The first years for a joined Trill can be a difficult even for those who went through all the rigorous training. The challenge is to reconcile the duality that exists between host and symbiont when differentiating the host's talents prior to joining from those of previous hosts or meeting old friends and colleagues of those previous hosts. It is even more of a challenge for Ezri Tigan, who had not planned to be joined.
For those not too familiar with my fan-fiction works, this story contains a tie-in to Chapter 12 of "The True Way".
Without further ado...
Dual Minds
“It's funny. Before yesterday, I'd never set foot on this station but it's as familiar to me as the back of my hand. Isn't that odd?”
Ezri Tigan—or more recently, Ezri Dax—was chatting with Morn on the second level of Deep Space Nine’s Promenade. As usual, the tall and burly creature remained silent. According to Quark, Morn was quite a talkative person. He could go on and on about his seventeen brothers and sisters at times. But other than the time Morn asked out Jadzia years ago, Ezri could not recall very many instances where Morn spoke. Maybe it was because host and symbiont had not fully integrated together. After all, Ezri had no plans on being joined. Perhaps Jadzia, Curzon, and all the hosts before experienced similar confusion in trying to reacquaint with friends and colleagues from past lives. Of course, they probably didn’t try to make small talk with old friends as if they were the previous host or absent-mindedly order food and beverage they couldn’t stomach. Those memories of past lives might need more time to fully integrate. For now, Ezri was experiencing a sensation of standing next to someone she had never seen prior to today while also having known this individual for years.
“You have no idea who I am, do you?” Ezri continued.
Morn simply shrugged. He had to have been asking himself, Who is this stranger and why is she speaking to me as if she knows me and I know her?
“I didn’t think so,” Ezri said with an embarrassed grin. “Thanks for listening anyway.”
It was an odd feeling of duality Ezri would experience for the next few years. Having to reacquaint herself with Kira, Julian, Miles, Odo, and Garak were awkward experiences. They had never met her prior to having appeared on the Promenade alongside Captain Benjamin Sisko, yet she knew a lot about them. Who could blame them for being put off by a total stranger who knew some very personal details about them. For the first few months, Benjamin and Quark were only friends of Jadzia who felt comfortable around Ezri. Despite Worf’s urgings for her not to leave on his say-so, he still went out of his way to avoid her. Jadzia somehow tolerated Worf being Worf, but Ezri could not always understand how.
Similar feelings of awkwardness would come about when various acquaintances came aboard the station of whom Ezri Tigan was unfamiliar. Captain Solok, an old rival of Sisko’s at Starfleet Academy, had brought his ship, the USS T’Kumbra, to the station shortly after Ezri had been assigned as a full-time counselor. Curzon had met Solok at a diplomatic function on Vulcan. He was like most Vulcans then, carried an air of smugness beneath his Vulcan calm. But why Benjamin hated him so much, neither Curzon nor Jadzia could understand. Kasidy Yates would make the reasoning clear prior to a baseball game between crewmembers and civilians aboard DS9 and the crew of the T’Kumbra.
It was a matter of pride, Ezri told herself. She kept at it even after the first day of practice was a total disaster. “I used to be an athlete,” she lamented while nursing an injured knee in the Infirmary. “At least I remember being an athlete. My third host Emony was an Olympic gymnast. I keep expecting my legs to react like hers did, but I fell all over myself. It's like I don't know my own body anymore.”
While the Niners lost by a huge margin, the game did feature some big moments for the “home team”. Drawing on Emony’s skills as a gymnast, Ezri ran up the center field wall and did a full back flip to hold onto the ball, robbing one of the Logicians of a home run. She would insist for months afterward that she hadn’t planned for something like that. Maybe it was an attempt, as Solok put it, to manufacture where none existed. But it was still something of a triumph that she did not fall and seriously injure herself.
Then there was the return of a group of human augments, judged misfits because the genetic alterations had unintended side effects. They were brought to the station a year ago to meet someone who was like them, but lived a “normal life”. Things came to a head when these misfits determined that the Dominion War was unwinnable and even thought to provide the enemy with classified battle plans. From what Ezri remembered from that experience was how hard Julian was on himself because of that near disaster. He had soon reminded Jadzia of why such genetic alterations were illegal in the first place. He said for every Julian Bashir, there was also a Khan Noonien Singh, as well as a Jack, a Patrick, a Lauren, and a Sarina.
