“Aaah!” Molly screamed as the front wheel lurched to the left, then right; before she knew what had happened, she saw the wheels of the bicycle swoop over her head and could feel the back of her elbow scraping on the rough concrete.
“Molly!” Miles O’Brien and his wife Keiko shouted in unison as they ran to where their child had fallen. “Are you all right?” said Miles, bending down to lift her up.
“Wow!” laughed Molly with a broad smile. “That was great!”
“I’ll get a dermal regenerator,” said Keiko, brushing off the back of Molly’s pants as Molly stood her bicycle back up and started to climb onboard again. Before she could check Molly’s arm, the little girl was off running down the sidewalk.
“Scrape already forgotten,” said Miles, smiling as he watched his daughter wobble erratically off, fall, get up, laugh, and start over again. “She’s a natural.”
“She could never do this on DS9—or the Enterprise,for that matter,” said Keiko. “Can you imagine Captain Picard’s reaction to a child on a bicycle in the corridors?”
“Picard? What about Odo? I can hear him now: ‘No pedaling on—’”
“‘—my Promenade!’” thay finished in unison, Keiko dropping her voice down a couple of octaves. They laughed. “He always tried so hard to come across so stern, when you know deep down he probably wanted to turn into a bicycle just to find out what the fascination was.”
“How’s the bike working out?”
The O’Briens turned to see Joseph Sisko walking toward them.
“It’s been wonderful, sir,” Keiko said. “Molly’s having the time of her life. We want to thank you again for your generosity, and your hospitality.”
Joseph waved away Keiko’s gratitude. “You don’t have to thank me, Keiko. This visit has helped me to realize there’s a lot more I need to be thinking about right now than my own feelings. In fact, that was actually what I came out here to discuss with you. I have a request to make.”
Miles looked at Keiko, then back to Joseph, smiling. “Well, of course, sir. Anything.”
Joseph grinned wryly. “I think you may regret saying that when you hear me out,” he said. “I want you to take me to Bajor.”
21
Dax sat with Prynn in the ensign’s quarters, letting her vent the grief, the outrage, the anger, and the hatred she felt for Vaughn. He had tried to talk with her, Dax knew, but the shock of what happened was still too recent and too raw.
“He couldn’t have been sure,” Prynn was saying. “He says she was going to assimilate me, but how could he really know? Dr. Bashir said the autopsy was inconclusive.”
Dax nodded. “I know. But he insists on what he saw, Prynn. And this was right after the Borg corpse down the hall tried to assimilate the Founder. Do you really think he was imagining it?”
Prynn covered her eyes with one hand, trying to rein in her emotions. “I don’t know what to think. I just know we were so close…and he deliberately killed her. My father killed my mother. Again.”
“You’ll get no argument from him on that,” Dax said. “He really believes that’s true, that he’s killed Ruriko twice. He may be more devastated by this than you are. But there’s something you both need to understand and accept before this goes any farther: Ruriko Tenmei died a long time ago, as a hero, saving lives. The thing that was in sickbay wasn’t her.”
“What are you saying?”
“What I’m telling you is that Dr. Bashir’s latest tests have confirmed what he feared all along: the damage to your mother’s brain was too extensive. There was nothing left of her to bring back. She was all Borg.”
“That isn’t true. I saw her, I heard her. She responded to me. She said my name.”
“Did it?” Dax asked, deliberately dropping the female pronoun. “It’s hard to know exactly what it actually said, isn’t it? I mean reallyknow beyond any doubt. And the drone never said anything else, did it?”
“Why did she respond to me, then?”
“Julian believes it was a form of imprinting,” Dax explained. “You were the first life-form the drone encountered when it regained consciousness. It targeted you for assimilation. But as weak as it was, with so many of its implants removed or neutralized, it need time to re-create its assimilation system. Do you understand what I’m saying? You weren’t that thing’s daughter. You were its target.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Dr. Bashir will confirm it if you ask him. It’s up to you. But if you believe nothing else I tell you, Prynn, I hope you’ll believe this, as someone who once, in an earlier lifetime, allowed her spouse to die and remained estranged from her daughter for eight years because of it: neither you nor your father will recover from this unless you do it together. You need to decide if the grief and anger and hate you feel right now, and the self-loathing Vaughn feels, are stronger than the love I know you share.”
Prynn shook her head, “I don’t know if I can do this, Ezri.”
“Prynn,” Dax said softly. “It was the Borg that killed your mother. Don’t let them destroy what’s left of your family. Don’t let them win.”
Prynn said nothing, and after a moment Dax stood up and departed, promising to look in on her later.
As Dax expected, Vaughn was waiting for her in the corridor, a confused expression on his face.
Dax pressed an index finger to her lips and gestured for him to follow her. She led him up to deck one, and suggested they go to his quarters. Inside he asked the question that she knew he needed to ask.
“Why did you lie to her? There are no new test results. Ruriko wasalive in there, somewhere, despite what the Borg implants were making her do. That much Julian was certain of before the end. He told me himself. She really was regaining her humanity, even if it wasn’t strong enough yet to fight off the assimilation imperative.”
“That’s right, I lied,” Dax said. “Someday you can tell her the truth, Elias. Maybe when she’s found someone who means to her what Ruriko meant to you. But until then, she won’t understand that you didn’t really kill Ruriko to save Prynn, or even to save the Defiant.You did it for Ruriko. So that whatever wasleft of her wouldn’t have to live one instant with the horror of turning her own child into a monster.”
Vaughn closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Dax saw that they were rimmed red. “I think I finally understand what L.J. was trying to tell me before I left the station.”
“L.J.?” Dax asked. “You mean Admiral Akaar.”
Vaughn nodded. “He warned me not to take Prynn on this mission. He said he wasn’t worried about the crew; he was worried about the two of us.”
“There’s something to be said about taking the advice of your elders,” Ezri said lightly, knowing she didn’t need to remind him that Dax’s life spanned over three hundred years.
Vaughn laughed bitterly. “I might have guessed you’d still have some pearls of wisdom to dispense.”
Dax shook her head. “Not really. Just a little common sense. Give her time. Give yourself time. And try to forgive yourself.”
After Dax left, Vaughn sat on the edge of his bunk and stared at the deck for long minutes. His tears fell silently.