#b'hala

[sophloph]

I am holding Avery Brooks in my arms

[nebulouscoffee]

The thing about Kai Winn's storyline ultimately being a tragedy is, it's not only a tragedy because her fate (in the eyes of the non-linear Prophets) was already known and nothing she did or said was ever going to make them acknowledge her- not only because she wanted so badly to have a big role to play in the grand, historic story of the newly independent Bajor and just couldn't handle the fact that she was never meant to- not only because the Prophets spoke to Sisko and Bareil and Kira and literally even Quark but not her- not only because she was deceived and raped and killed in the end- but most of all because, it was partly her love of Bajor that killed her.

Think about it- her whole regression during that final arc with Dukat is so tragic precisely because she was THIS close to redemption! Throughout the show, we see that her brain processes information in very rigid, binary ways: if you are not my ally, then you are my enemy. If you disagree with even one of my opinions, you are my enemy. If you refuse to endorse and support me in this mission, you are my enemy. That's part of why she's so easily swayed by fascist rhetoric, I think- she's just unable to cope with nuance. (This is foreshadowed in 'Shakaar', where she puts the whole of Bajor under martial law just because Shakaar disagreed with her over how she was handling soil reclamators.) Her personal narrative is I am the one who will save Bajor -> anyone who gets in my way is my enemy and therefore an enemy of Bajor -> I must stop them using any force necessary for the good of Bajor because I am after all the one who will save Bajor.

But when Sisko discovers the city of B'hala in 'Rapture', she is for the first time forced to accept the truth that he really hasn't been faking this whole "talks to the Prophets" thing- he's the real deal. We learn later on (when she tells "Anjohl" about how she honestly felt nothing the first time she saw the wormhole open) that a small, small part of her actually always doubted the existence of the Prophets. Now, she is faced with definitive proof that they are not only very real, but they also really do have a bond with Sisko. And for a while, she even comes to terms with this! In fact, at the end of the episode, she and Kira have possibly their first completely honest exchange:

KIRA: Maybe we're the ones who need to trust the Prophets. For all we know, this is part of their plan. Maybe they've told Captain Sisko everything they want him to know.  WINN: Perhaps. I suppose you heard that Bajor will not join the Federation today. The Council of Ministers has voted to delay acceptance of Federation membership.  KIRA: You must be very pleased.  WINN: I wish I were. But things are not that simple. Not anymore. Before Captain Sisko found B'hala, my path was clear. I knew who my enemies were. But now? Now nothing is certain.  KIRA: Makes life interesting, doesn't it?

Like, YASS babygirl- you too can learn to handle nuance!! I believe in you!!💪💪

And later on, at the onset of the Dominion War, she comes to Sisko for advice herself. She doesn't want to see her planet colonised again, and she's even willing to put aside her desire to be the main character to ensure it doesn't happen. Driven by pride and the need for power as she is, she is also driven by the desire save Bajor (and preferably be the one saving Bajor, which is the subsection of this desire that ultimately ends up being her downfall) - and she does briefly decide that cooperating with the Emissary is the best way to do this! I think about this scene from 'In The Cards' so much:

WINN: ... I have asked the Prophets to guide me, but they have not answered my prayers. I even consulted the Orb of Wisdom before coming here and it has told me nothing. So I come to you, Emissary. You have heard the voice of the Prophets. You were sent here to guide us through troubled times. Tell me what to do and I will do it. How can I save Bajor?  SISKO: You want my advice? Then this is it. Stall. Tell Weyoun you have to consult with the Council of Ministers, or that you have to meditate on your response. Anything you want, but you have to stall for time.  WINN: Time for what?  SISKO: I don't know. But I do know the moment of crisis isn't here yet, and until that moment arrives we have to keep Bajor's options open. I'm aware that this is difficult for you, given our past, but this time you have to trust me.  (Winn holds Sisko's left ear.)  WINN: Very well, Emissary. We put ourselves in your hands. May we all walk with the Prophets.

In the earlier seasons, Winn would often casually make claims that the Prophets had "told her" something, or that she was just "doing what the Prophets asked"- and her political position as Kai always allowed her to just lie about being in contact with them all the time. Now, you can see the sheer humility- the embarrassment, even- on her face as she (for the first time) openly admits to Sisko that she has never actually heard them speak before; and that they clearly "prefer" him. Yes, there's some (understandable imo) bitterness here- but not at him, at THEM. And when she tries to read his pagh at the end- something she probably does to dozens of people every day, most of whom would unquestioningly believe anything she declares afterwards- she doesn't even try to pretend she felt anything there. It's one of her most genuine moments in the whole show, you can just SEE the redemption arc in reach and it's so heartbreaking!!

I think 'The Reckoning' is a huge episode for her too, for many reasons- but let's talk about how it sets up this fascinating parallel between her and Kira (who Odo describes in this episode as having "both faith and humility"). The Prophets choose Kira as their "vessel" because she was "willing"- meanwhile, Winn was right there just begging to be a part of this! Here she is, with a Prophet right in front of her face- and she prays and postures and begs and prays some more, all just to get ignored. Kira's brand of faith is very, "I am ultimately insignificant and I surrender my power and my body and pagh to the Prophets"- Winn's is more, "if I do all the right things, then I will be able to prove to the Prophets that I am worthy of their attention, worthier than everyone else, and maybe then they'll appoint me the saviour of Bajor! It's My Destiny, You See!! (Why Isn't This Happening For Me??)" And the events of this episode are kind of a big slap in the face to her honestly, because they sort of prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Prophets have no interest in her. Maybe stopping the battle was also an attempt at regaining some kind of agency with them- I DID THIS, I pulled a switch and it had a direct effect on the Prophets, so there!! (Whatever that effect entails). She does care about Bajor. Of course she does. But her ideal configuration of Bajor involves her being a major player in its salvation, which she was just never meant to be. And this is why she's so tragically susceptible to Dukat's manipulation- he was the first person ever to tell her everything she always wanted to hear.

And the intriguing thing about Dukat's deception is, it doesn't all fall apart at one go. It falls apart in layers. And this makes for some excellent, excellent Winn characterisation imo.

First, she thinks the pah wraiths are the Prophets- and they tell her, hey, The Sisko has faltered, Bajor needs you, and only you can fix this. Good lord, imagine finally getting to hear those words after a lifetime of silence! And it's very telling that her first reaction isn't to gloat like she would've in the earlier seasons, but instead to humbly- even anxiously- pray. Bajor needs her, the "Prophets" have asked her to do something, this is her moment! Then, this random lovely Bajoran farmer comes in and tells her even more things she has always wanted to hear- that her activism during the Occupation (ignored by Kira and Sisko alike) saved lives, that he always wondered why the Prophets would choose an alien as their Emissary, that surely Sisko and his followers were mistaken- and finally, "our world will be reborn- with YOU as its leader". Sounds good, right? But THEN she finds out she's been speaking to the pah wraiths and the lovely farmer is a devil worshipper actually. And she tries the "wash away my sins" approach- she wants some kind of quick fix ritual that will "purify" her, so she can continue to be Kai the right way. She even admits to Kira that she's always been power hungry and she wants to change- and I believe her! Unfortunately, Kira then tells her something she doesn't want to hear- that she has to step down as Kai. And surely that can't be, right? She's the saviour of Bajor! She's so complex... it's not simply her love of power that this scene reveals imo, but more significantly, her inability to see herself as not a vital part of Bajor's history; of this whole larger narrative. Like-

WINN: I'm a patient woman. But I have run out of patience. I will no longer serve gods who give me nothing in return. "GIVE ME"!! ADAMI MY BESTIE MY GIRL MY BUDDY THEREIN LIES THE PROBLEM!!!

So, okay, fine, now she's swayed over to the side that maybe the Prophets aren't that great, and maybe the pah wraiths are the true gods of Bajor (because they were willing to talk to her), and maybe she's okay working with the devil worshipper. But then it turns out he's DUKAT- and at this point, she's literally murdered someone, she's ready to stop this, to go back to Sisko and set things right- but then the book of the Kosst Amojan lights up because of the blood she spilled. She did that. It happened as a direct result of her actions. She's just so desperate to be acknowledged... to have a role to play in all this, no matter who offers it to her. So the pah wraiths actually giving her a reaction isn't something she can resist. And here's where things get even more tragic.

WINN: But the prophecies! They warn that the release of the Pah wraiths will mean the end of Bajor.  DUKAT: The old Bajor, perhaps. But from its ashes a new Bajor will arise and the Restoration will begin.  WINN: Who will be left to see it?  DUKAT: Those the gods find worthy. It will be the dawn of paradise. And you, Adami, are destined to rule it.  WINN: You're sure of that?  DUKAT: It is meant to be.

Again with the ease at which she's swayed by fascist rhetoric! Let's be clear, she was (and is) absolutely against the Cardassian Occupation. But her worldview is built on the pursuit of being "worthier" than everyone else, of being "closer to god" than everyone else- her expectation of faith is that it's some sort of determiner of who's doing it The Most Effectively, rather than it being a practice- and she just completely misses that any sort of plan that executes masses and spares whoever is deemed "worthy" is... literally exactly what people like Dukat did to her planet. Something something faith as competition, faith as determiner of inherent superiority, faith as a way to gain power via proximity to god… never faith as submission. And the worst part is she’s self-aware. It’s heartbreaking.

