Author: Bonster
Website: Delectable Oomph
Disclaimer: I own not the copyright to these characters or universes.
Rating: PG
Recipient: Azar
Pairing: Jadzia Dax(DS9) / Martouf/Lantash(SG1)
Spoilers: Vague season 4 (DS9), Season 2 ep 1969 (SG-1)
Summary: Jadzia wakes in a crystalline cave, hundreds of years in the past. With the help of the Tok'Ra, she must find a way back to DS9.
A/N: Written for the livejournal community, multiverse2004. Specifically written for Azar. Hope you dig it!
Jadzia Dax woke up stiff, sore, and disoriented. Sure, she was beginning to get used to feeling so, after so many bat'leth sessions with Worf, but she hadn't had one of those in at least two weeks.
She opened her eyes and saw that she was in some sort of crystalline cave. Hearing voices nearby, she asked weakly, "How did I get here?" She paused, noting that the crystal formations were unlike any she had ever seen, and neither had Dax. "And where exactly is here?" The last thing she remembered was piloting the runabout at full impulse away from an unknown anomaly.
A man with light hair and blue eyes walked over to where she was lying. His eyes were kind, but the lines around his mouth were firm, determined. Jadzia hoped she hadn't popped up on a dominion occupied world. That would just the be the perfect way to top it off. She inwardly groaned.
The man spoke, "There was a large temporal disruption of some kind. Your ship was badly damaged, but the system's life support had not failed entirely. As a result, when our own ship arrived, you were still alive."
"Ship?" Jadzia asked, taking in the various prisms of light bouncing off the surrounding crystals.
The man, whoever he was, nodded just a bit. "You are no longer on our ship. We transported you here."
Well, no wonder she didn't hear any sort of inertial dampeners running or warp cores humming in the distance. All right then, now to find out if they were Domininion or not. "Who are you?"
An older man who stood next to the speaker shook his head. The blue-eyed man said, "We... can discuss that later. For now I must ask under which goa'uld do you serve?"
Jadzia blinked. Goa'uld? That didn't sound Dominion. "What?"
"We do not recognize the markings on your skin; they are unlike any jaffa's we've otherwise encountered."
"Well, that's because they're not--what was it?--jaffa markings. They're my spots. I'm a Trill. We all have them."
Conversing quietly, the men stepped away from her. Maybe the interrogation, as that was apparently what the whole thing was, was nearly over.
But again the younger man came forward. "You posses a symbiote in an abdominal pouch. By all indications, you are jaffa."
Jadzia's head started to throb. "Run some tests, why don't you." She was a scientist, a Starfleet officer. She knew, logically, that there were a multitude of tests that could be done to prove she wasn't... a cake or whatever they meant. If they'd go ahead and just show her to a set of equipment, they could get started, and she could get back to sleep. And hopefully wake up and realize this was all a holosuite program run amok, and that she'd have to kill Quark.
The older one said, "Believe me, miss, we plan to find out just who you are and where you came from." Then his voice changed into a deep rumbling that reminded her of one of Tobin's engineering tools. "For now, we'll be your only contacts with my people. I am Selmak. This is Lantash."
She nodded.
Lantash spoke that same deep voice, "I am also called Martouf. It is the name of my host."
"Host?" Was there a party going on?
"You do not know what a host is?"
Confusion somehow worked for the man, she thought. Any other circumstances...
"No. I don't. Not in this context at least."
He dropped his head, and when he looked back up, said in the normal voice he had used when he first spoke to her, "My symbiote and I share this form completely. As two distinct minds, though we share our thoughts and feelings."
Oh. So they were a different form of trill. "Symbiote? Smallish creature that retains its memories of several lifetimes and passes them on to each new carrier? Host, as you call it?" She thought for a second. "Is the changing of minds, is that what makes your voice change?"
Martouf nodded.
"Well, my symbiant and I, share our experiences and memories, but it's a little different."
