Peoplehood
(DS9 ficlet, Rated: G, 586 words)
—
If the situation weren’t quite as painful as it in fact was, Odo might be amused at the display of sentimentality within his own mind. Or at the irony. That after a lifetime of wondering, longing even, he would find the people from which came and decide to turn against them within days. It had hardly been enough time to learn enough about them to claim that he knew them—he hadn’t joined the Link, after all—so it seems stupid, now, that instinctually he thinks of the Founders as “his people.”
“It’s not stupid, Odo!” Kira says, when he manages to vocalize as much after they return to the station. “We all want to know where we come from! To know there are people with whom we share—”
“Share what? Beliefs? Because it has become alarmingly clear that the Founders and I share little in the way of that.”
“Not necessarily beliefs. Common experiences, perhaps.”
“But there are so many experiences that we don’t have in common. They abandoned me on the other side of the galaxy! Left me among people who had no hope of understanding me, whom they knew to be hostile to our kind! Condemned me to an existence of always feeling othered, an outsider, alone—” He stops short when he sees Kira’s face fall. “Major…I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s alright, Odo. I know it’s been difficult for you.”
“But not…always. You must know how deeply I value…Major, your friendship means worlds to me.”
“I do know that. You don’t need to justify yourself. And I also know there are some things about you that I can’t understand, that no one can understand except other changelings.” She sits down beside him. “With us, you need to explain yourself. Like I have to explain the reality of the Occupation when I’m with non-Bajorans. It’s…nice to be understood without having to explain yourself. We all need that. And there’s no shame in it.”
“Perhaps not,” Odo sighs.
And for some time to come, he allows the words my people fall off his synthesized-or-solid tongue and cringes when they do. It won’t be until later—much later, years later, when several wars have come and gone, when he has lost and found himself several times over, and he’s a permanent part of the Link—that the converse will occur to him: that there are also things about himself that the Founders can’t understand, no matter how perfectly they may be able to imitate his chosen solid form. Things that only that strange collection who happened to live and work on the lone space station orbiting Bajor in the years immediately following the Cardassian withdrawal can comprehend.
It’s a novel thought, that after so many years of searching for one people, he may actually be a part of two, and this is an idea he doesn’t entirely know what to do with. But, if he is to help his people—one of his peoples—grow and learn, as he has vowed to do, then this idea that families and clans can form from the seemingly most disparate of backgrounds—that that is not an inherent contradiction in terms—seems a crucial one for them to understand.
Changelings don’t speak, when they’re joined, so instead Odo allows himself to dwell in the steadiness of Sisko’s handshakes, the warmth of Kira’s smile and her kiss, even the glint of Quark’s smirks, and hopes the emotions he sends rippling along the Link is explanation enough.
[ao3]