And it's about to get even more heartbreaking, because she truly believes she has arrived at her girlboss moment in the finale (I think the tragedy of her being a rape victim and knowing this and having to hide the body of the one (1) person who was looking out for her while being stuck with her rapist speaks for itself.) After kicking Dukat out on the street (lol), she studies the eeevil texts and realises that to set the pah wraiths free, you need to make a sacrifice. So now she gets to deceive him in return. And she does! The look of shock on his face when he discovers she poisoned him is priceless imo, and her triumph as she taunts his dead body, the sheer joy on her face as she casts off her Kai robes, when she recites those incantations and something actually happens- and that too such a large pyrotechnic spectacle- is so sad knowing what's coming. Because ultimately, the pah wraiths want to destroy Bajor, right? And Winn just doesn't. Of course they don't choose her. Of course they choose Dukat over her! She really thought that by tricking and murdering him, she'd made him the unimportant piece of the puzzle, that she was stealing back his thunder- but tragically, it turns out even the pah wraiths see her as disposable. Of course they resurrect Dukat (a man who's proved time and time again that he wants to see Bajor & Bajorans destroyed) and turn her into the sacrifice. The way she screams "NO!" here breaks my heart- she's betrayed her planet, and it was all for nothing. (Dukat's "are you still here?" is particularly devastating.) I think it's very significant that her final words are "Emissary, the book!"- it shows that in her last moments, she's owning her mistakes- she's stepping away from power and putting Bajor first, and leaving her own fate in the hands of the Prophets. Who, of course, once again ignore her, and choose to save Sisko instead. God.

The utter tragedy that even in the pah wraiths' plan, she was just a pawn. That she died at the hands of the gods she thought chose her, but used her, all while the gods she'd coveted her whole life stood by and did nothing. The Prophets chose Sisko because they believed he would put Bajor's interests over even his own- and now they ensure he will be back one day to see the new Bajor. She never will.

Yes, it was her pride that got her here. Her mean streak. Her inability to cope with nuance. Her inability to see herself as ultimately insignificant. Her inability to surrender to a higher power in any way that didn't involve becoming more powerful herself; more relevant, more "close to god". But it was also her love of Bajor. Because if she'd cared about Bajor less, then maybe the pah wraiths might have chosen her- or at least spared her, or taken her to their realm after she burned, the way they did with Dukat. Now, she ends up being the one thing she never wanted to be: insignificant.

Honestly if I had to summarise the tragedy of her arc in one sentence, it would probably be Kai Winn: Too Evil For The Prophets, Not Evil Enough For The Pah Wraiths. She and Dukat are not the same! She is a perfectly pathetic, sad and wet blorbo and I am holding her gently in my hands while apologising for her crimes <3

[beatrice-otter]

Fic: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

fandom5k authors have revealed! So I can reveal what I wrote. First of all, thank you to my recip violet_pencil for having some great prompts, that was lovely. It's such a help to get an idea that inspires me, but which I also know my recip will also like. The relationship and pairing sent me in a direction I'd never considered before, and also I think in the process I figured out a bit more of why the Prophets are the way they are and why Sisko is important to them.

Title: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Author: Beatrice_otter Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Characters: James T. Kirk, Benjamin Sisko Written For: violet_pencil in Fandom 5k 2024 Rating: Gen Length: 5,787 words Betaed by: Greenygal

On AO3. On Squidgeworld. On Ad Astra. On Dreamwidth. Rebloggable on Pillowfort.

Benjamin Sisko was watching the heat death of the universe. Benjamin Sisko was helping the Bantaca Spire be erected in B'Hala. Benjamin Sisko was trying to comfort Kasidy over his entering the Celestial Temple, and failing because he could not collect enough of himself in one time and one place to give her the attention and care she needed. Benjamin Sisko was watching Cardassian soldiers use tractor beams and force-fields to remove the Orb of Harmony from the ruins of the monastery at Choddosh. Benjamin Sisko was in the Celestial Temple, teaching the Prophets about linearity for the first time using baseball as a metaphor. Benjamin Sisko was watching Kai Kira direct the Vedek Assembly to begin considering her successor, because she was going to retire to the monastery of Basyo Ume in nine weeks. Benjamin Sisko was watching the star that would one day be named B'hava'el coalesce and begin to burn.

Benjamin Sisko was no longer corporeal, but he had a headache anyway.

"The Sisko is overwhelmed."

Ben turned to face the Prophet who had once possessed his biological mother. "Yes," he said.

"Why?" she asked. "The Sisko is no longer linear."

"But I am," he said. "Not as linear as I once was, but … if I had left it behind completely, you would not be wearing that face, or speaking."

The Prophets had no language; they didn't need it. Individuality, like linearity, was something the Prophets didn't quite understand. They needed language no more than the different spores of a fungus needed it. What one knew, or thought, the others could sense as part of themselves.

"The Sisko has many tasks to perform," the Prophet said. She studied him. "The Sisko is doing them well. Yet the Sisko is overwhelmed."

Ben thought it through. "I am doing them well—because you see them as I am doing them, in the future, from my perspective."

"Yes," she said.

"You're asking … how is it that you know I am capable of doing things and learning your way of seeing the universe, but am also having problems."

"Yes."

"That's not how it works for linear beings," Benjamin said. "We develop and grow over time. We learn things. We start out, as infants, knowing nothing and capable of nothing. As we grow, we gain skills and knowledge by trying, by failing, by doing things many times until we have mastered a skill."

Ben brought them to the park where his father was teaching him how to throw a baseball. Five-year-old Benjamin had thrown other things, of course, but nothing with the same size and mass and heft. Most of his throws went wild, and Joseph patiently practiced with him, giving him tips, encouraging him.

Ben and the Prophet watched the child he had been over months and years, learning to throw the ball, learning to hit a ball off a tee, learning to hit a ball thrown at him.

"These tasks are more difficult for you because your body is not fully developed," the Prophet observed.

"True," Ben said, and moved them to the Academy gym where he had learned hand-to-hand combat. "But when I learned to fight, I was at the peak of my physical prowess. Adult but young, strong, dedicated—I'd done running and weightlifting and other sports in high school. And still," he nodded at his younger self, "you see how I struggled. How much time and effort and practice it took me to learn how to do it. Academically, it was the same. I learned a great deal in my time at the Academy—because I studied. Because I practiced using the knowledge."

They watched him in flight simulators, in classrooms, and finally in holodeck models of various ships learning to fix everything from hull breaches to fluctuations in the warp core. "When I started with the practical engineering scenarios, I knew the books backwards and forwards, because I'd spent months—years—preparing and learning everything I could about ships. Even so, learning to translate that to practical action took time, and repetition."

"The Sisko has had time to learn here," the Prophet said. "The Sisko has all of time to learn here.

"But all of it at once."

The Prophet studied him. "You want something smaller. Simpler. A … 'beginner project.'"

"That would be very helpful," Ben said.

The Prophet took them to a place that was like the Celestial Temple, but smaller. It, too, was outside of time and space; it, too, was anchored to one physical location (though that physical location traveled through the galaxy and would one day pass beyond it). Still, it was more tightly bounded; the connections to time and space were weaker. And it was … simpler. It was alive, but it had no sentience.

The Prophet observed the place she'd shown him, and he could sense her affection for it. And her frustration. Very like the way his sister Judith had looked at her dog Sadie when Sadie had chewed up her slippers.

There were people in the simpler anomaly, but they were not like the Prophets. They could not see it for what it was.

"How did they get in here?" he asked, scrutinizing them. "They're not from here, they're linear. Corporeal." Although not very linear; they tended to replay the same few events, time after time. Whole worlds in a bottle, visions that they could not always tell from reality.

"This ribbon does not have the capacity to make its entrance safe for things and beings of matter," the Prophet said, pointing out the great rip in space and time that was the point where the infinite interfaced with the finite.

Ben studied it, and saw the problem, and also realized that he knew this anomaly. Not from his time in the Celestial Temple, seeing all of space and time, but from a report that had crossed his desk three years into his time on Deep Space Nine. It had been flagged for him because of a few superficial similarities to the wormhole, but the most interesting thing about it had been … "Kirk," he said.

James T. Kirk had come out of the Nexus to help Picard save the Veridian system, and died in the process.

So what, Ben wondered, was he doing still in the Nexus after that point? The Prophet's attention had turned elsewhere; Ben could have asked her or any Prophet, for they were all connected to each other and to him.

But this was meant to be a learning experience, and Ben thought he would rather figure it out on his own. He dove into the Nexus, and was relieved to find that while it was infinite and nonlinear, like the Celestial Temple, it was at least a smaller infinity. Ben could wrap himself up in it and be slightly less overwhelmed.

There were Prophets here, too, though it was not their home. It was … a place of retreat? Regeneration? And they liked it best when the Nexus responded to their desires, not the desires of the corporeal, linear beings trapped inside it.

Ben's job, he realized, would be to clean it up. Put the linear beings back in the linear world, and hopefully arrange things so that they would stop falling into it. Or being killed by it.

He had all of time and space to work with—and this time, he had the opportunity to actually talk with the great Captain Kirk without having to worry about the Department of Temporal Investigations. Ben entered into Kirk's environment, and breathed a sigh of relief as it helped him gather all of himself into one moment and setting.