Hearing that reminded Jadzia, as well as Ezri, of the “misfits” who were hosts to the Dax symbiont. All of Dax’s previous hosts had heard again and again from the Symbiosis Commission that a joining of an unsuitable host to a symbiont could cause permanent psychological damage to both host and symbiont. But somehow, the Dax symbiont was joined to the mentally unstable Joran Bellar for six months. Ezri had known of the difficulties of re-integrating Joran’s memories once they had resurfaced. That never seemed to be much of problem for Jadzia. Nor did having the memories of Verad Kalon. Jadzia would later recount Verad’s feelings of inadequacy at having been judged unsuitable for joining. For Ezri, these hosts were both a source of strength and of fear. What if Ezri could not measure up to all of Dax’s other hosts? What if she was just another Joran or Verad? Would she back on that operating table in six months so that the symbiont could be transferred to a more suitable host? After all, she was the only Trill on the Destiny when the symbiont was in desperate need of a new host to save its life.
Another one of those awkward moments happened for Ezri when Kor came aboard Deep Space Nine for the last time.
She passed by an elderly Klingon on the Promenade. To her, he was just another Klingon on the station. A lot of them were on the station ever the Federation and the Empire reinstated the Khitomer Accords. She thought nothing of this old man at first. Then she stopped as certain memories came back to her. Of having slain the Albino and of finding the Sword of Kahless only to have it beamed into space. “Kor!” she squealed. She jogged towards Curzon’s and Jadzia’s old friend and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
Kor had learned restraint in recent decades after the first peace treaty with the Federation. And his reflexes had slowed with age. He grabbed her arms hoping to coax this petite woman off of him. “I’m sorry,” he growled. “Have we met before? My memory isn’t quite what it was.”
“Jadzia,” Ezri replied. “Remember going after the Albino? The Blood Oath to avenge my godson’s death? Finding the Sword of Kahless.”
“Of course!” Kor exclaimed. “Jadzia… Dax, was it?” He was at a loss for words. He wasn’t sure if he had actually offered condolences to Worf about the death of Jadzia. “But, um…” he continued with slight hesitation, “you were taller. And your hair was longer wasn’t it? But I do see a resemblance. A little Jadzia in the eyes. A little Curzon in the smile.”
“Did I say Jadzia?” Ezri blurted out. “I meant Ezri.”
“Ezri,” Kor repeated. “Meeting Jadzia the first time was hard time, especially when Kang and Koloth needed more persuading to allow her to accompany us on our Rite of Vengeance. Tell me, did Jadzia die a warrior?”
“For the most part,” Ezri said with a smirk, trying to hide what little embarrassment she was still feeling, as well as remembering how Jadzia was murdered in cold blood by a Pah-Wraith possessed Skrain Dukat. At times, she wanted to cower in a corner when she was reminded of it. Not this time, though, not in front of a Dahar Master.
Don’t think. Just do
Ezri wasn’t exactly certain how previous Dax hosts had earned such a reputation for impulsiveness. In this situation, however, it was good advice to give herself. She and Lieutenant Lisa Neeley were tasked with preventing the assassination of Alon Ghemor, First Castellan of the Cardassian Union And they would have to carry out this mission without phasers and without Neeley’s security team because the building’s receptionist had confiscated their weapons and requested that the rest of the team remain in the main lobby.
More was at stake, Ezri felt, now than when a Jem’Hadar overpowered her on AR-558 or when she was on the bridge of the Defiant during the Second Battle of Chin’toka or the final battle of the Dominion War. She was one among many in those circumstances. But within the next few minutes, her actions would decide the survival of Ghemor, which in turn would decide the survival of a Cardassian government that was not a threat to the Federation. As a Starfleet officer, Ezri was well trained in various forms of combat. And she would also have to draw on Curzon and Jadzia’s knowledge of Klingon martial arts. Ezri knew the basics, but was not at the same skill level as Dax’s previous two hosts.