Martouf and Selmak shared another look--she was beginning to get irritated by that--and Martouf asked, "What do you mean?"
"I mean, that I'm the one in control. Dax, my symbiant, has lived through seven previous hosts, and so I have the knowledge each of them had, but the hosts make more of an impression on the symbiant than the other way around. And the symbiant can't speak either. It is a sentient being, but we work as one."
"We work as one as well."
"Yes, but the memories of the hosts are what influence me, not Dax itself. Necessarily."
"I do not understand."
Jadzia sighed. "I'll try again later." She relaxed back into the pallet, which though obviously made of the same crystal everything else around here was, was becoming steadily more comfortable, or maybe she just was becoming steadily more exhausted.
Selmak said, "We'll let you get some rest. We'll be back later to run those tests."
She nodded, closed her eyes, and drifted to sleep.
So. As Martouf explained to her after the tests were completed and she was found not to be a jaffa, she was with a race called the Tok'Ra. She was in a sort of rebel camp, completely encased in crystal, which they grew from other crystals that contained the right programming information. The other officers on DS9 would have loved it.
Martouf appeared in the door way and coming forward with a plate of what looked like fruit and bread, said, "Here is some refreshment."
She took the plate and dug in. She was starving.
"We do apologize again that we thought you a jaffa."
"What exactly is a jaffa?" she asked around a bite of some delicious citrus-like leaf.
"They are the foot soldiers of our long-time enemy, the goa'uld." Before she could ask what they were as well, Martouf raised his hand and continued to speak, slight smile on his lips. "The goa'uld are like the tok'ra in that they require hosts. But they take the hosts by force. They also conquer entire planets, killing or enslaving the population, just to suit their needs for expansion and own destructive nature."
"Sounds like an enemy of ours." She went on to explain about the Federation, Dominion, Jem'Hadar, the wormhole to the gamma quadrant, Deep Space Nine, and her own role there, a pang of yearning hit her during the last.
Martouf was quiet for a moment. "Jadzia, we will find a way to get you back to your time."
The solemnity of his eyes brought further weight onto her shoulders. That she had to completely rely on these people, as well as face the possibility of never returning to the station, soured what little there was in her stomach.
"I hope so, Martouf. I really miss home."
They were convened in a sort of conference room, complete with a large table and crystalline-grown chairs. Martouf, Selmak, several, what looked like, high-ranking tok'ra, and Jadzia sat around the table. They had apparently found a way to send her home.
Selmak explained, "The Tau'ri made use of solar flares that coincided with the exact moment of stargate travel in order to traverse time. We think it possible that you can do the same. We can find a stargate on a planet that will meet the requirements for such a trip. Hopefully, the planet will be in your own neighborhood."
Jadzia pondered that. Surely, if they could just get to Bajor, sneak in, leave her, sneak out, she'd be able to 'gate' to her own time and she would know the Bajorans there. Or at least maybe she'd be able to access a comm system that would allow her to contact DS9. "All right, let me get this straight, a solar flare at an exact instant while I'm traveling through a wormhole will be enough to get me back to my time?" Jadzia asked.
Selmak simply replied, "Yes."
"Then let's get started tracking those flares." They all stood and Jadzia went with...she forgot his name, to assess the suns of the planets that were near the location of DS9. Bajor wasn't one that had a gate, but a nearby planet, unoccupied as far she knew, did. And if she could modify a beacon with a large enough power source to boost the signal, she send a distress signal when she arrived.
Smooth sailing, then.
After she okayed the planet, the tok'ra began to monitor the sun, comparing the solar flares the Tau'ri--earth people, she'd found out--had experienced, the flare activity of the sun, and several other factors. She'd found she was tired and went back to the room that had been allocated to her. As she wandered the tunnels, deciding she wasn't so much tired as needing to clear her head, she took the long way back. Here she was, in a new situation, exactly what she lived for, and the tok'ra were using highly advanced technology and at this moment discovering new, exciting, useful things about stars and their habits... And all she could think about were her quarters, a cup of raktajino, and a quiet conversation with Ben while he's facing some sort of dilemma, and she's the one who advises him, guides him to doing just what he knew had to be done anyway.