Kirk was sitting at a campfire, drinking a cup of coffee. He was older and stockier than he'd been when Ben had gotten his autograph at Deep Space Station K-7. He was not alone; Ambassador Spock was with him, and another man Ben recognized after a moment's contemplation as Doctor Leonard McCoy.

Neither man was actually there, of course; these were phantoms of Kirk's own mind given form by the Nexus. Kirk watched them bicker, and there was a hunger in his eyes.

Ben studied him with senses he had not possessed as a corporeal, wholly-linear being. This was not all of Kirk, he realized, but rather a fragment of him, left behind when he had left the Nexus. Kirk knew where he was, he knew none of this was real; he knew that he was alone. Given his limited perception of the Nexus, that wasn't enough to free himself.

Ben gave himself a physical body and stepped forward through the trees to the edge of the clearing.

"Hello," he said.

Kirk looked up. His companions continued their conversation, like holograms set to limited interactions. "You're new," he said. "Are you real?"

"I am," Ben said.

"You've got a Starfleet badge," Kirk said. "If you want me to help save someone or something from the Nexus I'd love to, but the last time I tried it didn't actually work. We tried to leave the Nexus and nothing happened."

"But it did," Ben said. "You and Captain Picard left the Nexus and saved Veridian IV, although you died in the process. The problem is, the Nexus is not so easy to leave. Part of you remained here."

Kirk wiped a hand over his face.

Sisko gave him a moment. How much time had it been, subjectively, for Kirk? Did he feel like it was only moments since he'd met Picard, or had he felt the years in between?

"I'm glad it worked," Kirk said. "Although part of me wishes Picard never came and told me where I was. Being trapped here was a lot nicer when I didn't know it was a trap and none of this was real. I don't suppose you have a way out of here?"

"I do," Ben said. "It's complicated, and I'm trying to figure out the best way of handling it."

Kirk waved a hand, and they were in a briefing room done with mid-23rd-Century aesthetics. Kirk himself was younger, in a gold tunic, just as he had been when Ben first met him. "If there's one thing I've got, it's time. How can I help?" He gave a wry smile.

Ben took a seat at the conference table. He could think this through on his own, of course, but it would be more interesting to do it with Kirk, and get the legend's perspective. If his adolescent self could see him now, he would be so jealous. "I'm Captain Benjamin Sisko, former commander of space station Deep Space Nine, near a planet called Bajor. I've been … adopted into a group of noncorporeal energy beings called the Prophets, who live outside of time and space and experience it all at the same time, instead of in a linear progression from one moment to the next."

"Sounds confusing," Kirk said, with the knowing air of someone who had met more than his fair share of strange things over the course of his career.

"It can be," Ben admitted. "But it means I have a much better understanding of the Nexus than you do, and can manipulate it to get everyone trapped here out of it."

"So what's the problem?" Kirk asked.

"The problem is, I'm still a Starfleet officer, sworn to uphold the Federation charter and Starfleet regulations … including the Temporal Prime Directive." Ben spread his hands. "But the Temporal Prime Directive was not designed for beings who experience time in a non-linear fashion."

Kirk cocked his head. "It assumes that you're from a specific point in time, and shouldn't change anything before that time. But if you experience all of time at once …"

"… then that doesn't work," Ben said. "Either nothing I do is temporal interference, because I'm from every bit of time I'm affecting; or everything I do is temporal interference, because I am outside of time."

"If you take all of us in here and drop us off back in the real world, no matter what time you do it, we're going to change things merely by being alive again." He looked off into space, and Ben remembered Dulmer and Lucsly's revilement of him. What had Kirk learned in those seventeen separate temporal violations?

"I could make it so that you never get swept up into the Nexus in the first place," Ben said. "But what would change because you lived? I have no idea, and you didn't live your life on a small scale—even in retirement, you could well change something major. But that applies to any point I drop you off at. Or I could take this fragment of you here, and reunite it with your whole self as you saved the Veridian system … but then you'd die."

"I don't mind dying for a good cause, but I'd rather not die if I have a choice about it," Kirk said wryly.

"And I'd rather not kill you," Ben said. "I might be able to reunite you in such a way that it changed things just enough that you wouldn't die then, but it would change things from the perspective of the time I became nonlinear—which is, I suspect, the point the Department of Temporal Investigations will use as their reference, when I return to linear, corporeal existence."

"Department of Temporal Investigations?" Kirk asked.

"That's right, they didn't exist yet in your time," Ben said. The DTI had been a fairly late development, with breaches of the Temporal Prime Directive handled by the regular Federation legal system, at first. "Lucky you. They're a department of the Federation—not Starfleet—that exists to police time travel incidents. But of course by the time they hear of something, it's already happened. And then they show up and you have to justify every detail of the mission." He shuddered. He'd gotten off lightly.

"Surely they can't be that bad," Kirk said. "It's never fun to justify yourself to bureaucrats, but there's worse things."

"True," Ben said. "But they can put in a report that will kill your career, if they don't like how you handled it, and they have no sense of humor. I was lucky, I only had to deal with them the once, and it was after a mission that had gone off without a hitch." He sighed. "And my career is well and truly off the rails in any case—officially, Starfleet has me on detached duty while I'm outside of linear time, but when I go back to corporeal existence … I'll have to resign my commission."

"Have to?" Kirk said delicately.

"I have … religious obligations, that I put off while we were at war with the Dominion," Ben said. "Even if I could do both, I have to be in the Bajor system, or close to it, and the only post there for a Starfleet captain is the command I had before I became … this." Ben gestured at himself. "From their perspective, I'm gone for … awhile. I don't know exactly how long; it's hard to judge such things, when you aren't linear." Though inside the Nexus, space and time were small and limited enough that he had a better idea. His heart sank; it was going to be longer than he had hoped. "Someone else is given command after I join the Prophets. She does a great job, but I can't just go back to my former command. Which means … resigning from Starfleet."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Kirk said. "I'm sure you're a fine officer."

Ben smiled. "Thank you. That means a lot, coming from you. I don't regret having to leave Starfleet; I almost did once before, and I have much better reasons to do so now. Still … it'll be a change."

"I do," Kirk said. "Regret having to leave Starfleet. Well, I regret having to stop serving on starships; I've been an admiral, and while I can do the work, it's not for me. I'd rather be retired than chained to a desk. But I've had a purpose all my life. Important things to do—exploring, taking care of my crew, serving the Federation. Reasons to get up out of bed in the morning, reasons to feel satisfied and accomplished when I go to bed at night. Things that matter. Things that are worth doing." He sighed. "I'm sure it'll be worse in the future. In my own time, I have my friends. In the future—well, they'll all be dead, except maybe Spock, depending on when you drop me off."

Depending on how long it took Ben to fulfill his mission with the Prophets, and how well he was able to time his re-embodiment, he might be facing similar concerns. He pushed the thought aside, as he had been doing since he had entered the wormhole. There was nothing he could do about it either way, or at least, not until he learned more about the way his time in the Celestial Temple really worked. "I wish I could drop you off back when you came from." He shook his head. "It's not the Department of Temporal Investigations I'm worried about, not really. You see, in my time, we just finished a war with a very dangerous enemy, the Dominion, who not only almost conquered the Federation, but all of the Alpha Quadrant along with us—Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, everyone. It took a miracle—literally—to win, on more than one occasion. My time with the Prophets is part of the price of that miracle. I can't jeopardize the Federation's survival, and unfortunately seeing all of space and time at once isn't enough for me to accurately predict possible effects to the timeline if I change things in the Federation or its neighbors before that victory. I see all of what is; I don't see very many of the possibilities of what might be different."

"Thank you for your honesty," Kirk said. He cocked his head and gave half a smile. "Well, I've sacrificed more for less worthy causes before. And I deeply understand about consequences you can't foresee even from something that seems like a good thing at the time."

"Oh?" Ben said. "That sounds like there's a story there."

"There is," Kirk said, and told a story about being trapped in the 1930s on Earth, and the horror of realizing that in order to save Earth from being conquered by Nazis, they had to let a deeply good person die.

Part of Ben watched it happen, even as part of him sat with Kirk in the Nexus and listened. Part of Ben reflected that Kirk was very lucky that he and the other two trapped in the past with him—Spock and McCoy, of course—could all pass for white, in 20th Century terms.

"Of course, later on, I realized that we didn't have to let Edith die after all," Kirk said, looking down and off to the side. "We could have brought her with us to the future; that would have stopped her from peace advocacy in the 1930s just as surely as her death did. She would have loved the future. She would have loved to see Earth at peace, with no hunger or want or any of the things she spent her life working to help."

With very little prodding, that led to stories of some of Kirk's other adventures in time, and other adventures in general. Ben thoroughly enjoyed the stories, particularly since he could watch them as they happened, and see the ways in which Kirk shaped the story as he told it.

"So why are you so interested in my exploits?" Kirk asked at last. "It's not that I mind telling stories, and I'm glad to talk to someone who isn't a figment of my imagination for once, but … it's hardly helping you figure out what to do about all of us stuck in here."

