Placing his hand on the duffel, Sisko said, “This isn’t an overnight bag; I just brought a couple of things for Rebecca.” To her credit, Kasidy did not ask what he intended to give to their daughter.
“Can I take your coat?” she said.
“Yes, of course.” Sisko walked back across the room. He shrugged out of his long, black coat, revealing the black-and-gold dashiki he wore over brown pants. Kasidy took his coat and hung it on the rack beside the front door.
“Rebecca will be home from school in a few minutes,” she said when she turned back to face him. Her manner appeared stilted, as though, under the circumstances, she too struggled with what to say and how to act. She motioned to the sitting area before the windows, and Sisko took a seat on the sofa. Kasidy followed and moved to one of the chairs, but she did not immediately sit down.
“How does she like first grade?” Sisko asked.
“She just started, so it’s hard to know,” Kasidy said. “But she loved kindergarten, and even though it’s only been a couple of days, I think she’s taken a shine to her new teacher.”
“Nerys tells me that Rebecca’s doing very well learning to read.”
“Well, you remember how much she loved us reading to her.” Kasidy’s voice trailed off toward the end of her statement, as though she wished she hadn’t alluded to happier family times. She paced over to one of the windows and gazed out, as though looking for Rebecca.
“Is Ms. Tey bringing her home?” Sisko asked.
“After what happened,” Kasidy said, turning to glare down at him, “Rebecca doesn’t go anywhere without me, Jasmine, Jake, or Rena.”
Sisko understood at once that Kasidy referred to the terrible ordeal they had lived through nearly two and a half years earlier, when a delusional, mentally ill fanatic had abducted Rebecca. “Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Kasidy snapped at him. “For questioning my abilities as a good parent? You better not look in the mirror then.” She closed her eyes, clearly attempting to bring her emotions under control. She stalked back across the room, away from him, but then spun around once more to face him. “Or maybe you’re sorry for choosing to raise your daughter in a place where she’s revered as a religious icon by one subset of the planet’s population, and considered suspect by another group? Or maybe you’re just sorry for abandoning your family.”
“I’m sorry for everything,” Sisko told her.
Kasidy regarded him, and as she did so, she seemed to deflate. After a moment, she moved to the nearest chair and sank into it. “Ben, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to ambush you. I honestly didn’t plan to get angry or argue with you.”
“You’ve got every right to be angry,” Sisko said.
“And I am, though maybe not as much as I was when you first left,” she said. “Mostly, I’m hurt.”
Again, as Sisko peered at her from across the room, he wanted to go to her, wanted to enfold her in his arms. He also knew that he couldn’t … that he mustn’t. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he said. “In fact, I left specifically to prevent that from happening.”
“But why didn’t you tell me that?” Kasidy asked, almost pleading for an answer to a question that obviously continued to vex her. “Why didn’t you at least discuss it with me?”
“And say what, Kasidy?” Sisko said. “That I was going to follow the will of the Prophets, that I was going to heed their warning? That wouldn’t have convinced you to agree with what I had to do. You’re still not convinced.”
“But it would have given me the chance to convince you that you didn’t have to leave,” Kasidy said. “Maybe I could have shown you how the right thing would have been for you to stay.”
Sisko leaned forward on the sofa, resting his forearms atop his thighs. “Don’t you see?” he said. “That’s what I feared most: that you would convince me to stay. I was worried that I wouldn’t be strong enough to leave, and that you and Rebecca would ultimately pay the price for my weakness … for my spending my life with you.”
Kasidy threw her hands in the air. “But you can’t know with certainty that would have happened.” She stood up and turned to the window, hands on hips, her back to Sisko.
“I know you don’t understand,” he said, moving back on the sofa. “I’m not sure I really do either. But everything else I learned from the Prophets turned out to be true. I defied their warning by marrying you, and we started to suffer for it.”
Kasidy turned toward him. “But not right away. And not in any way I can see that’s connected to our being together.”