Down the corridor, a Cardassian military officer was escorting Castellan Ghemor from his meeting chamber. Those two were the last to leave behind members of Ghemor’s cabinet. Corak was waiting for those cabinet members had turned at an adjoining corridor and slowly raised his rifle.
“Something wrong?” Ghemor asked, sensing a growing distance between himself and his personal guard. Something seemed off since his other guard was missing. Neeley lunged towards Corak shoving him against the wall. Ezri, drawing on Jadzia and Curzon’s knowledge of Klingon martial arts, karate chopped Corak’s right shoulder with her left hand and kicked the rifle out of his hands.
Don’t think. Just do.
Ezri jumped away from Corak when he began waving a knife at her. She maintained a martial arts stance, but didn’t know what to do when the huge Cardassian lunged towards her. These seconds were most tense of her life. But of whose life, Ezri wasn’t entirely sure. This was a more tense moment than when a Jem’Hadar solider pointing a plasma rifle at her and when she faced execution on Cardassia Prime. More tense than when Dukat ended Jadzia’s life or when Torias had his fatal shuttle accident. Is this what was meant by ones life flashing before their eyes?
What do I do next? Do I deflect with my left arm or my right arm? Or do I try to kick the knife out of his hand like I did his rifle? Don’t think. Just do.
She used her left arm to try to protect herself from the knife. Neeley grabbed Corak’s arm with both hands, pulled him away from Ezri, then delivered a right hook to his jaw. Corak then came at both women with the knife, but a Cardassian phaser beam vaporized him. Elim Garak had appeared at the end of the corridor.
Neeley and Ezri let out a sigh of relief that Garak came to the rescue in time. Neeley applied a dermal regenerator to the knife wound on Ezri’s left forearm and whispered, “When you throw a left chop, you should put all your weight on the right leg.”
“I was right-handed before being joined,” Ezri replied.
She smirked to hide her embarrassment that things could have turned out a lot more disastrous. Mostly, she was grateful to have prevented an assassination that could have had disastrous implications for Cardassia, the Federation, and the Alpha Quadrant. It was also defining moment in her life as a joined Trill. During her return trip to Deep Space Nine, Ezri Dax had vowed to try to make better use of the knowledge and talents she had inherited from all of the previous hosts of the Dax symbiont.
For those not too familiar with my fan-fiction works, this story contains a tie-in to Chapter 12 of "The True Way".
Without further ado...
Dual Minds
“It's funny. Before yesterday, I'd never set foot on this station but it's as familiar to me as the back of my hand. Isn't that odd?”
Ezri Tigan—or more recently, Ezri Dax—was chatting with Morn on the second level of Deep Space Nine’s Promenade. As usual, the tall and burly creature remained silent. According to Quark, Morn was quite a talkative person. He could go on and on about his seventeen brothers and sisters at times. But other than the time Morn asked out Jadzia years ago, Ezri could not recall very many instances where Morn spoke. Maybe it was because host and symbiont had not fully integrated together. After all, Ezri had no plans on being joined. Perhaps Jadzia, Curzon, and all the hosts before experienced similar confusion in trying to reacquaint with friends and colleagues from past lives. Of course, they probably didn’t try to make small talk with old friends as if they were the previous host or absent-mindedly order food and beverage they couldn’t stomach. Those memories of past lives might need more time to fully integrate. For now, Ezri was experiencing a sensation of standing next to someone she had never seen prior to today while also having known this individual for years.
“You have no idea who I am, do you?” Ezri continued.
Morn simply shrugged. He had to have been asking himself, Who is this stranger and why is she speaking to me as if she knows me and I know her?
“I didn’t think so,” Ezri said with an embarrassed grin. “Thanks for listening anyway.”
It was an odd feeling of duality Ezri would experience for the next few years. Having to reacquaint herself with Kira, Julian, Miles, Odo, and Garak were awkward experiences. They had never met her prior to having appeared on the Promenade alongside Captain Benjamin Sisko, yet she knew a lot about them. Who could blame them for being put off by a total stranger who knew some very personal details about them. For the first few months, Benjamin and Quark were only friends of Jadzia who felt comfortable around Ezri. Despite Worf’s urgings for her not to leave on his say-so, he still went out of his way to avoid her. Jadzia somehow tolerated Worf being Worf, but Ezri could not always understand how.
