MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Content:
Het
Odo/Kira
Implied or Graphic Sexual Situations
No Violence

With thanks and apologies to Paramount, Jimmy Buffett and friends, and proceeding under the assumption that forgiveness is easier to ask than permission….

This is a sequel to my story "Looking For the Next Best Thing." It takes place following "The Sacrifice of Angels" and departs from canon with that episode.

Middle of the night, hold on 'til morning
We will see the light love is born in
Middle of the night, hold on forever
We'll know when it's right, all together

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT ~ Jimmy Buffett, Michael Utley, Art Neville, Will Jennings

~~~

When will we listen
When will we ever learn
Read all about it
This tide has got to turn

~~~

With one breath, Kira was ten years old again.

A chill, bitter wind whipped the red dirt of Parkalune into her hair and nostrils; she squinted and turned her back to it, trying to see Dax and Bashir through the swirling dust. The scent on the wind ... Kira had grown up in places like this. With every camp they had visited on this mission to find and return the displaced of the Dominion war to their homes, the memories of her childhood had risen to torment her. Now the scent on the wind wrenched her again from the present into her past, and it was all she could do to shake off the touch of the ghosts in the gooseflesh edging her hairline. The ghosts of Gallitep, and of Terok Nor....

An hour later, the three officers had explained their mission to Administrator Lopez of the Daigoro Refugee Camp. Relief was visible through the exhaustion in the administrator's gray eyes. "I can't tell you how grateful I am for this news," she said quietly.

"I think we can guess," smiled Dax. "You're not the only refugee camp that we've found; the others all felt the same way."

The administrator smiled, but her face remained serious. "We have over two thousand people here, Commander Dax, forced out of homes in more than twenty systems. Relocating them all is going to be a big job, even for Star Fleet."

Dax nodded. "It's going to take time to get the transports here and coordinate the evacuation. With your permission, I want Dr. Bashir to work with your medical staff in preparing the sick and injured for travel. And I'd like to ask you to assign one of your aides to work with Major Kira in assembling a census of the camp residents. We'll need to know who these people are and what systems and planets they hope to return to. I'll work with you and Star Fleet to contact those Star Bases close enough and with the facilities to receive them, and secure the ships to get them there."

The administrator nodded and reached for a battered portable computer console; it spat ear-piercing feedback for a moment before her adept fingers coaxed the channel to clear. "Lopez here. Odo?"

Kira froze. Dax shot her a quick glance, and then another at Bashir.

"Mr. Odo?" Lopez repeated.

The harshness of his voice seemed even grittier over the static-ridden link. "Odo here." The connection popped. "--do for you, Administrator?"

"We have visitors, Odo," she replied. "Where are you?"

"--hospital." His voice faded out and then returned. "--to move the residents back in. Any chance one of our 'visitors' is a carpenter?" The sardonic tone disappeared in a spiral of static and the connection terminated.

Bashir was grinning, in spite of himself. "Odo?"

"One of our volunteers," replied Lopez, not comprehending the recognition in the doctor's voice. "He may seem gruff, but he's a good man; he's been invaluable to me. There's a story there ... not that anyone knows it. Anyway, you'll like him. Everyone likes Odo."

Kira felt Dax tugging on her arm, and realized that she was expected to stand up and follow the others. She did so automatically, oblivious to a piercing look from Jadzia. She had been flung back in time again … this time to the spaceport on Bajor where Odo had walked away from her over a year ago.

~~~

Old folks and babies
They're crying in the storm
I try to tell them
Soon they'll be safe and warm

~~~

The huge sheet of fiberboard was lightweight and the wind made it willful. The shapeshifter had to struggle to hold it; several arms had finally been required, along with an increased density leant in full against the wall section while it was secured in place by others. Shifting his weight slightly so that the four-year-old hanging onto his legs did not pull him down into the frozen mud, Odo studied the gaps between the new boarding and the old wall, considered his resources, and reviewed the volunteers standing expectantly before him.

"Natroy," he addressed one of them, "take some of these men." The boys at Odo's knee beamed at their sudden promotion to the rank of adult; the changeling noticed, and smiled minutely before continuing. "Go salvage as many of the shingles from the old dining hall as you can. We'll patch the remaining holes and the roof with them."

"Yes sir!"

"Don't call me sir," Odo growled absently. His hand caressed the head of the smallest "man" in the work crew before the boy charged off to join the others on their mission.