Ben shrugged. "The Prophets aren't what you'd call great conversationalists," he said. "And they don't really understand me or my concerns. And it's hard, being non-linear, to talk with people who are experiencing only one point of time—the Nexus makes it easier, believe it or not. It touches all of space and time, but … it's a smaller infinity, than the Celestial Temple is."

"You're lonely, too," Kirk said.

"Yes," Ben said. "When the Prophets took me, I had to leave behind my wife and children, my family, all of my friends—and you know how the officers you serve with become your family."

"I do," Kirk said. "I always knew that everything would turn out fine, as long as I had Spock and Bones with me. And it was true—when I went into the Nexus, I was alone. When I helped Picard stop Soran, I was alone."

"When I went to stop Dukat and the Pah-wraiths, I was alone," Ben said, nodding. "I stopped the Pah-wraiths and sealed them forever in the Fire Caves—they won't get to burn the universe. They'll never be able to do it; the universe will end before they are released. I'll even get to go home to my family and friends, one day. When I've finished my work for the Prophets."

"But in the meantime, you're alone," Kirk said.

"Yes," Ben said. "It's been … pleasant, to sit and talk with someone who understands."

"I'm glad to have been helpful," Kirk said. "But the sooner you get your work done, the sooner you'll be able to go back home."

"It doesn't quite work like that, when you're outside of linear time," Ben said. "But I take your point." He considered the Nexus thoughtfully. "If it had emissions that were just a bit stronger in both radio and subspace bands, more people would see it with enough time to avoid it," he said. "And if I make that adjustment early enough in the ribbon's journey through the universe, that would prevent a lot of the people in it from ever encountering it closely in the first place."

"That would definitely change the timeline," Kirk observed. "Weren't you the one who was worried about timeline changes? What if one of them is a Hitler? Or an Edith Keeler? How do you know how it will turn out?"

Ben spread his hands. "If I prevent them from going into the Nexus at all, that will change history. But it will also change history if I dump them out of it at random points in time—only then, they would be lost decades or centuries or millennia out of their own time. The fact that it won't change the past of the Federation from my perspective before I became non-linear does not mean that it won't change things. What right do I have to make my personal linear lifetime as the basis around which all of space and time revolves? To say that I can't change anything before my lifetime, but I can change things that come afterwards?"

"Either everything you do violates the Temporal Prime Directive," Kirk said, nodding, "or nothing does."

"Yes," Ben said, and realized why he had been so slow to act. Not just here, but with all the other little projects the Prophets had given—were giving, would give—him. "What right do I have to make those sorts of decisions? I'm just one human being. I see all of space and time, but that doesn't mean I understand it, and it doesn't give me any special wisdom. Who am I to make those decisions for whole civilizations of people?"

"You're the man on the spot," Kirk said. "Maybe you don't deserve to make those decisions, but who does? Maybe you're not wise enough to make those decisions, but who is? Are they the sorts of things that your 'Prophets' should be deciding instead?"

"No," Ben said. "They don't understand linear beings. Or corporeal beings. Or singular beings—they're a collective. How could they possibly understand the consequences of their decisions for linear, corporeal, singular beings?"

"Well, then," Kirk said. "Whether you have the right to make those decisions, you may have a duty to, if there's no one else who would be better at it. You'll make mistakes along the way, of course, but that's inevitable. What matters is that you pay attention and work to fix things when you do—and lucky for you, you have all of space and time to do it."

"I suppose that's true," Ben said.

"You know, I've met more than my fair share of beings with godlike powers," Kirk said. "It isn't their wisdom—or lack thereof—that's the problem. And it isn't really their power, either."

"Then what is it?" Ben asked, barely restraining himself from asking for more stories. What he needed right now was perspective, and advice.

"It's their callousness," Kirk said. "When they don't care about what their use of power does to people. That's what does the damage. As long as you're genuinely trying to do your best for the people your actions will affect, as long as you pay attention to their needs and wants and cares, there's a limit to how badly you can mess things up."

Ben thought about that. "I can watch, when I send people home, to see if it changes things for the worse, and if so, how to mitigate it."

"Yes," Kirk said. "And as for being partial, so what? That's part of being alive! Of course you have people and places that you care about more than others. Of course you have times that matter more to you than others. The only things in the universe that truly act impartially are natural forces. Stars burn according to natural principles with no regard for anyone or anything around them. You're not a star, you're a person—and a Starfleet officer."

"You know, I once said something very similar to that to the Prophets," Ben mused. "The Dominion was about to destroy the minefield around the wormhole—" he stopped at Kirk's raised eyebrows, and moved them to a place where they could see the galaxy at a scale Kirk could process. "The Dominion is a fascist empire from the Gamma Quadrant. There is a stable wormhole from Bajor to the Gamma Quadrant, which the Dominion was using to send fleets of ships through to conquer the Alpha Quadrant." As he spoke he made each place glow for Kirk, so he could see it. "The wormhole is also the home of the Prophets, whom the Bajorans worship as gods. We'd had to abandon Bajor to the Dominion, we couldn't hold the wormhole … but we'd managed to mine it so they couldn't bring more ships through."

Ben brought them closer to the B'hava'el system to watch the events around the wormhole, at a sped-up perception of time. "That held them back for a while, they could only work with what ships they already had, and the ships their allies here had. But then they figured out how to take down the mines. We were barely holding our own. If they could have brought through as many ships as they wanted, it would be all over for the Federation—and for Bajor. We launched a fleet in a desperate attempt to get there and retake the wormhole. It almost worked, but we were too late." They watched the battle. Ben felt his desperation and pain and single-minded focus all over again. He watched as all those ships—and their crews—died so that the Defiant could reach the wormhole.

Rather than narrate what happened next, he brought Kirk along to watch.

"What about Bajor?" Benjamin Sisko said, as Benjamin Sisko watched."You can't tell me Bajor doesn't concern you. You've sent the Bajorans Orbs, and Emissaries—you've even encouraged them to create an entire religion around you!"

Corporeal, linear Benjamin Sisko was not aware of non-linear Benjamin Sisko watching him, nor of Kirk's presence, but the Prophets were. They didn't approve of him bringing an outsider to watch this, but they did not disapprove strongly enough to do anything about it.

"You even told me once that you were 'of Bajor'," his linear self insisted, "so don't you tell me, you're not concerned with corporeal matters! I don't want to see Bajor destroyed. Neither do you—but we all know that's exactly what's going to happen if the Dominion takes over the Alpha Quadrant! You say you don't want me to sacrifice my life—well fine! Neither do I. You want to be gods? Then be gods! I need a miracle. Bajor needs a miracle—stop those ships!" It was interesting, the things he couldn't perceive the first time he'd experienced this moment. The Prophets were both more and less powerful than he had believed. More, because he couldn't comprehend the vastness of time in the way they perceived it; less, because he couldn't comprehend what it was like to be a being of pure energy, not merely non-corporeal but never corporeal.

The Prophets didn't understand matter, for precisely the same reason they did not understand linearity.

How does a collective of energy, which has never been connected to matter in any way, destroy a fleet of ships? How do they know what to do?

Simple: get a being of matter, a linear being, and make it part of themselves.

As the Prophets discussed how intrusive and controlling Benjamin Sisko was, what penance must be enacted for his demand that the Prophets change their very nature in order to save Bajor, Benjamin Sisko reached out to the Dominion fleet in the wormhole and began unraveling the atoms that made up the ships and people aboard them.

This was the penance required: not because, or not only because, the Prophets were upset that he demanded their intervention in corporeal matters. But also because their intervention in corporeal matters could not be done—or could not be done effectively—without him being the one to do them.

The Sisko: human, but with a Prophet feeding him a little bit of their essence to him even as he nursed at his mother's breast. Not enough to be noticeable to other humans or even to himself, but enough that when the time came, he could make the transition from linearity and corporeality into the same sort of being the Prophets were, without losing too much of himself in the process. An interface, between them and the rest of a universe they could see but not understand enough to affect.

Benjamin Sisko demanded the Prophets intervene. Benjamin Sisko was the Prophet who intervened

Ben turned away and brought himself and Kirk back to the Nexus. They had seen what they needed to see—and Ben had done what he needed to do. The Federation was saved. And he knew why he was here.

"I see what you mean," Kirk said. "That was quite a speech you gave." His smile was warm, approving, and Ben smiled in return.

"But what if I go too far? I'm not a god," Ben said. The lingering doubts swirled in his mind, and he feared that if he lost them he would lose too much of his humanity.

"Of course not," Kirk said. "People who want power for power's sake—who want that kind of control over the world and other people—usually can't be trusted with it. If you did want it, Starfleet would never have let you rise to the rank of captain. We've learned from our mistakes. But that doesn't change the fact that whether or not you sought this power, you have it. If you have it … you have a responsibility to use it, and use it well. Not for personal aggrandizement, or to make yourself or the Federation the bully with the biggest stick. But to help people live in safety and harmony, free from fear or want or cruelty. I think you'll do well."

"Thank you," Ben said. "That means a lot, coming from you."

"I'm not surprised to hear it," Kirk said. "I don't think, deep down, you needed me to tell you any of this. You were more interested in hearing my stories than discussing your problem, despite that being why you said you wanted to talk. I've been kind of wondering if you'd ask for my autograph."

"That, I already have," Ben admitted. "I mentioned a previous mission that involved time travel, and the Department of Temporal Investigation afterwards?"

