#it's my favourite so i was sad to hear other tiny fandom people hadn't read it

[theimaginatrix27]

I've been in the Star Trek fandom spaces long enough, time to talk publicly about a thing that I am injecting into every fic where it is relevant

So if you've been paying attention to my blog the last couple months, you will know I am a huge fan of @enbygesserit 's work. They write the absolute best Dominion lore and fic I have ever had the pleasure of reading/encountering, and I eat up each new piece like my favourite confectionery.

What I am about to discuss predates any exposure I had to their work by at least thirteen years.

And the ship it surrounds was my DS9 OTP for two entire decades (before I discovered the O'Brien polycule and now my DS9 otp is a "One True Polyamorous tangle", but moving on).

That ship being Kiraodo. My heart broke when Odo confessed his love to an apparently dying Kira, she said she loved him back, and that was the clue for him to realise she was not Kira at all. And then when the Female Changeling Voice of the Link told him Kira would never love him because he was a Changeling, I was a tiny sad twelve-yo who thought, "But I love him!" And then I wanted it to be a thing.

And when I found out it was a thing in canon but they had to part ways at the end of the series, I was happy and sad at the same time.

I was a teenager, I didn't know the relationship felt awkward to some (though to be fair I still hated Children of Time and what the alternate/Gaia Odo did, but I address that in another fic so it's fine). I just wanted the sad Changeling and the fiery Bajoran to prove the mean Changeling wrong.

But also, I acknowledged to myself, even in 2009-10, that it would not be fair to Odo at all to make him leave his people again so quickly. I felt sympathetic toward the Changelings/Founders even as a teenager who had not and would not see DS9 in its entirety (curse you, cable TV! You with your reruns and exorbitant prices making it so hard for us to keep you for more than a few months at a time!) Anyways, I knew even then that I didn't want to take Odo away from his people again, even for him and Kira to be together.

So what was my solution?

Here were the canon points I considered at age nineteen (I was creating the bare bones of the Galactic Warp AU at the time and also had a strict must-adhere-to-canon policy for any fanfic ideas I'd had at the time):

The Great Link turned Odo into a solid.

The baby Changeling in The Begotten turned him back, at the cost of its life (but maybe not if it hadn't already been dying).

Therefore, it is canonically possible for a solid to become a Changeling.

What if Kira had been Changelinged?

WHY IS THAT NOT CANON?

I have this as a significant plot point in any Kiraodo content I'm going to write, so if you see Kiraodo becoming a thing in any fic, expect to see Changeling Kira show up somewhere.

"But wait!" someone yells. "You just said you didn't want to take Odo from his people, and Kira's Bajoranness is a huge part of her identity! And you're gonna just take that away from her?"

No, actually. You think the Prophets give a shit whether or not Kira's corporeal form is solid? Fuck no, they're not corporeal and time is not linear for them! The Kira is always the Kira. The Kira is always of Bajor. The Kira is always beloved of the Prophets.

This holds true in every single fic in which I have inserted this. Kira doesn't always become a Changeling full time (some of my AUs have magic), but more importantly, She never stops being Bajoran in the ways that really matter.

Which, if this had been a canon episode, would have been emphasised by the Prophets themselves and I am not taking critique on this.

"But the Founders would never do this in canon!" I hear you cry. "They hate solids and the Voice doesn't like Kira especially!"

First of all, the convoluted love triangle between Odo, Kira and the Voice was stupid.

Second of all, it doesn't even have to be them who do it, we got other more powerful entities around! Q was basically banned from DS9, sure, but what if Kira and Odo weren't on DS9?

Here's my idea for how this could have happened in canon, if the writers had really wanted to sell us the ship.

Odo and Kira have been away on a mission together (doesn't matter where, they just have to be off the station). It's sometime in Season 6, post the Dominion occupation of DS9. When the runabout returns, Odo coms the station and says he needs to give them warning about something, and they're going to have to take him at his word, however hard that may be.

"What's wrong?" Sisko asks. "And where's Major Kira?"

In response, Odo holds up his bucket. There is a Changeling in goo form inside.

"There was an—incident while we were returning from our mission. It was successful, by the way."

Sisko stares at the screen intently for a moment.

"Are you saying," he asks slowly, "that Major Kira was replaced by a Changeling?"

"No, Captain," Odo responds. "I am saying this Changeling is Major Kira."

Cue opening theme!

And possibly this would be a two-parter! I feel that with the whole theme of DS9 being nuance, and with the Dominion being such a big deal, it deserves to be!

Basically the plot would first involve a flashback to Q popping in while Kira and Odo are arguing about something Changeling-related or whatever, going "You know, I've been watching you and yours for a while now—from a safe distance of course—and frankly, I've been surprised by the lack of nuance with regard to the Founders."

