lapse of memory

[Kai Winn]

i'm confused when i watch the records from my demise, i recall that i poisoned dukat, and was asking kosst amojan to come forward and accept the sacrifice.
that was when on cardassia, garak shot weyon, that shapeshifter bitch refused to give in, and odo beamed down to cajole her into submission.
well, he fixed her medical condition, and she surrendered after all. emissary, martok and that admiral had a drink on cardassia. then they all must have flown to ds9 to sign the peace treaty, and had a party on the holodeck. must have taken days, at least.
so, how comes i'm still standing over dukat's body, and calling for kosst when my story is resumed?

 

[Jono]

^ She's still chanting because the Pah Wraiths hadn't responded to her summons yet. She went to the effort of going all the way down there, bringing the poison and getting Dukat to drink to just give up if the Pah Wraiths didn't answer when she first rang.

 

[Admiral Shran]

There's nothing to indicate that the two storylines are occuring at the same time. The editing of the episode heavily implies that they are. However, there could very easily be a time laspe between them.

A good example of something like that is "The Lord of the Rings." In the book "The Two Towers," the internal chronology has the Aragon storyline stop at one point, but the Frodo/Sam storyline then continues for a few more days. Things are still happening with Aragon and company, but we don't find out what those things are until the third book.

Maybe it's something similiar in "What You Leave Behind." Once Winn and Dukat leave DS9, there's nothing that connects their storyline to the Sisko/War one until the end. It probably would have worked better if the episode hadn't spent so much time away from Winn and Dukat after he was poisioned. But there it is.