Odo glanced down at the datapadd which held a tally of displaced patients to be moved. Too late to transfer them all back into the hospital before dark, when the winds would become brutal; most would have to stay another night in the overcrowded ward he'd fashioned in one of the storage buildings. We'll need fuel to keep those heaters going.... A gust of wind flung red dust into his face. He blinked, knuckled his eyes and squinted ... walking toward him out of a cloud as red as her uniform, as red as her hair, was Kira Nerys.

~~~

Lord, lead us out of this hall full of mirrors
Make it all clearer
Don't let us fall
In the middle of the night

~~~

"Those two low buildings on the north side of camp are the storage sheds, and the one to the east houses the generator." The two stood together on a small hill, braced against the unrelenting wind, Odo's hand drawing Kira's attention from structure to structure as he recited the information.

He's treating me like a stranger....

"The hospital is where we ... met earlier. Behind it is a smaller shed where we keep the medical supplies. When we have any." He snorted; the familiar sound touched Kira's memory. "Over there are the dormitories; couples, single men and women, two for the children, and that other one for those we don't have room for in the hospital but who still need some special care. The kitchen is next to that; the pile of lumber there was the dining hall, but it blew down in the last big storm. We can't rebuild it, so I've been scavenging from it to patch other buildings."

"What is that fenced area behind the bigger storage shed?" Kira asked.

Odo's face remained impassive, and when he spoke, his voice was flat. "A lot of people died last winter. The ground was too frozen to dig graves, and we didn't have enough fuel to spare for cremations, so we stacked the bodies there until spring. I built the fence to keep them from blowing away in the wind." He looked at Kira with eyes that betrayed his blank expression. "There will be bodies there again soon, if Star Fleet can't evacuate this camp before winter rolls in." He looked away, up the valley; she followed his eyes and saw the ominous wall of black clouds building there.

"Well, then," she said simply, "we'd better get started."

~~~

It was difficult to remain distant from each other, but they managed. The work, tedious and heartbreaking, helped. Unacknowledged between them as they moved from dormitory to dormitory, from family to family, and finally to the ones who were alone, was a brutal fact; with the temperature dropping every day and too few transports available, many of these people would never leave Parkalune. Without discussion they agreed upon a lie; no emotion was invested in each other or the task.

It proved easier, though, for Odo to reassume an old familiar burden than it did for Kira to face painful feelings stirring once again in her heart. Every day she saw that Lopez had been right about Odo; everyone did like him. The changeling's voice was as harsh as she remembered it, his manner as brusque, his face as impassive. He listened quietly and said little. Yet people confided freely in him, not only about where they wished to go but about what had happened to them, how they had come to this terrible place, and who they had been forced to leave behind. He seemed even more gruff with the children than with the adults, but they loved him most of all. Especially the silent ones; those lone and quiet bodies that had survived only with paghs withdrawn somewhere deep inside them. They trailed Odo around the camp, solemn small people that he professed to ignore. But his irascibility failed to hide his gentleness; Kira often saw his hand fall carelessly to their shoulders, or absently smooth tangled hair from their foreheads.

She watched him every day as they worked together and it seemed too long ago that Odo had listened to her as he did to these people, offering brutal words and gentle eyes when she had needed both. She had loved him for it, and she wondered how she could not have known. Still, the distance remained between them. And although Kira was careful of its borders, Odo observed them with even greater severity.

He was repairing the fence that would hold the winter's dead in place until the next spring when the thought came to him that somehow the winter of last year had been easier to bear. Without hope, the dead were easier to let go. Now that rescue was so close, Odo felt every death more keenly. Welcomed just as bitterly were his feelings for Kira, long hidden in his deadened heart but returned with her presence to torment him. Overnight it had become again as it had always been ... her commitment, her compassion, and her refusal to accept defeat still shaped her beauty in his eyes. Not loving her was as impossible as refusing the Link had been. Every day Odo felt the old emotion rising within him and fought it down again.

And as he had always done before, he buried himself in his work.

~~~

Hunched over the datapadd, shivering in the cold of his small room as the frigid wind shook the walls around him, Odo tried to resolve the impossible numbers. Too many people, too few transports. Many would be left behind, possibly for weeks, and winter was upon them. The Link is responsible for this ... and I didn't even try to stop them....

He could not change the cold equations. Odo bowed his head wearily. Only gradually did he became aware, over the harsh howling of sand mixed with sleet pelting the roof, of a more insistent pounding. Hurrying to the door, he put his shoulder to it and cautiously released the latch. The gale made the thin piece of plastiboard buck in his hands, and the changeling wrestled to hold it as Kira Nerys blew in out of the chaotic night.