Kirk frowned. He looked Ben up and down. "Deep Space Station K-7! The incident with the Tribbles!"

"You remember?" Ben asked.

"Enterprise had a crew of 430, and we didn't get that many transfers in and out over the course of our exploratory mission," Kirk said. "When we got new faces, those faces stuck around. You didn't. And now I suppose I know why."

"Please don't tell the Department of Temporal Investigation that you remember me," Ben said. "They were upset that I caught your attention long enough to get your autograph."

Kirk chuckled. "I won't. I suppose I'd have done the same, if I'd found myself on Archer's Enterprise. But now I have to know: what were you doing there in the first place?"

Ben explained about Barry Waddle, a.k.a Arne Darvin, and his desire to retroactively make himself a hero by altering the timeline, and what they'd had to do to stop him.

While he was doing that, he altered the Nexus so that it would be easier to sense and avoid … but not so much so as to avoid the incident with the El-Aurian refugees which incited Soran's work and the destruction of the Enterprise-D.

Most of the beings trapped inside the Nexus vanished, never having been there at all. Others remained, and Ben fixed that, too, altering as little as possible while still preventing them from falling into the Nexus. The El-Aurians were the easiest to handle; they were naturally more attuned to the larger space-time continuum than most nonlinear beings, and he could simply re-unite them with the part of themselves who had been rescued.

When all was done, and Ben was finished telling the story of their experience with the Orb of Time, he smiled at Kirk. "Thank you for the company, and the stories, and the advice," he said.

"You're welcome," Kirk said. "Thanks for the rescue."

They shook hands. Ben reunited this fragment of him with the rest of himself, fighting Soran on Veridian III, and shifted things just enough so that he didn't die.

Ben watched, satisfied, as the Nexus continued on its way—now safe from corporeal beings.

He turned to the next project the Prophets had in mind for him.

[polluxian-keith]

can't believe that sisko got electrocuted by a plasma beam and it made him autistic which allowed him find the lost city of b'hala

[boreal-sea]

#star trek#ds9#star trek ds9#deep space nine#major kira nerys#free palestine#israel is committing genocide

Yeah see for your example to work, Cardassians would have to be native to Bajor - which was actually originally called Cardassia.

Cardassians would have to be the original people who found the orbs and founded the religion of the Prophets. Cardassians are the ones who built the ancient city of B'hala. Many of the ancient holy sites on the planet would be Cardassian, not Bajoran.

Then, the Bajorans came along and kicked the Cardassians off the planet. And then the Cardassians faced hundreds of years of persecution in the diaspora. And they don't have a powerful empire, in fact, they only constitute 0.2% of the population of the galaxy.

Then one planet tried to do interstellar war and also tried to kill all the Cardassais. After this, the Federation decided to help them return to Cardassia, which had been renamed Bajor by the Bajorans.

In this case, the Bajorans are actually the ones with an empire and many planets and military forces under their control. The Bajorans attack the newly returned Cardassians, but the Cardassians fend them off. And then the Bajorans spend the next 50 years funding terrorist groups on the planet in an attempt to force the Cardassians to leave the Cardassian homeworld again.

Is that really the metaphor you're going for here?

Sometimes I think about how Star Trek Deep Space Nine depicted the Bajorans as having just come out of a 50 yr long brutal fascist, colonial, genocidal occupation that they used terrorism (the show explicitly used this word) to kick out.

And how the show depicts this as unquestionably a good thing.

One of the lead characters in the show, Major Kira, was a "terrorist", and we're not meant to think less of her because of it. She was resisting the occupation of her home!

[usstrekart]

“Rapture” (S05E10, Stardate Unknown) is a phenomenal episode containing Federation and Bajoran politics, deep conversations, spiritualism, family and so much more. And at the core is a struggle between balancing faith, duty and family. Every time I watch Rapture I gain something new from the experience.

[mythomagically-delicious]

Season 1 Kira: “It was so much easier when I knew who my enemy was.”

Season 5 Kai Winn: “I knew who my enemies were. But now...nothing is certain.”

Season 1 Kira looking between the Federation, the Cardassians, and Bajor’s own splinter groups (former friends and former fighters alongside her) and trying to figure out where her loyalties lie in accordance with what is best for Bajor.

Season 5 Kai Winn looking between all she has done up to this point to gain power, and comparing it to all she has suffered in the past. From the beatings she suffered in the (5 years of) Cardassian labor camp, to her faith in the Prophets, to Kira and Sisko and how she feels of their interference/assistance in many matters. 

Both of these women are on the verge of decisions that will allow them to walk a better path. Kira is deciding to allow herself to trust Sisko and do what is best for Bajor, even if it means turning her back on those she used to know.

Kai Winn is on the verge of rethinking all of her past aggression toward the federation, toward Sisko and Kira especially, as B’hala has been discovered and it changes so much in terms of who they were as a people. Except it might mean turning her back to the power she fought so desperately for, and she isn’t ready to surrender that (in fact, she never is able to do this).

[douxreviews]

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - ‘Rapture’ Review

When Sisko gets struck by inspiration – and lightning – he begins to experience visions of the past and future, and finds a mysterious lost Bajoran city, B'hala.

Critic's Log, Stardate 20208.15. The Prophet is an important part of Ben Sisko, but I'm not going to pretend it's one I fully understand, and my lack of understanding is a wonderful thing. It's one thing when understanding is muddied by poor writing or acting; that's not the case here. Instead religion and mystery come together with science fiction to create a sense of wonder in this episode.

When the fortunes of the occupation and independence bring an ancient Bajoran relic home, Sisko uses holodeck technology to discover a clue to the location of an important Bajoran spiritual center, B'hala, a lost city. In the process there's some sort of technical glitch (or is it?) and Sisko experiences an electrifying shock which leave him, ironically–given his use of future technology to identify the location of a past city– inspired by the finding of a relic from the past with the ability to perceive truths about the future.

Read the full review at douxreviews.com

[dgcatanisiri]

Cestus III's Pike City Pioneers and Bajor's B'hala Buccaneers are the opening match of the UFP's renewed Major League Baseball.

One of the last things we saw of Kira in DS9 was her tossing Sisko's baseball. And it was very appropriate to see her doing that when we see her again for the first time in Lower Decks.

And over the years, people in the DS9 fandom have mused that baseballs took on religious significance to the Bajoran people because of Sisko. Personally, I don't think that would be the case. Bajorans may be very spiritual but they're not ignorant.

Instead, I'd like to think that the story of Sisko leaving his baseball in his office during the Dominion occupation as a promise that he would return spread across Bajor. And some Bajorans copied the replicator patterns for baseballs from DS9 and installed them on replicators on Bajor. And whenever a Bajoran wants to demonstrate their intent to return to some place they're leaving, they leave behind a baseball. So baseballs on Bajor have emotional but not religious significance.

[trekfm]

133: We All Put Our Faith in Something

The Emissary’s prophecies.

In “The Reckoning,” Doctor Bashir said that if you look hard enough, you'll find a Bajoran prophecy for just about anything. The Ancient Texts, he feels, are a tangle of vague contradictions. But that's not everyone's view—certainly not if you are Major Kira or Kai Winn. The list of believers extended to include Captain Sisko in “Rapture,” when his discovery of the lost city of B'hala solidified his acceptance of his connection to the Prophets. The visions that led to the find also ended Bajor's impending entry into the Federation and almost cost Sisko his life.

In this episode of The Orb, hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing discuss the events of “Rapture” as we explore the role of faith and spirituality in Deep Space Nine, Roddenberry's vision of the future and how religion has been portrayed throughout Star Trek, as well as how the story of Bajor, the Federation, and Sisko's journey balances the natural and supernatural to allow people with diverse backgrounds and beliefs to work together.

Hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing

Production C Bryan Jones (Editor and Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Norman C. Lao (Associate Producer)

New podcast episode:

[screamingay]

b'hala is so pretty i hope they find it

[boreal-sea]

He's an outsider who is told he is the prophet of a group of oppressed people only to discover he is in fact a part of those people ("You are of Bajor"). He can directly talk to the Prophets, something very uncommon for the average Bajoran. There are other religious members of the Bajorans jealous of his special relationship with the Prophets. The Prophets occasionally give him gifts that could be considered magical powers. He finds their ancient holy land and leads them back to B'hala.

AND

most critically

Due to his own choices when he asks a great miracle from the Prophets, he is denied access to find rest on Bajor. He is taken up by the Prophets instead.

Like.

Sisko is very inspired by Moses.

I know people joke and compare Sisko to "Space Jesus" but he's way WAY more similar to Space Moses in like, literally every single way.

[beatrice-otter]

Fic: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

fandom5k authors have revealed! So I can reveal what I wrote. First of all, thank you to my recip violet_pencil for having some great prompts, that was lovely. It's such a help to get an idea that inspires me, but which I also know my recip will also like. The relationship and pairing sent me in a direction I'd never considered before, and also I think in the process I figured out a bit more of why the Prophets are the way they are and why Sisko is important to them.

Title: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Author: Beatrice_otter Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Characters: James T. Kirk, Benjamin Sisko Written For: violet_pencil in Fandom 5k 2024 Rating: Gen Length: 5,787 words Betaed by: Greenygal

On AO3. On Squidgeworld. On Ad Astra. On Dreamwidth. Rebloggable on Pillowfort.

