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Founders' Day

By Cardie-ologist

A sudden gust of wind broke the twilight stillness of Gaia, sweeping aside the blossom-laden branches of the sidnera tree that brushed the monument on Kira Nerys' grave. Shifting, Odo put out a few more flowers to reposition his tree self in its loving embrace and returned to his reverie.

Tomorrow was The Day, the one to which he had been counting down for two hundred years, just like the human children every year counted down the hours until their birthdays. Tomorrow she would be there, before him, in the flesh. The tree's branches quivered again, although this time the wind was calm.

Unlike Dax, he had no memories of The Day. Unable to hold any shape, he had been dimly aware of the crash, of frantic confusion as his container was evacuated and put in a secure, but out-of-the-way, location on the planet. By the time he had made the adjustments necessary to reassume humanoid form, Kira was dead and three months buried. He had lost the chance to tell her of his feelings, the chance even to say good-bye. The loss, bitter as it was, became even more bitter with the passing years as hopes of escape failed and the stranded Deep Space Nine personnel paired off and began to produce children, the beginning of a long chain of generations they hoped would reach forward to the day that had flung them backward these two centuries. Once again, he was the odd man out, not likely to be chosen by a woman with breeding on her mind. Although a treasured Uncle Odo, especially to Jadzia's oldest daughter Nerys, he would always come second to the children's' true parents. As the generations passed, the name of Nerys, unnourished by child or grandchild's memory, died out. And "Uncle" Odo began to harbor dark thoughts that the children were just as fond of the holographic Quark who taught them mathematics as they were of him.

He had begun to spend more and more time alone and in non-humanoid shapes. His thoughts had begun to fixate on The Day. He wasn't alone in his obsession, however. Speculation about what would happen when time returned to its ground zero on Gaia was a source of endless debate generation after generation. At first the original Defiant crew argued the necessity of keeping memory alive, so that, 200 years hence the accident could be avoided and they, long dead, would yet have a chance to regain the adventurous lives lost and loved ones left behind. As they settled into an Edenic domesticity that those lives would never have provided, however, dissent began to surface. By the time they had passed on, the succeeding generations naturally turned their thoughts toward making sure that the accident did happen and so ensured Gaia's continued existence. They agonized mightily on the morality of it all, but any solution they arrived at seemed sure to cause irreparable harm to someone. Gradually self-interest prevailed.

It was a self-interest Odo did not share. He had tried over the years to make the various Daxes understand, but Jadzia had lost the least of any of the original crew; her lover was stranded with her, and all her children were Gaia-born. As she too died and was absorbed into the symbiont's collective selves, the succession of Gaia-born hosts became less and less sympathetic to Odo's arguments. Even the sacrifice of Kira, a major sticking point with Jadzia Dax, was cavalierly dismissed as a necessary evil by her successors.

So Odo began to plan for The Day on his own. At first he merely rehearsed how he would make use of the precious time that Nerys would be on the planet's surface, how he would at last confess his centuries-old love that had never dimmed. No matter what happens to the timeline after that, I'll be content, he thought, although the prospect of erasing the lonely years on Gaia certainly had its charms. Whatever fleeting joy Odo had experienced in his life had always been snatched away, replaced by devastating heartbreak. He had long ago abandoned hope. Yet as The Day approached, other thoughts arose. If she knew of his love, if she lived, and the two of them returned to life on the station, wasn't there still an opportunity for happiness? Against such a restored hope, the claims of the generations that had forgotten Nerys stood no chance. How could mere justice, mere morality, mere . . . others satisfy a yearning that had gone unfulfilled for so long?

Fifty years ago, when formal strategies for dealing with the inevitable visit of the Defiant began to be formulated, the planetary council had officially designated the event Founders' Day. Alexander Dax had flashed Odo a wicked grin, but neither of them had ever explained the irony of the choice to the uncomprehending population.

That fatuous Yedrin Dax was now as uncomprehending as the rest of them. Odo had considered all the ways his scheme to recreate the accident might succeed and had formulated strategies to block them. It would be hardest if Nerys herself desired to make some sort of noble sacrifice. She had always seemed an expert at self-preservation, but these humanoids, these solids, could always surprise you. It had taken Odo a long time to get over the tendency to protect others at his own expense that he had learned from them, and his first impulse was still to serve the public good on this idyllic planet that had never had need of a policeman. Nevertheless, he would not be swayed. He extended his branches to a pair of birds looking for a roost for the evening. This Founder's day was at hand. He would be ready.