He slammed the door shut behind her, bolting it against the wind. "What do you think you're doing, Major?" he growled. "People get lost five feet from their doorways in storms like this."

Kira spoke the news immediately, with a triumphant tone in her voice.

"The Klingons are sending two more transports," she panted, her breath clouding the chill air of the small room. "In eight days, this camp will be empty. All these people will finally go home."

Odo turned away from her and walked the few steps to his desk, sitting heavily on its edge. "Thank you for that news."

"Sometimes it helps to have a friend with powerful Klingon in-laws." Kira pushed the hood of her heavy cloak from her hair, looked at Odo's back and felt her throat grow tight at the relief evident in his slumped shoulders. She felt suddenly awkward, as if she were intruding on his emotion. Too close to breaking their unspoken agreement....

"Well, I'd better go," she said, tugging her gloves more snugly over numb fingers.

He looked up, seeing for the first time that her brows and lashes were crusted in ice, her cheeks stained with pink where the sleet had slashed at her skin. "Sit down," he commanded, taking the robe from her shoulders and draping it on the only chair.

He moved quickly around the small room. A kettle was lifted from the top of the iron heater, a bowl pulled from a shelf, a scrap of soft cloth immersed in the warm water. He sat on the edge of the desk, bathing the ice and blood from Kira's face; she closed her eyes and allowed it, shivering against the inside of his leg and resting her head on his chest. Odo stilled for a moment, then rose and left her. Kira watched as a pallet was tugged from a storage space and unrolled on the floor in front of the tiny heater. Blankets folded inside it were shaken and neatly spread out. She looked at him curiously.

"Sometimes children come here to talk," he said gruffly. "I needed a place for them to sleep."

They looked at each other as the howling wind flung ice against the thin walls of the shack. Kira kicked off her boots and knelt on the pallet, and Odo drew the blankets up and around her shoulders. Returning to the storage cabinet and reaching inside, he withdrew a bottle and a mug.

"Sometimes, Lopez comes here to talk, too. I keep this for her." His expression might have been a smile. He poured from the dusty bottle, added hot water from the kettle, and folded Kira's icy fingers around the warm ceramic. "Drink," he commanded gently.

Kira sipped; it tasted harsh and alien but seemed to burn away the chill in her bones. Slowly she worked her way to the bottom of the mug while Odo carefully tucked a roll of rags against the crack beneath the door and dropped a new fuel slug into the heater. "Warm enough?" he asked with concern.

The glow of the flames from the small iron box lit Kira's face with a reddish tinge. "Yes," she murmured. It was almost the truth.

"Good. Sleep well." He turned back to his desk.

"Odo?" she asked quietly. "What will you do? When this place is gone?"

The changeling stood still. "I don't know," he murmured, after a moment. "Find some other camp. The Dominion ... my people ... created a lot of places like this."

"Odo," Kira said quietly, "you're not responsible for what your people did to the Alpha Quadrant."

"You're right," Odo replied. He lifted her cloak off the chair and lay it over the blankets that covered her. "I have my own unforgivable sins. Now go to sleep."

"They're not unforgivable, and they're not just your sins, Odo," Kira said fiercely. "I couldn't understand why you would link with Her even when I asked you not to, even when it placed us all in danger." She saw his silhouette stiffen. "But it was my fault, Odo. You sat on that Council because I asked you to. I promised to support you, and I didn't. But She was there, offering you everything you've ever wanted ... everything you deserve, dammit! I'm so sorry...."

He was silent in the dark.

"You told the Founder once that you had a link to us, too, Odo. I took that link for granted, and I shouldn't have. I love you. Please come home."

Haunted eyes met pleading ones; never expecting absolution, Odo did not know what to do when confronted also with love. Kira took his hands and gently pulled him down into the warmth of her arms and the blankets that she wrapped around them both. They huddled together in the cold, on a desolate planet far from any place either one of them might have called home, and whispered softly late into the night as the ice storm raged outside.

Flames danced in the heater grate as they talked of many things ... of Gaia and Terok Nor, of Furial and Lupaza and Quark, of Ziyal and the baby changeling, of Bariel and Arissa, of the Link and of loneliness and, finally, of love. The middle of the night was well behind them before Odo relaxed his shape into the warm curves of Kira's body and, nestled together beneath the blankets, they slept.

In the morning, she woke him with a kiss. The love between them had already been made.

~~~

Middle of the night, new voice is calling
Saying it's all right, I'm not falling
Middle of the night, halfway til morning
Middle of my life, new day dawning

~ 30 ~

~ Return to "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" ~

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