memories in paraphrase (star trek ds9 | kimara/nerys)

[fiachairecht]

memories in paraphrase. star trek: deep space 9, kimara/nerys. on the difficulties of wanting something new. 745w, rated t. for the trek-rarepair-swap

There's a jumja stick on Nerys' desk when she keys open her door at 0500.

The office is awash with the pale blue light of Ashalla's pre-dawn hours, the promise of sun catching on the still-bare walls and the small half-withered bouquet she set out the day before to ease Ezri's mind about how well she was transitioning to her new post planetside, and there, in the centre of her desk, a shockingly pink jumja stick. 

Nerys smiles as she steps inside, scanning the room for a figure she's not entirely sure she hopes to see. "You can come out now, Ambassador."

Kimara's voice, though, comes from behind her. "Not suspicious, then, General?"

"Oh, I didn't say that." She spins around, hands on her hips as she looks Kimara up and down. Diplomacy sits oddly on her shoulders these days, heavier than it did during wartime and yet easier than prison ever did. "But after everything we've been though, I must say I'd be disappointed if that's how you chose to end me."

Kimara's own smile slips just slightly at that. "After everything we've been through part of me had hoped you wouldn't expect that of me anymore."

Nerys deflates, rubs her eyes. How much sleep had she gotten last night? Not enough, apparently, the quiet of peacetime winding too soft around her and relegating long days of thriving on stolen naps to the past. "Not seriously."

Three years since Kimara Cretak's pardon and appointment as the Romulan Ambassador to Bajor, perhaps they've done too good of a job avoiding each other, the sharp tenuous connections of alliance and betrayal and unspoken want easier to let lie. Oh, there had been the unavoidable professional interactions. Perfectly polite, the way an Ambassador and a Colonel ought to be, and if their aides thought they worked too well together -- if they themselves remembered bonding sessions cut short by questionably necessary lies, well. They didn't need to talk about it.

Now, half in and half out of her new office, Nerys feels the old familiar sideways tug below her ribcage and thinks that the time for that sort of silence to come to an end. That maybe it's been time for longer than either of them cared to admit. "Why are you here so early, anyway?" she asks, voice deliberately measured.

Kimara raises an eyebrow. "I can't congratulate the new commander of the Bajoran Militia?" Her voice is deliberate, too, Nerys thinks. Deliberately ... soft.

Time was that would have made her flinch even more than Kimara's presence. "It's five in the morning, Kimara," she says, and if she can't muster up true malice for the woman in front of her, she's not sure the tangled knot of her feelings can be combed out into true anything. "You can congratulate me at the reception tonight, or you can drop the politician act and tell me what this is."

Green stains Kimara's cheeks, dark and prettier than it has any right to be painted across her cheekbones, and Nerys bites her lip, wondering if she's pushed too far. "I told you once that jumja sticks were too sweet," Kimara says, all in a rush like the words have surprised even her. "And we -- we can't have that, yet. But I want something closer to that."

Nerys wonders how profoundly she could possibly have offended the Prophets to be having this conversation before even one raktajino. Or perhaps it's just Ben, pulling the strands of time to give her a well-deserved kick up the backside. "You covered my moon with illegal weapons," she says, and even as the words leave her mouth, she wonders why she's never said them before. Maybe because they both knew that was never the real issue.

Kimara lifts one shoulder in an elegant, practised shrug, like she'd been expecting that. Like maybe it makes anything else they have to say easier. "You got me thrown in prison. It wasn't personal."

No, Nerys thinks, and maybe that was always our problem. "You're saying you want ... something personal?"

Kimara's smile is a real one, this time, but she doesn't say anything.

Part of Nerys wonders if she's just been handed an overheating disruptor. Part of her is too tired and too reckless to care. "Let's start with something raktajino."

Kimara reaches out a hand. "I'd like that."

When Nerys closes her fingers around the offered hand, she's faintly surprised to find that the skin is warm to touch.

Also on Ad Astra