajorans he knew. Major Kira, he expected, was inside the temple. 

    Looking up, Julian saw familiar faces lining the upper level. The commander, he knew, was also inside the temple, in his role as Emissary, but the rest of the senior staff had turned out for the funeral, dressed in their dress uniforms. Keiko and Molly O’Brien stood next to the Chief, dressed all in black. The Kai’s necklace, which she had pressed into the Chief’s hand, sparkled where it hung around Molly’s neck. If Julian had any Starfleet nurses he could leave in his stead, he would have been up there with them, making an appearance.

    If he was honest, though, and Julian preferred to be honest with himself, he would rather be down here, with the people. Starfleet’s official presence at a state funeral like this was a matter of appearances—the officers weren’t expected to mourn, they were just expected to be there. Julian hadn’t known Kai Opaka long, but she had been remarkable—brave, self-assured, kind. He wanted to mourn her.

    A horn sounded inside the temple, a deep, slow note. The murmuring crowd became silent—the service had started. Julian reached up to tap behind his ear, turning off his universal translator so that he could listen to the service properly.

    A swell of sound swept along the promenade, until the prylars nearest Julian picked up the chant, each section layering over and harmonizing with the one following it like a round song. The chant was a prayer and a story all at once, begging the Prophets to guide the Kai to the Celestial Temple and recounting her life story and her deeds of faith. Julian listened intently, trying to sort out the liturgical prayers from the personal narrative. The chant went on for over an hour, and by the end of it, Julian could see the children in the crowd swaying on their feet. The prylars moved on to a call and response, and then the horn rang out again. The promenade settled into a total silence.

    The senior staff had been warned about every element of the Kai’s state funeral, from the horn to the standing to the five minutes’ silence at the end. Julian breathed deep, waiting, and reflected on his brief acquaintance with Kai Opaka. Even with her own life so abruptly transformed, she had been gracious, calm, and kind. Was that what a life of faith offered Bajoran people? Peace with their own deaths—metaphorical or otherwise? He did not think he could ever be so at peace with losing everything in one fell swoop. He would always be scrambling to fix things.

    I am the master of my fate . The line came to mind abruptly, involuntarily, and tinged with grim irony. Jules had, perhaps, been at peace with his death, so to speak, but then he hadn’t known what was happening. Neither he nor Julian had ever been masters of their own fate. Coming out to Deep Space 9 was the first choice Julian felt like he ever made, and yet, even here, some choices were out of his hands. Despite the years, some days he seethed with it. Yet in the moment of her death, the loss of everything she had ever known and loved in exchange for imprisonment and eternal war, Opaka had been so entirely at peace. And they had left her there.

   Julian was startled from his thoughts by the third and final blast of the horn. Slowly, people began to disperse—Bajoran pilots heading back to their shuttles to receive the many passengers they had ferried to the station, workers returning to their shops and stations after the two-hour close for the funeral, Quark rushing to his bar to open in time to catch the crowd of mourners. Julian saw the rest of the senior staff making their way down to the temple to pay their respects more personally, Miles with his daughter drooping in his arms. He himself held back— he couldn’t actually leave the sightline of the infirmary until someone came to cover it, and he had told the nurses not to rush. He gave a last look toward the temple, thanking Opaka silently for the kindness she had shown him and apologizing for leaving her behind, and then ducked back into the infirmary. There was work to be done, and experiments to run in the event that there were no injuries or illnesses on the station today. He was working on developing a full medical file for common Bajoran illnesses, accumulating information lost due to the Occupation. It would keep him busy.

    Despite his intentions, he wasn’t alone very long. Three nurses trickled in over the next half hour, asserting a need to keep busy so they didn’t have to think about their grief. They were soon busy with the minor injuries of day-to-day life: scrapes on a child who had fallen down the stairs, burns on three engineers who had been caught in a small electrical fire. As they were finishing up with the last, Julian spotted Major Kira passing by outside. He left the final instructions up to Jabara and stepped out, calling to her.

    “Major!”

    She turned, and he could see the grief and exhaustion in her face. “Doctor Bashir. What can I do for you?”

    He stepped up to her, close enough to speak privately but not too close. Kira didn’t like people to tower over her. “I don’t need anything from you, Major. I just wanted to express my condolences and ask if there was anything I could do for you.”

    She stared at him a moment, then blurted “You weren’t with the senior staff.”

    He felt his eyebrows raise involuntarily. “No,” he responded, “I was minding the infirmary so that the nurses could take their time and attend the funeral properly. I am sorry I couldn’t come down and express my regrets in the temple.”

    Kira hesitated, seeming uncertain, her eyes flicking between the temple and Julian himself, then she said, “I was going to light a duranja in my quarters if you would like to join me. You can make your personal prayers there.”