Benjamin Sisko was watching the heat death of the universe. Benjamin Sisko was helping the Bantaca Spire be erected in B'Hala. Benjamin Sisko was trying to comfort Kasidy over his entering the Celestial Temple, and failing because he could not collect enough of himself in one time and one place to give her the attention and care she needed. Benjamin Sisko was watching Cardassian soldiers use tractor beams and force-fields to remove the Orb of Harmony from the ruins of the monastery at Choddosh. Benjamin Sisko was in the Celestial Temple, teaching the Prophets about linearity for the first time using baseball as a metaphor. Benjamin Sisko was watching Kai Kira direct the Vedek Assembly to begin considering her successor, because she was going to retire to the monastery of Basyo Ume in nine weeks. Benjamin Sisko was watching the star that would one day be named B'hava'el coalesce and begin to burn.

Benjamin Sisko was no longer corporeal, but he had a headache anyway.

"The Sisko is overwhelmed."

Ben turned to face the Prophet who had once possessed his biological mother. "Yes," he said.

"Why?" she asked. "The Sisko is no longer linear."

"But I am," he said. "Not as linear as I once was, but … if I had left it behind completely, you would not be wearing that face, or speaking."

The Prophets had no language; they didn't need it. Individuality, like linearity, was something the Prophets didn't quite understand. They needed language no more than the different spores of a fungus needed it. What one knew, or thought, the others could sense as part of themselves.

"The Sisko has many tasks to perform," the Prophet said. She studied him. "The Sisko is doing them well. Yet the Sisko is overwhelmed."

Ben thought it through. "I am doing them well—because you see them as I am doing them, in the future, from my perspective."

"Yes," she said.

"You're asking … how is it that you know I am capable of doing things and learning your way of seeing the universe, but am also having problems."

"Yes."

"That's not how it works for linear beings," Benjamin said. "We develop and grow over time. We learn things. We start out, as infants, knowing nothing and capable of nothing. As we grow, we gain skills and knowledge by trying, by failing, by doing things many times until we have mastered a skill."

Ben brought them to the park where his father was teaching him how to throw a baseball. Five-year-old Benjamin had thrown other things, of course, but nothing with the same size and mass and heft. Most of his throws went wild, and Joseph patiently practiced with him, giving him tips, encouraging him.

Ben and the Prophet watched the child he had been over months and years, learning to throw the ball, learning to hit a ball off a tee, learning to hit a ball thrown at him.

"These tasks are more difficult for you because your body is not fully developed," the Prophet observed.

"True," Ben said, and moved them to the Academy gym where he had learned hand-to-hand combat. "But when I learned to fight, I was at the peak of my physical prowess. Adult but young, strong, dedicated—I'd done running and weightlifting and other sports in high school. And still," he nodded at his younger self, "you see how I struggled. How much time and effort and practice it took me to learn how to do it. Academically, it was the same. I learned a great deal in my time at the Academy—because I studied. Because I practiced using the knowledge."

They watched him in flight simulators, in classrooms, and finally in holodeck models of various ships learning to fix everything from hull breaches to fluctuations in the warp core. "When I started with the practical engineering scenarios, I knew the books backwards and forwards, because I'd spent months—years—preparing and learning everything I could about ships. Even so, learning to translate that to practical action took time, and repetition."

"The Sisko has had time to learn here," the Prophet said. "The Sisko has all of time to learn here.

"But all of it at once."

The Prophet studied him. "You want something smaller. Simpler. A … 'beginner project.'"

"That would be very helpful," Ben said.

The Prophet took them to a place that was like the Celestial Temple, but smaller. It, too, was outside of time and space; it, too, was anchored to one physical location (though that physical location traveled through the galaxy and would one day pass beyond it). Still, it was more tightly bounded; the connections to time and space were weaker. And it was … simpler. It was alive, but it had no sentience.

The Prophet observed the place she'd shown him, and he could sense her affection for it. And her frustration. Very like the way his sister Judith had looked at her dog Sadie when Sadie had chewed up her slippers.

There were people in the simpler anomaly, but they were not like the Prophets. They could not see it for what it was.

"How did they get in here?" he asked, scrutinizing them. "They're not from here, they're linear. Corporeal." Although not very linear; they tended to replay the same few events, time after time. Whole worlds in a bottle, visions that they could not always tell from reality.

"This ribbon does not have the capacity to make its entrance safe for things and beings of matter," the Prophet said, pointing out the great rip in space and time that was the point where the infinite interfaced with the finite.

Ben studied it, and saw the problem, and also realized that he knew this anomaly. Not from his time in the Celestial Temple, seeing all of space and time, but from a report that had crossed his desk three years into his time on Deep Space Nine. It had been flagged for him because of a few superficial similarities to the wormhole, but the most interesting thing about it had been … "Kirk," he said.

James T. Kirk had come out of the Nexus to help Picard save the Veridian system, and died in the process.

So what, Ben wondered, was he doing still in the Nexus after that point? The Prophet's attention had turned elsewhere; Ben could have asked her or any Prophet, for they were all connected to each other and to him.

But this was meant to be a learning experience, and Ben thought he would rather figure it out on his own. He dove into the Nexus, and was relieved to find that while it was infinite and nonlinear, like the Celestial Temple, it was at least a smaller infinity. Ben could wrap himself up in it and be slightly less overwhelmed.

There were Prophets here, too, though it was not their home. It was … a place of retreat? Regeneration? And they liked it best when the Nexus responded to their desires, not the desires of the corporeal, linear beings trapped inside it.

Ben's job, he realized, would be to clean it up. Put the linear beings back in the linear world, and hopefully arrange things so that they would stop falling into it. Or being killed by it.

He had all of time and space to work with—and this time, he had the opportunity to actually talk with the great Captain Kirk without having to worry about the Department of Temporal Investigations. Ben entered into Kirk's environment, and breathed a sigh of relief as it helped him gather all of himself into one moment and setting.

Kirk was sitting at a campfire, drinking a cup of coffee. He was older and stockier than he'd been when Ben had gotten his autograph at Deep Space Station K-7. He was not alone; Ambassador Spock was with him, and another man Ben recognized after a moment's contemplation as Doctor Leonard McCoy.

Neither man was actually there, of course; these were phantoms of Kirk's own mind given form by the Nexus. Kirk watched them bicker, and there was a hunger in his eyes.

Ben studied him with senses he had not possessed as a corporeal, wholly-linear being. This was not all of Kirk, he realized, but rather a fragment of him, left behind when he had left the Nexus. Kirk knew where he was, he knew none of this was real; he knew that he was alone. Given his limited perception of the Nexus, that wasn't enough to free himself.

Ben gave himself a physical body and stepped forward through the trees to the edge of the clearing.

"Hello," he said.

Kirk looked up. His companions continued their conversation, like holograms set to limited interactions. "You're new," he said. "Are you real?"

"I am," Ben said.

"You've got a Starfleet badge," Kirk said. "If you want me to help save someone or something from the Nexus I'd love to, but the last time I tried it didn't actually work. We tried to leave the Nexus and nothing happened."

"But it did," Ben said. "You and Captain Picard left the Nexus and saved Veridian IV, although you died in the process. The problem is, the Nexus is not so easy to leave. Part of you remained here."

Kirk wiped a hand over his face.

Sisko gave him a moment. How much time had it been, subjectively, for Kirk? Did he feel like it was only moments since he'd met Picard, or had he felt the years in between?

"I'm glad it worked," Kirk said. "Although part of me wishes Picard never came and told me where I was. Being trapped here was a lot nicer when I didn't know it was a trap and none of this was real. I don't suppose you have a way out of here?"

"I do," Ben said. "It's complicated, and I'm trying to figure out the best way of handling it."

Kirk waved a hand, and they were in a briefing room done with mid-23rd-Century aesthetics. Kirk himself was younger, in a gold tunic, just as he had been when Ben first met him. "If there's one thing I've got, it's time. How can I help?" He gave a wry smile.

Ben took a seat at the conference table. He could think this through on his own, of course, but it would be more interesting to do it with Kirk, and get the legend's perspective. If his adolescent self could see him now, he would be so jealous. "I'm Captain Benjamin Sisko, former commander of space station Deep Space Nine, near a planet called Bajor. I've been … adopted into a group of noncorporeal energy beings called the Prophets, who live outside of time and space and experience it all at the same time, instead of in a linear progression from one moment to the next."

"Sounds confusing," Kirk said, with the knowing air of someone who had met more than his fair share of strange things over the course of his career.

"It can be," Ben admitted. "But it means I have a much better understanding of the Nexus than you do, and can manipulate it to get everyone trapped here out of it."

"So what's the problem?" Kirk asked.

"The problem is, I'm still a Starfleet officer, sworn to uphold the Federation charter and Starfleet regulations … including the Temporal Prime Directive." Ben spread his hands. "But the Temporal Prime Directive was not designed for beings who experience time in a non-linear fashion."

Kirk cocked his head. "It assumes that you're from a specific point in time, and shouldn't change anything before that time. But if you experience all of time at once …"

"… then that doesn't work," Ben said. "Either nothing I do is temporal interference, because I'm from every bit of time I'm affecting; or everything I do is temporal interference, because I am outside of time."

