What She Would Never Say

By Laura Schiller

Based on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Copyright: Paramount

My people may have been isolated for hundreds of years, but I haven't lost my talents. I'm the finest Changeling in the Great Link. When I take a form, I don't just resemble it. I become it.

I became Kira Nerys for Odo in that cave. We observed her well enough when she came to the Homeworld with him earlier. I smiled like her, I put on a brave face like her, I cracked jokes and told stories to pass the time like her. I even tried to pull rank on him to send him away to safety, just like her.

When he told me that his name meant "Nothing" in the language of his former masters, I wept for him, just as she would have done if she knew. (Some of those tears were my own, too – how long must our children endure the brutishness of Solids before they are all under our control?)

When I told him I loved him, that was also something she would very likely say.

Oh, perhaps she didn't know it yet when they came to our world. But I saw the softness in the Major's eyes when she looked at him. I saw the way she looked ready to spit fire in his defense. And I saw how she held his hand before they beamed off the surface – it's the closest her sort can get to a Link.

Odo's not the only one of us who is an excellent observer, and in this case, his talents fail him. Those Solids he grew up with, those scientists who treated him like a lab specimen, have warped his perception so that he honestly believes no one could ever want him as a mate.

I hate them for it. But I'm not above using their tactics if it means he'll come back to me someday.

"How could she ever love you?" I said to him. "You're a Changeling."

I lied.