“The Prophets didn’t tell me that if I spent my life with you, sorrow would manifest the next day, or the next month, or the next year,” Sisko said. “They simply said that it would happen. And just because we can’t see the connections doesn’t mean they’re not there. I’m not even sure that it’s about connections in the way you mean. I only know that the Prophets saw my future with and without you, and they warned me about the dangerous consequences—or the dangerous concurrences—of us being together.”
“Ben, bad things happen in life,” Kasidy said. “Do you think that your father wouldn’t have died if we hadn’t been together? Or that Elias wouldn’t have gotten injured in the Borg invasion? Or that Audj and Calan wouldn’t have died in the fire? Our marriage didn’t have anything to do with any of those things.”
“I know that’s how it seems,” Sisko said. “But I also know what the Prophets told me. And I know what I feel. I cannot risk your safety.”
Kasidy’s features softened. She walked over and sat on the sofa beside him. “Isn’t every day a risk?” she asked. “Ben, you’re the man who stood up to the Cardassians for the sake of the Bajoran people. You led an overmatched, outgunned squadron into battle against the Borg in order to save the Alonis. You fought the Dominion and the Founders in an attempt to preserve the Federation itself.” She reached forward and placed her hands on his. “Why can’t you fight for Rebecca and me? For our family?”
Sisko stared down at their hands, at her light, caramel-colored skin against his darker complexion. Kasidy’s simple touch had sent a shockwave through him. He felt a yearning that went far beyond the physical. His heart, his mind, his … pagh … ached for Kasidy, craved a return to the shared life they’d created together, and that had brought them the marvel of Rebecca, a blend of the two of them with her own unique life force.
Under the guise of responding to her question, Sisko stood up, breaking their physical contact. As he padded across the room, a sensation of loss overwhelmed him. He felt as though he had been emptied somehow, that his flesh and bones had become tattered rags and hollow supports, devoid of spirit. This is why I couldn’t talk to Kasidy about the situation, he thought. He wanted so badly to stay with her.
“Why can’t you fight for us, Ben?” she asked behind him again.
He turned. “Fight who? Fight what? How can I combat existence, how can I battle the natural forces of the universe?”
“I’m talking about the Prophets.”
“The Prophets?” Sisko said. “They’re not doing this to me, to us. They only warned me about it.”
“I’m not as convinced as you are of their part in this, or of their motives,” Kasidy said. “But even if you can’t fight them, why can’t you seek clarification? Why can’t you find out what will happen, and when and how. Maybe if we knew the dangers, we could prevent them, or at least avoid them.”
“You know it doesn’t work like that.”
“No, I don’t know that,” Kasidy said, her voice rising in evident frustration. “And I don’t know why, if Rebecca and I are so important to you, why you can’t just try to talk with the Prophets about this.”
“What makes you think I haven’t?” Sisko asked. He sat down in one of the chairs, keeping some distance between him and Kasidy. He felt defeated. “I did try,” he said. “Literally for years, I tried. I’m still trying, but … they won’t respond. I think … the
y’re done with me.”
“Oh, Ben,” Kasidy said. “I won’t pretend I know how difficult that obviously must be for you, but …” She paused, seemingly giving consideration to what she would next say. “I can’t pretend I’m disappointed if the Prophets are no longer a part of your life.”
Emotion welled up within Sisko. Some days, the loss of the Prophets from his life struck him as a liberation, as freedom from a long period of forced servitude. At other times, he mourned the loss of an ongoing experience that for so long had shaped the course of his days. After the death of his first wife, the Prophets had in some regard brought purpose back into his existence, allowing him a hand in a great endeavor well beyond the compass of most people’s lives: the caretaking of an entire race.
“It is difficult,” he said. “It marks a significant change to my life, and a loss about which I have no say.” Sisko knew well that his own actions had affected Kasidy in the same ways. “But mostly it troubles me because it leaves me—because it leaves us—with no possibility of recourse.”