"If you take all of us in here and drop us off back in the real world, no matter what time you do it, we're going to change things merely by being alive again." He looked off into space, and Ben remembered Dulmer and Lucsly's revilement of him. What had Kirk learned in those seventeen separate temporal violations?

"I could make it so that you never get swept up into the Nexus in the first place," Ben said. "But what would change because you lived? I have no idea, and you didn't live your life on a small scale—even in retirement, you could well change something major. But that applies to any point I drop you off at. Or I could take this fragment of you here, and reunite it with your whole self as you saved the Veridian system … but then you'd die."

"I don't mind dying for a good cause, but I'd rather not die if I have a choice about it," Kirk said wryly.

"And I'd rather not kill you," Ben said. "I might be able to reunite you in such a way that it changed things just enough that you wouldn't die then, but it would change things from the perspective of the time I became nonlinear—which is, I suspect, the point the Department of Temporal Investigations will use as their reference, when I return to linear, corporeal existence."

"Department of Temporal Investigations?" Kirk asked.

"That's right, they didn't exist yet in your time," Ben said. The DTI had been a fairly late development, with breaches of the Temporal Prime Directive handled by the regular Federation legal system, at first. "Lucky you. They're a department of the Federation—not Starfleet—that exists to police time travel incidents. But of course by the time they hear of something, it's already happened. And then they show up and you have to justify every detail of the mission." He shuddered. He'd gotten off lightly.

"Surely they can't be that bad," Kirk said. "It's never fun to justify yourself to bureaucrats, but there's worse things."

"True," Ben said. "But they can put in a report that will kill your career, if they don't like how you handled it, and they have no sense of humor. I was lucky, I only had to deal with them the once, and it was after a mission that had gone off without a hitch." He sighed. "And my career is well and truly off the rails in any case—officially, Starfleet has me on detached duty while I'm outside of linear time, but when I go back to corporeal existence … I'll have to resign my commission."

"Have to?" Kirk said delicately.

"I have … religious obligations, that I put off while we were at war with the Dominion," Ben said. "Even if I could do both, I have to be in the Bajor system, or close to it, and the only post there for a Starfleet captain is the command I had before I became … this." Ben gestured at himself. "From their perspective, I'm gone for … awhile. I don't know exactly how long; it's hard to judge such things, when you aren't linear." Though inside the Nexus, space and time were small and limited enough that he had a better idea. His heart sank; it was going to be longer than he had hoped. "Someone else is given command after I join the Prophets. She does a great job, but I can't just go back to my former command. Which means … resigning from Starfleet."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Kirk said. "I'm sure you're a fine officer."

Ben smiled. "Thank you. That means a lot, coming from you. I don't regret having to leave Starfleet; I almost did once before, and I have much better reasons to do so now. Still … it'll be a change."

"I do," Kirk said. "Regret having to leave Starfleet. Well, I regret having to stop serving on starships; I've been an admiral, and while I can do the work, it's not for me. I'd rather be retired than chained to a desk. But I've had a purpose all my life. Important things to do—exploring, taking care of my crew, serving the Federation. Reasons to get up out of bed in the morning, reasons to feel satisfied and accomplished when I go to bed at night. Things that matter. Things that are worth doing." He sighed. "I'm sure it'll be worse in the future. In my own time, I have my friends. In the future—well, they'll all be dead, except maybe Spock, depending on when you drop me off."

Depending on how long it took Ben to fulfill his mission with the Prophets, and how well he was able to time his re-embodiment, he might be facing similar concerns. He pushed the thought aside, as he had been doing since he had entered the wormhole. There was nothing he could do about it either way, or at least, not until he learned more about the way his time in the Celestial Temple really worked. "I wish I could drop you off back when you came from." He shook his head. "It's not the Department of Temporal Investigations I'm worried about, not really. You see, in my time, we just finished a war with a very dangerous enemy, the Dominion, who not only almost conquered the Federation, but all of the Alpha Quadrant along with us—Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, everyone. It took a miracle—literally—to win, on more than one occasion. My time with the Prophets is part of the price of that miracle. I can't jeopardize the Federation's survival, and unfortunately seeing all of space and time at once isn't enough for me to accurately predict possible effects to the timeline if I change things in the Federation or its neighbors before that victory. I see all of what is; I don't see very many of the possibilities of what might be different."

"Thank you for your honesty," Kirk said. He cocked his head and gave half a smile. "Well, I've sacrificed more for less worthy causes before. And I deeply understand about consequences you can't foresee even from something that seems like a good thing at the time."

"Oh?" Ben said. "That sounds like there's a story there."

"There is," Kirk said, and told a story about being trapped in the 1930s on Earth, and the horror of realizing that in order to save Earth from being conquered by Nazis, they had to let a deeply good person die.

Part of Ben watched it happen, even as part of him sat with Kirk in the Nexus and listened. Part of Ben reflected that Kirk was very lucky that he and the other two trapped in the past with him—Spock and McCoy, of course—could all pass for white, in 20th Century terms.

"Of course, later on, I realized that we didn't have to let Edith die after all," Kirk said, looking down and off to the side. "We could have brought her with us to the future; that would have stopped her from peace advocacy in the 1930s just as surely as her death did. She would have loved the future. She would have loved to see Earth at peace, with no hunger or want or any of the things she spent her life working to help."

With very little prodding, that led to stories of some of Kirk's other adventures in time, and other adventures in general. Ben thoroughly enjoyed the stories, particularly since he could watch them as they happened, and see the ways in which Kirk shaped the story as he told it.

"So why are you so interested in my exploits?" Kirk asked at last. "It's not that I mind telling stories, and I'm glad to talk to someone who isn't a figment of my imagination for once, but … it's hardly helping you figure out what to do about all of us stuck in here."

Ben shrugged. "The Prophets aren't what you'd call great conversationalists," he said. "And they don't really understand me or my concerns. And it's hard, being non-linear, to talk with people who are experiencing only one point of time—the Nexus makes it easier, believe it or not. It touches all of space and time, but … it's a smaller infinity, than the Celestial Temple is."

"You're lonely, too," Kirk said.

"Yes," Ben said. "When the Prophets took me, I had to leave behind my wife and children, my family, all of my friends—and you know how the officers you serve with become your family."

"I do," Kirk said. "I always knew that everything would turn out fine, as long as I had Spock and Bones with me. And it was true—when I went into the Nexus, I was alone. When I helped Picard stop Soran, I was alone."

"When I went to stop Dukat and the Pah-wraiths, I was alone," Ben said, nodding. "I stopped the Pah-wraiths and sealed them forever in the Fire Caves—they won't get to burn the universe. They'll never be able to do it; the universe will end before they are released. I'll even get to go home to my family and friends, one day. When I've finished my work for the Prophets."

"But in the meantime, you're alone," Kirk said.

"Yes," Ben said. "It's been … pleasant, to sit and talk with someone who understands."

"I'm glad to have been helpful," Kirk said. "But the sooner you get your work done, the sooner you'll be able to go back home."

"It doesn't quite work like that, when you're outside of linear time," Ben said. "But I take your point." He considered the Nexus thoughtfully. "If it had emissions that were just a bit stronger in both radio and subspace bands, more people would see it with enough time to avoid it," he said. "And if I make that adjustment early enough in the ribbon's journey through the universe, that would prevent a lot of the people in it from ever encountering it closely in the first place."

"That would definitely change the timeline," Kirk observed. "Weren't you the one who was worried about timeline changes? What if one of them is a Hitler? Or an Edith Keeler? How do you know how it will turn out?"

Ben spread his hands. "If I prevent them from going into the Nexus at all, that will change history. But it will also change history if I dump them out of it at random points in time—only then, they would be lost decades or centuries or millennia out of their own time. The fact that it won't change the past of the Federation from my perspective before I became non-linear does not mean that it won't change things. What right do I have to make my personal linear lifetime as the basis around which all of space and time revolves? To say that I can't change anything before my lifetime, but I can change things that come afterwards?"

"Either everything you do violates the Temporal Prime Directive," Kirk said, nodding, "or nothing does."

"Yes," Ben said, and realized why he had been so slow to act. Not just here, but with all the other little projects the Prophets had given—were giving, would give—him. "What right do I have to make those sorts of decisions? I'm just one human being. I see all of space and time, but that doesn't mean I understand it, and it doesn't give me any special wisdom. Who am I to make those decisions for whole civilizations of people?"

"You're the man on the spot," Kirk said. "Maybe you don't deserve to make those decisions, but who does? Maybe you're not wise enough to make those decisions, but who is? Are they the sorts of things that your 'Prophets' should be deciding instead?"

"No," Ben said. "They don't understand linear beings. Or corporeal beings. Or singular beings—they're a collective. How could they possibly understand the consequences of their decisions for linear, corporeal, singular beings?"

"Well, then," Kirk said. "Whether you have the right to make those decisions, you may have a duty to, if there's no one else who would be better at it. You'll make mistakes along the way, of course, but that's inevitable. What matters is that you pay attention and work to fix things when you do—and lucky for you, you have all of space and time to do it."

"I suppose that's true," Ben said.

"You know, I've met more than my fair share of beings with godlike powers," Kirk said. "It isn't their wisdom—or lack thereof—that's the problem. And it isn't really their power, either."