She rounded the corner, the final tunnel before she'd really return to her room, and there stood Martouf, looking slightly perplexed, but brightening when he saw her.
"Hello, Jadzia."
"Martouf, hi." There was something comforting about the man, and his near constant presence had really been a high point during the whole situation.
"I was just coming to inform you that we have identified an exact time for your journey home. I am sorry to say that it will be fifteen of your days from now, but it is the nearest window of opportunity."
Fifteen days. Well, it could be worse. "That's all right, Martouf. I'm just glad a time has been identified at all."
"Yes."
He shifted uncomfortably, almost shyly, though she thinks she was imagining that part. Or maybe... "Would you like to get something to drink with me?"
"Are you sure you're not tired?"
"Not at all. Let's go." She smiled brightly.
They went to what she considered their equivalent of a commissary, retrieved drinks, sat down, and ended up talking about so many things, hours later, Jadzia can't recall what some of them even were. Maybe a later Dax would.
"It really is getting late," Martouf said. The last of the other tok'ra had left more than an hour ago.
"Yes, it probably is." She leaned back on the crystal chair. She'd really feel that in the morning, but for now she was quite content with how this evening was spent and wouldn't have changed anything. And, she thought with a hint of mischievousness, neither would Martouf.
"So."
She nodded. "So."
Martouf stood. "Well, if you'll let me, I'll accompany you back to your room."
"That would be nice." She stood also, took his arm. When he opened his mouth to maybe protest, maybe keep her from doing so, she said, "A gentleman escorting a lady home offers his arm. It's a courtesy that I must insist on."
He laughed, raised his other hand's fingers to her own, and gently touched them.
The two weeks flew by, her visits with Martouf causing a bit of a stir, but mostly with just his friends. Like Jacob, the tok'ra Selmak's host. He teased her non-stop, and the part of her that was Curzon, and more than a small part of herself as well, adored the man, a sort of kindred spirit.
Seven days in, she had kissed Martouf, tired of waiting for him to kiss her. They were both adults, both with lots of previous host and symbiote experiences. They enjoyed each other's company, and really, it was all right for them to do this.
Or at least she thought so at first. As Martouf and she grew even that much closer, a sense of regret took hold. They both knew they would never see one another again, unless her symbiant and his symbiote's hosts ran into one another. And as she had never heard of the tok'ra, she considered it a slim-to-none chance.
Making out like teenagers, or rather desperate adults as it were, was all well and good, but she had responsibilities, not just to deep space nine, but to Dax. If there were no trill nearby, and something should happen to her, or she succumbed to old age, Dax would cease to exist. And she couldn't let that happen.
The day to leave finally arrived. Jadzia's feelings were of hope mixed with duty, mixed with disappointment.
"Martouf," Jadzia sighed. They were standing under an improbable light show on the planet's surface. Auroras lit up the sky with a massive range of colors.
"Jadzia, I know. I will miss you as well. You're a rare jewel, whose value cannot be measured." He put his hand on her face, she leaned into it. "I will miss you."
Saying goodbye to this wonderful man who stood beside her on such a perfect evening was so bittersweet. They didn't fall, but tears began to fill her eyes. She sniffed. "You have no idea how much I'll miss you, too, Martouf."
Selmak, who was standing back several yards, came forward. "It's time."
As she stepped away from Martouf and toward the stargate and the event horizon that would lead her home, she wondered if maybe all of this was a dream. If she really was in that holosuite. She turned back for one last glance, because no matter how many times you can repeat to yourself "Don't look back," it never works. She knew it wasn't a dream. Even though that meant it was all complete and total reality, and they lived in a somewhat harsh universe, everything was going to be okay.
She stepped through. To bat'leths and jem'hadar, to tongo and raktajinos. To home.