Kasidy gazed across the room at him with a longing he easily recognized, because he also felt it. Before he could stop himself, before he even knew the words would come out of his mouth, he said, “I still love you, Kasidy.”
Tears immediately welled in her eyes. As they spilled down her cheeks in glistening trails, Sisko again wanted to go to Kasidy and embrace her. He feared that if he did, he would never be able to leave again.
“Ben … don’t,” she said, almost as though she could read his thoughts.
“No,” he said, “you’re right.” He knew that she dreaded not that he would stay, but that after staying, he would go again.
Sisko looked at Kasidy, at the mother of his daughter, at the woman who had returned to him an important aspect of his life he thought had forever perished with his first wife. When Jennifer died at the hands of the Borg during the Battle of Wolf 359, so much changed for Sisko. He never knew that his heart could ache so much and continue to beat. If not for the love he felt for his son, and his responsibilities as a parent, he didn’t know what he would have done.
He had remained in Starfleet because of its familiarity, and because he had needed to do something. But his ambitions to one day command a ship of his own—born several years earlier when Captain Leyton had plucked him from Okinawa’s engineering section and deposited him on the bridge—washed away like rain down a windowpane. Nor did his technical background provide him with any desire to return to the roots of his training as an engineer. He took a posting at Utopia Planitia only because it opened up and Starfleet wanted him there.
During those years, the idea of romance had never even occurred to Sisko. After Jennifer, how could it? He had loved her so thoroughly that her death had broken something inside of him. He took care of his son, he did his job, and he accepted that life had little more to offer than that. For a long while, that sufficed, until Sisko’s assignment to Deep Space 9 thrust him into the role of the Bajoran emissary. Even then, though his life grew fuller, it took meeting Kasidy Yates to open him up to the possibility of loving again.
And he had loved her … and loved her still. But if her safety depended on Sisko’s not spending his life with her, then how could he possibly stay? He understood Kasidy’s antipathy to the Prophets; he felt it himself.
They sat together in silence. Sisko wanted to say more, but what more could he say? What more could either of them say?
On the far side of the room, the fire danced and popped as it consumed the wood that fueled it. Outside, in counterpoint, a wind picked up and whistled intermittently through the eaves. The moment swelled, as though growing in import, and Sisko feared that it would crush his fragile concord with Kasidy, or worse, that it would weigh him down so greatly that he would not be able to leave, which would eventually crush them both.
“Ben …”
The single word, though spoken softly, shattered the equilibrium in the room. Sisko dreaded what would follow. But instead of Kasidy’s voice, he heard footfalls. Sisko looked over at his wife, who rubbed her eyes and quickly wiped away the tracks of her tears. They both rose as the front door swung open.
Jasmine Tey stepped inside with Rebecca, the little girl’s arm raised so that she could hold the hand of her protector. Both wore coats buttoned up to their necks. Each of them looked to Kasidy first, and then over at Sisko.
Coming out from the sitting area and squatting down, Sisko peered across the width of the room at his daughter. She couldn’t have been much more than a hundred centimeters tall. She looked delicate and beautiful. And so much more like Kasidy now, he thought. “Hello, Rebecca,” he said in a light singsong.
Rebecca pulled her hand from Tey’s and raced around the other end of the sofa into the sitting area. Kasidy crouched just quickly enough to allow Rebecca to throw herself into her mother’s arms. “Hi, sweetie,” Kasidy said. Rebecca responded by trying to burrow deeper into Kasidy’s embrace. Kasidy asked Tey, “Did something happen, or is Miss Rebecca just being shy?”
“I think she’s just being shy,” Tey said.
Rising from his haunches, Sisko said, “Hello, Ms. Tey. It’s good to see you again.”
“And you as well, Mister Sisko,” Tey said. “You’re looking well.” Sisko replied with a nod, and Tey looked back over at Kasidy. “You won’t be needing me for the rest of the day, then, Ms. Yates?”
Over Rebecca’s shoulder, Kasidy said, “No, thank you, Jasmine. We’ll see you in the morning for school.”