"Then what is it?" Ben asked, barely restraining himself from asking for more stories. What he needed right now was perspective, and advice.

"It's their callousness," Kirk said. "When they don't care about what their use of power does to people. That's what does the damage. As long as you're genuinely trying to do your best for the people your actions will affect, as long as you pay attention to their needs and wants and cares, there's a limit to how badly you can mess things up."

Ben thought about that. "I can watch, when I send people home, to see if it changes things for the worse, and if so, how to mitigate it."

"Yes," Kirk said. "And as for being partial, so what? That's part of being alive! Of course you have people and places that you care about more than others. Of course you have times that matter more to you than others. The only things in the universe that truly act impartially are natural forces. Stars burn according to natural principles with no regard for anyone or anything around them. You're not a star, you're a person—and a Starfleet officer."

"You know, I once said something very similar to that to the Prophets," Ben mused. "The Dominion was about to destroy the minefield around the wormhole—" he stopped at Kirk's raised eyebrows, and moved them to a place where they could see the galaxy at a scale Kirk could process. "The Dominion is a fascist empire from the Gamma Quadrant. There is a stable wormhole from Bajor to the Gamma Quadrant, which the Dominion was using to send fleets of ships through to conquer the Alpha Quadrant." As he spoke he made each place glow for Kirk, so he could see it. "The wormhole is also the home of the Prophets, whom the Bajorans worship as gods. We'd had to abandon Bajor to the Dominion, we couldn't hold the wormhole … but we'd managed to mine it so they couldn't bring more ships through."

Ben brought them closer to the B'hava'el system to watch the events around the wormhole, at a sped-up perception of time. "That held them back for a while, they could only work with what ships they already had, and the ships their allies here had. But then they figured out how to take down the mines. We were barely holding our own. If they could have brought through as many ships as they wanted, it would be all over for the Federation—and for Bajor. We launched a fleet in a desperate attempt to get there and retake the wormhole. It almost worked, but we were too late." They watched the battle. Ben felt his desperation and pain and single-minded focus all over again. He watched as all those ships—and their crews—died so that the Defiant could reach the wormhole.

Rather than narrate what happened next, he brought Kirk along to watch.

"What about Bajor?" Benjamin Sisko said, as Benjamin Sisko watched."You can't tell me Bajor doesn't concern you. You've sent the Bajorans Orbs, and Emissaries—you've even encouraged them to create an entire religion around you!"

Corporeal, linear Benjamin Sisko was not aware of non-linear Benjamin Sisko watching him, nor of Kirk's presence, but the Prophets were. They didn't approve of him bringing an outsider to watch this, but they did not disapprove strongly enough to do anything about it.

"You even told me once that you were 'of Bajor'," his linear self insisted, "so don't you tell me, you're not concerned with corporeal matters! I don't want to see Bajor destroyed. Neither do you—but we all know that's exactly what's going to happen if the Dominion takes over the Alpha Quadrant! You say you don't want me to sacrifice my life—well fine! Neither do I. You want to be gods? Then be gods! I need a miracle. Bajor needs a miracle—stop those ships!" It was interesting, the things he couldn't perceive the first time he'd experienced this moment. The Prophets were both more and less powerful than he had believed. More, because he couldn't comprehend the vastness of time in the way they perceived it; less, because he couldn't comprehend what it was like to be a being of pure energy, not merely non-corporeal but never corporeal.

The Prophets didn't understand matter, for precisely the same reason they did not understand linearity.

How does a collective of energy, which has never been connected to matter in any way, destroy a fleet of ships? How do they know what to do?

Simple: get a being of matter, a linear being, and make it part of themselves.

As the Prophets discussed how intrusive and controlling Benjamin Sisko was, what penance must be enacted for his demand that the Prophets change their very nature in order to save Bajor, Benjamin Sisko reached out to the Dominion fleet in the wormhole and began unraveling the atoms that made up the ships and people aboard them.

This was the penance required: not because, or not only because, the Prophets were upset that he demanded their intervention in corporeal matters. But also because their intervention in corporeal matters could not be done—or could not be done effectively—without him being the one to do them.

The Sisko: human, but with a Prophet feeding him a little bit of their essence to him even as he nursed at his mother's breast. Not enough to be noticeable to other humans or even to himself, but enough that when the time came, he could make the transition from linearity and corporeality into the same sort of being the Prophets were, without losing too much of himself in the process. An interface, between them and the rest of a universe they could see but not understand enough to affect.

Benjamin Sisko demanded the Prophets intervene. Benjamin Sisko was the Prophet who intervened

Ben turned away and brought himself and Kirk back to the Nexus. They had seen what they needed to see—and Ben had done what he needed to do. The Federation was saved. And he knew why he was here.

"I see what you mean," Kirk said. "That was quite a speech you gave." His smile was warm, approving, and Ben smiled in return.

"But what if I go too far? I'm not a god," Ben said. The lingering doubts swirled in his mind, and he feared that if he lost them he would lose too much of his humanity.

"Of course not," Kirk said. "People who want power for power's sake—who want that kind of control over the world and other people—usually can't be trusted with it. If you did want it, Starfleet would never have let you rise to the rank of captain. We've learned from our mistakes. But that doesn't change the fact that whether or not you sought this power, you have it. If you have it … you have a responsibility to use it, and use it well. Not for personal aggrandizement, or to make yourself or the Federation the bully with the biggest stick. But to help people live in safety and harmony, free from fear or want or cruelty. I think you'll do well."

"Thank you," Ben said. "That means a lot, coming from you."

"I'm not surprised to hear it," Kirk said. "I don't think, deep down, you needed me to tell you any of this. You were more interested in hearing my stories than discussing your problem, despite that being why you said you wanted to talk. I've been kind of wondering if you'd ask for my autograph."

"That, I already have," Ben admitted. "I mentioned a previous mission that involved time travel, and the Department of Temporal Investigation afterwards?"

Kirk frowned. He looked Ben up and down. "Deep Space Station K-7! The incident with the Tribbles!"

"You remember?" Ben asked.

"Enterprise had a crew of 430, and we didn't get that many transfers in and out over the course of our exploratory mission," Kirk said. "When we got new faces, those faces stuck around. You didn't. And now I suppose I know why."

"Please don't tell the Department of Temporal Investigation that you remember me," Ben said. "They were upset that I caught your attention long enough to get your autograph."

Kirk chuckled. "I won't. I suppose I'd have done the same, if I'd found myself on Archer's Enterprise. But now I have to know: what were you doing there in the first place?"

Ben explained about Barry Waddle, a.k.a Arne Darvin, and his desire to retroactively make himself a hero by altering the timeline, and what they'd had to do to stop him.

While he was doing that, he altered the Nexus so that it would be easier to sense and avoid … but not so much so as to avoid the incident with the El-Aurian refugees which incited Soran's work and the destruction of the Enterprise-D.

Most of the beings trapped inside the Nexus vanished, never having been there at all. Others remained, and Ben fixed that, too, altering as little as possible while still preventing them from falling into the Nexus. The El-Aurians were the easiest to handle; they were naturally more attuned to the larger space-time continuum than most linear beings, and he could simply re-unite them with the part of themselves who had been rescued.

When all was done, and Ben was finished telling the story of their experience with the Orb of Time, he smiled at Kirk. "Thank you for the company, and the stories, and the advice," he said.

"You're welcome," Kirk said. "Thanks for the rescue."

They shook hands. Ben reunited this fragment of him with the rest of himself, fighting Soran on Veridian III, and shifted things just enough so that he didn't die.

Ben watched, satisfied, as the Nexus continued on its way—now safe from corporeal beings.

He turned to the next project the Prophets had in mind for him.

[bonnierosebryan]

V THE HIEROPHANT :   Captain Benjamin Sisko / The Emissary

The card represents:

The High Priest, The Wise Man, a patriarchal figure, the bridge between the mortal and the divine, spiritual wisdom,spiritual guidance, cultural heritage, philosophy, belief systems, knowledge of the occult / the hidden, intuitive understanding, and revelation

Captain Sisko is a bridge. He is human, but he is of Bajor. He is a man, but he is of The Prophets. He is Star Fleet, but he serves as a mediator for the Bajorans, on a formerly Cardassian station. As The Emissary to The Prophets (or Wormhole Aliens, depending on whom you ask...) Sisko is a bridge between the Bajorans and their gods, and he periodically receives revelations, often cryptic in their meaning, for the guidance and benefit of the Bajoran people. He's often guided by his own intuition, not only in spiritual matters, but also as a father and a Star Fleet captain. Sisko immerses himself in the study of ancient Bajoran culture and spirituality, to better understand the Bajoran people, and The Prophets, who often speak to him in riddles. He is a wise counselor, role model, learned man, and fated bridge to the divine.

Sisko holds his baseball, a personal talisman, which in this case, also represents the wisdom and revelation that he holds. The Orb of the Emissary and the pillar of B'hala are behind him, representing his connection to Bajor and The Prophets, his appointment as The Emissary, and his gifts of spiritual intuition and revelation, which lead him to discover the secrets of both of these sacred objects.

Mediums: ink, watercolour, coloured pencil, and acrylic paint on A4 paper.

Click here to see the other illustrations in my series of Deep Space Nine characters, represented through the symbology of the Tarot

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B'Hala