Similar feelings of awkwardness would come about when various acquaintances came aboard the station of whom Ezri Tigan was unfamiliar. Captain Solok, an old rival of Sisko’s at Starfleet Academy, had brought his ship, the USS T’Kumbra, to the station shortly after Ezri had been assigned as a full-time counselor. Curzon had met Solok at a diplomatic function on Vulcan. He was like most Vulcans then, carried an air of smugness beneath his Vulcan calm. But why Benjamin hated him so much, neither Curzon nor Jadzia could understand. Kasidy Yates would make the reasoning clear prior to a baseball game between crewmembers and civilians aboard DS9 and the crew of the T’Kumbra.
It was a matter of pride, Ezri told herself. She kept at it even after the first day of practice was a total disaster. “I used to be an athlete,” she lamented while nursing an injured knee in the Infirmary. “At least I remember being an athlete. My third host Emony was an Olympic gymnast. I keep expecting my legs to react like hers did, but I fell all over myself. It's like I don't know my own body anymore.”
While the Niners lost by a huge margin, the game did feature some big moments for the “home team”. Drawing on Emony’s skills as a gymnast, Ezri ran up the center field wall and did a full back flip to hold onto the ball, robbing one of the Logicians of a home run. She would insist for months afterward that she hadn’t planned for something like that. Maybe it was an attempt, as Solok put it, to manufacture where none existed. But it was still something of a triumph that she did not fall and seriously injure herself.
Then there was the return of a group of human augments, judged misfits because the genetic alterations had unintended side effects. They were brought to the station a year ago to meet someone who was like them, but lived a “normal life”. Things came to a head when these misfits determined that the Dominion War was unwinnable and even thought to provide the enemy with classified battle plans. From what Ezri remembered from that experience was how hard Julian was on himself because of that near disaster. He had soon reminded Jadzia of why such genetic alterations were illegal in the first place. He said for every Julian Bashir, there was also a Khan Noonien Singh, as well as a Jack, a Patrick, a Lauren, and a Sarina.
Hearing that reminded Jadzia, as well as Ezri, of the “misfits” who were hosts to the Dax symbiont. All of Dax’s previous hosts had heard again and again from the Symbiosis Commission that a joining of an unsuitable host to a symbiont could cause permanent psychological damage to both host and symbiont. But somehow, the Dax symbiont was joined to the mentally unstable Joran Bellar for six months. Ezri had known of the difficulties of re-integrating Joran’s memories once they had resurfaced. That never seemed to be much of problem for Jadzia. Nor did having the memories of Verad Kalon. Jadzia would later recount Verad’s feelings of inadequacy at having been judged unsuitable for joining. For Ezri, these hosts were both a source of strength and of fear. What if Ezri could not measure up to all of Dax’s other hosts? What if she was just another Joran or Verad? Would she back on that operating table in six months so that the symbiont could be transferred to a more suitable host? After all, she was the only Trill on the Destiny when the symbiont was in desperate need of a new host to save its life.
Another one of those awkward moments happened for Ezri when Kor came aboard Deep Space Nine for the last time.
She passed by an elderly Klingon on the Promenade. To her, he was just another Klingon on the station. A lot of them were on the station ever the Federation and the Empire reinstated the Khitomer Accords. She thought nothing of this old man at first. Then she stopped as certain memories came back to her. Of having slain the Albino and of finding the Sword of Kahless only to have it beamed into space. “Kor!” she squealed. She jogged towards Curzon’s and Jadzia’s old friend and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
Kor had learned restraint in recent decades after the first peace treaty with the Federation. And his reflexes had slowed with age. He grabbed her arms hoping to coax this petite woman off of him. “I’m sorry,” he growled. “Have we met before? My memory isn’t quite what it was.”
“Jadzia,” Ezri replied. “Remember going after the Albino? The Blood Oath to avenge my godson’s death? Finding the Sword of Kahless.”