    Hesitating, Julian looked back into the infirmary, but Jabara waved him off. “We’ll be fine here, Doctor. We’ll comm you if anything goes wrong.” She gave him a smile, a pale imitation of her usual cheery self but a smile nevertheless. Reassured, Julian nodded to the Major, and followed her to her quarters.

    Kira left the lights off in her rooms as they made their way over to her shrine. She knelt before a small table which held a four-sided oil lamp, and Julian followed her lead, watching as she struck a match from a small box and lit the lamp. She looked over at him. “If you want to pray, now is the time. If not, just... I don’t know. Do whatever you do when someone dies.”

    Julian was not a prayer sort of person, but he was not about to say so. Besides, unlike most of the prayers he had seen in his life, it was probable that these prayers were heard by their targets, an hour or so away in the wormhole. They might actually be watching.

    Instead, he bowed his head when Kira did, and listened to her prayers. She prayed aloud, asking the prophets to guide Opaka’s soul to the Celestial Temple when it was released from her body, begging them not to let her wander alone in darkness. Julian immediately recognized why she had wanted to pray alone—everyone else was praying as though the Kai was already dead, and Kira was praying that Opaka would be allowed to die. Her words skirted around it, alluding but never saying it outright. 

    “Forgive me.” The words were slipped in between Kira’s other prayers, nearly escaping his notice at first, but then she repeated them as she cycled through prayers, voice breaking over the plea. Julian felt his throat closing up at the desperate pain in her voice, and tears seeped from under his closed eyelids. He let them fall.

    Eventually, Kira’s prayers subsided, and Julian could hear the soft sounds of her trying to control her weeping. Keeping his eyes closed, he sniffled, and wiped tears from his cheeks conspicuously. Let her know that she was not alone in her grief, or let her believe that he was too caught up in his own mourning to notice her tears. He gave it a few more minutes, until all he could hear was slightly heavy breathing, then he sat back on his heels and opened his eyes. When he looked at her, Kira’s own eyes were red-rimmed, but she seemed otherwise composed. 

    “Thank you,” he said quietly, and she nodded in return. In that moment he wanted very much to hug her, but he knew it would not be welcomed. Instead, he just stood and brushed himself off, preparing to leave. Before he could even turn away, however, Kira reached out to him, not touching but seemingly asking him to stay. He waited.

    “Do you still think you could reprogram those nanites and stop the regeneration?” she asked abruptly. 

    “Almost certainly,” he answered, honestly. In truth he had already worked all the coding out in his head—it wouldn’t be difficult, but he couldn’t do it from off-planet.

    “Could you—do that? How close would you have to be?” 

    “I would need a blood sample—the one I had was lost—and then you would need to inject someone with the reprogrammed nanites, and then spread the changed nanites person to person by blood transfusion. It would be a rather involved process.”

    Kira’s shoulders slumped, and she nodded. “I understand. I just... we just left her there.”

    His heart ached, and before he could second-guess himself, he said “I have an idea.”

____________________________

    A week later, Julian sat at one of the consoles on the Rio Grande , Kira at the other, piloting, both of them looking down at the prison planet where the Ennis and the Nol-Ennis fought each other still. 

    “Are you sure?” he had to ask, looking over at the Major.

    She looked back at him, calm and confident. “They deserve a chance. Are you sure it will work?”

    “There’s no reason it shouldn’t. Each PADD is loaded with enough educational material to get someone to the point where they could reprogram the nanites themselves, and the instructions for the programming. Besides that, there’s other educational material and entertainment. And then of course there’s the rest of the relief kits—blankets, clothing, seeds bred for different soil types, soap, medical supplies, a basic tech kit. Everything you might want if you were trying to start living again, instead of just killing each other.”

    Kira took a deep breath. “Okay. So, fifteen kits. For each one we have to send out a little probe and distract a satellite, and then beam the kit to the surface.”

    “Yes. The probes are mostly scrap. Don’t worry about them.” Julian got up and moved to the transporter console, where the kits, each the size of a large hiking backpack, lay piled. “Are you ready?”

    “Ready.” Kira hit a button, and the first beeping decoy launched into space. Kira kept an eye on her screen, waiting for a satellite to move and leave a hole in the defensive net. Julian turned away, punching in a set of coordinates that he estimated would hit land, waiting for the signal. “Now!” Kira commanded, and he slung the first kit onto the transporter and sent it away. Moving quickly, he got a second kit off to a different location before the net closed. 

    “That’s two.”

    Kira turned to him and grinned, the first smile he’d seen her give since they crashed on this planet the first time, and he grinned back. 

    “Only thirteen more to go,” she declared, turning back to her console. “Ready... decoy launched... now!”

    And they were off.