“Very good. Have a lovely rest of the day.” To Sisko, she said, “Enjoy your stay.” Then she opened the door and headed back out into the chilly afternoon.
Once Tey had gone, Kasidy peeled Rebecca’s arms from around her neck and stood up. “What’s going on with you today?” she asked. “You knew that your father would be here when you got home from school.”
“I forgot,” Rebecca whispered. She kept her back to Sisko and did not look around at him.
“Well, now you remember,” Kasidy told her, “so why don’t you go give him a hug and say hello.”
In reply, Rebecca wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist. “Come on now,” Kasidy urged. “Let’s get your coat off.” Kasidy pulled Rebecca’s arms away, then helped her out of her coat. Beneath it, she wore dark pants and a striped, multicolored pullover. “Now go give Daddy a hug.”
Rebecca refused even to look around at Sisko, instead just shaking her head mutely.
“Would it help if I told you that I brought you something, Rebecca?” Sisko coaxed.
“Did you hear that?” Kasidy asked their daughter. “Daddy brought you a present.”
“What present?” Rebecca asked in her tiny voice.
“Well, I don’t know,” Kasidy said. “Why don’t you go over and ask him.”
Cautiously, Rebecca peeked back over her shoulder. Sisko moved to the table and grabbed his duffel. He kneeled down and set it on the hardwood floor before him. “Come take a look,” he said, unfastening the cylindrical carryall.
“Go on,” Kasidy urged.
Slowly, with steps that seemed far too long for her little legs, Rebecca made her way over to Sisko, her gaze firmly on the duffel. “Hello, Rebecca,” Sisko said.
“Hello.” She dropped to her knees without looking up from Sisko’s carryall. “What did you brought me?” she asked.
“Bring me, Rebecca,” Kasidy said from across the room. “What did you bring me?”
“Bring me,” Rebecca echoed. “What did you bring me?”
“Let’s find out,” Sisko said. He opened the bag, but shielded its contents from Rebecca. He reached in and pulled out a lightweight, metal model, about fifteen centimeters long. He handed it to Rebecca.
“What is it?” she asked.
“That’s a replica of my starship, the Robinson,” he said. “I’m the captain.”
“Mommy’s a captain too,” Rebecca said.
“I know she is,” Sisko said. “That’s why I
brought you this too.” He went into his duffel again, this time extracting a similarly sized model of an Antares-class freighter. “This is the Xhosa. It’s Mommy’s ship.”
Rebecca put down the Robinson model on the floor and took the Xhosa. Kasidy hung Rebecca’s coat on the rack, then walked over to Sisko and their daughter. “What do you say, Rebecca?” she asked.
Rebecca set down the second model. “Thank you,” she said in her small voice. Then, looking up at Kasidy, she asked, “Can I go to my room?”
“Sweetie, your father came here to visit you,” Kasidy said.
“Don’t you like the spaceships?” Sisko asked.
“Yes, thank you,” Rebecca said, though she made no move to pick up either one of them from the floor.
“I do have one other gift for you,” he said. From his duffel, Sisko retrieved a hardcover book. On its cover, a young, red-haired girl sat amid some farm animals, all of whom watched as a spider spun a web in the air above them.
“A book!” Rebecca said with great enthusiasm. She reached for it, and Sisko handed it to her. “Can I read it, Mommy?”
“Yes, of course,” Kasidy said. “If you want, we—” Rebecca immediately scampered to her feet and raced down the hall that led deeper into the house, opposite the doorway to the kitchen. “Rebecca Jae Sisko!” Kasidy called after her. Rebecca stopped in her tracks, the book clutched to her chest. “Come back here this instant,” Kasidy said, pointing to a spot directly before her. Sisko collected the duffel, stood up, and placed it back on the table.
Clearly feeling chastened, Rebecca dutifully marched slowly back to Kasidy, again taking longer steps than seemed appropriate for her size. “You said I could read it,” she said quietly, looking down at her shoes.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact 06: Plagues of Night Page 11