“Of course!” Kor exclaimed. “Jadzia… Dax, was it?” He was at a loss for words. He wasn’t sure if he had actually offered condolences to Worf about the death of Jadzia. “But, um…” he continued with slight hesitation, “you were taller. And your hair was longer wasn’t it? But I do see a resemblance. A little Jadzia in the eyes. A little Curzon in the smile.”
“Did I say Jadzia?” Ezri blurted out. “I meant Ezri.”
“Ezri,” Kor repeated. “Meeting Jadzia the first time was hard time, especially when Kang and Koloth needed more persuading to allow her to accompany us on our Rite of Vengeance. Tell me, did Jadzia die a warrior?”
“For the most part,” Ezri said with a smirk, trying to hide what little embarrassment she was still feeling, as well as remembering how Jadzia was murdered in cold blood by a Pah-Wraith possessed Skrain Dukat. At times, she wanted to cower in a corner when she was reminded of it. Not this time, though, not in front of a Dahar Master.
Don’t think. Just do
Ezri wasn’t exactly certain how previous Dax hosts had earned such a reputation for impulsiveness. In this situation, however, it was good advice to give herself. She and Lieutenant Lisa Neeley were tasked with preventing the assassination of Alon Ghemor, First Castellan of the Cardassian Union And they would have to carry out this mission without phasers and without Neeley’s security team because the building’s receptionist had confiscated their weapons and requested that the rest of the team remain in the main lobby.
More was at stake, Ezri felt, now than when a Jem’Hadar overpowered her on AR-558 or when she was on the bridge of the Defiant during the Second Battle of Chin’toka or the final battle of the Dominion War. She was one among many in those circumstances. But within the next few minutes, her actions would decide the survival of Ghemor, which in turn would decide the survival of a Cardassian government that was not a threat to the Federation. As a Starfleet officer, Ezri was well trained in various forms of combat. And she would also have to draw on Curzon and Jadzia’s knowledge of Klingon martial arts. Ezri knew the basics, but was not at the same skill level as Dax’s previous two hosts.
Down the corridor, a Cardassian military officer was escorting Castellan Ghemor from his meeting chamber. Those two were the last to leave behind members of Ghemor’s cabinet. Corak was waiting for those cabinet members had turned at an adjoining corridor and slowly raised his rifle.
“Something wrong?” Ghemor asked, sensing a growing distance between himself and his personal guard. Something seemed off since his other guard was missing. Neeley lunged towards Corak shoving him against the wall. Ezri, drawing on Jadzia and Curzon’s knowledge of Klingon martial arts, karate chopped Corak’s right shoulder with her left hand and kicked the rifle out of his hands.
Don’t think. Just do.
Ezri jumped away from Corak when he began waving a knife at her. She maintained a martial arts stance, but didn’t know what to do when the huge Cardassian lunged towards her. These seconds were most tense of her life. But of whose life, Ezri wasn’t entirely sure. This was a more tense moment than when a Jem’Hadar solider pointing a plasma rifle at her and when she faced execution on Cardassia Prime. More tense than when Dukat ended Jadzia’s life or when Torias had his fatal shuttle accident. Is this what was meant by ones life flashing before their eyes?
What do I do next? Do I deflect with my left arm or my right arm? Or do I try to kick the knife out of his hand like I did his rifle? Don’t think. Just do.
She used her left arm to try to protect herself from the knife. Neeley grabbed Corak’s arm with both hands, pulled him away from Ezri, then delivered a right hook to his jaw. Corak then came at both women with the knife, but a Cardassian phaser beam vaporized him. Elim Garak had appeared at the end of the corridor.
Neeley and Ezri let out a sigh of relief that Garak came to the rescue in time. Neeley applied a dermal regenerator to the knife wound on Ezri’s left forearm and whispered, “When you throw a left chop, you should put all your weight on the right leg.”
“I was right-handed before being joined,” Ezri replied.
She smirked to hide her embarrassment that things could have turned out a lot more disastrous. Mostly, she was grateful to have prevented an assassination that could have had disastrous implications for Cardassia, the Federation, and the Alpha Quadrant. It was also defining moment in her life as a joined Trill. During her return trip to Deep Space Nine, Ezri Dax had vowed to try to make better use of the knowledge and talents she had inherited from all of the previous hosts of the Dax symbiont.