And Kira's all, "Oh come on, don't you start with this high-and-mighty attitude! I read all the records about you after your last visit to Deep Space 9, you don't have any room to talk!"

"And neither do you," Q fires back. "You think your terrible acts were justified, don't you? Oh, you know they were dreadful, the fact that you could be so violent distressed you so! But when it comes down to it, you can sleep at night, because you helped drive out the Cardassians and set Bajor free. But when the Dominion imposes their order on their part of the galaxy because they used to be oppressed and were traumatised, you sit there on what moral high ground you have and pass judgment on them!"

"I don't need to hear this! Especially not from you! Sisko made you stay away from the station—from us! Now get off this runabout and leave us alone."

"Oh, you do need to hear it, Nerys. But if you insist on me leaving, let me do so on my terms. Don't worry, my little firework, I'll make sure you don't need my help undoing this." And he snaps his fingers and disappears.

And Kira's form begins to melt and she barely has time to call Odo's name before she dissolves into Changeling goo.

Back on DS9, everyone's a bit frantic after seeing the runabout footage, which confirms Odo's story. He links with her and is able to help her reform after a little time, during which we get to hear panicked Kira thoughts and some cool visuals of what the link is like for her. We get a scene after she's able to shift back into herself where Jadzia quips that she's got purple hair and Cardassian neck ridges or something, which is not amusing to her at all.

Then there's a whole discussion on how they're going to fix her before the rest of the Federation finds out, because "Are they going to believe the testimony of one rogue Changeling and the footage from a runabout computer? What if they decide Kira's a threat and take her into custody?"

And the answer is pretty obvious, especially after Julian examines a sample of her matrix and discovers traces of her dna are still in it.

They have to take her to the Great Link so she can be restored to solidity. The Founders are rather good at genetic manipulation, after all. It'll be fine!

Except they're at war, and the Voice does not like Kira, which forms the majority of the conflict, as they have to convince any Dominion forces they meet that "Seriously, we are not here to fight, please don't blow us up, we just want to help our friend, yes we mean it, don't fire!"

And in the end Kira has to pretend to be a Founder just to get the various ships to leave them alone, and it's weird as fuck for her but she makes it to the Great Link and the Voice is there and doesn't believe her at first until they link and she gets proof from her memories.

Which leads to Kira finding out about the morphogenic virus early, and being incensed, because "Look, I don't like you, but that's crossing multiple lines! I'd never have signed off on that if it were up to me, and I know Sisko wouldn't either! Doctor Bashir's brilliant—he can help you, I'm sure of it."

"Even if we did not help you right away?"

"I can wait, if I have to. I'm kind of getting used to this whole thing. It's been—an interesting experience."

And after another link to confirm that yes, she means that and it's not even in a bad way, the Voice consents to help her regain her solid status and she goes into the Great Link, gets a small taste of the Founders' collective trauma and is deeply moved by it, bursting into tears when she emerges, once more humanoid. There's a whole final scene about how she wishes more people in the Federation could have experienced what she did, and then she goes to write a log entry on the whole thing or something.

But this would absolutely change the trajectory of the war because that's how DS9 works, so it wouldn't just be handwaved away. in subsequent episodes, Julian is able to find a cure—possibly with help from within the Dominion itself because the Founders would very much like to not die and Julian is being Julian at them and they're taking a real liking to him.

And the galaxy is saved because Q did a thing! But also Kira understands Odo better after this and their relationship is all the richer for it.

*Starts chanting* It should've been canon, it should've been canon, it should've been canon, IT SHOULD'VE BEEN CANON!

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

Whispers Under Ground - The Domestic

It has been brought to my attention (by the lovely @sixth-light​) that I am the only member of the tiny fandom in possession of a copy of Whispers Under Ground with the Waterstones’ short story The Domestic. And since this is probably my favourite of all the ROL shorts I think it’s a crying shame that the rest of the tiny fandom hasn’t read it. so here, for your reading pleasure:

The Domestic by Ben Aaronovitch

The tricky thing about architectural fashion is that it’s never as demarcated as the textbooks make out. The terrace mid-way up Prince of Wales Road was doing its best to pretend it was Regency, but the sash windows, slapdash stucco and half basement all said mid-Victorian at the earliest. I gave it the once over. The paint was grubby rather than dirty and the iron railings had been maintained free of rust. First wave right-to-buy property owner, I thought, from back in the days when Camden Council still had terrace flat conversions on its books.

My domestic lived down a flight of external stairs, in the basement flat. The front door was trapped in an alcove under the steps to what would have originally been the main entrance before the house was sub-divided - the better for the unspeakably common tradesman to come and go as unobtrusively as possible. The doorbell chimed when I pressed it and habit made me step out if the confined alcove while I waited for it to open. It’s always good to have some space to manoeuvre when the door opens - just in case.

When it did open, a little old white woman stuck her head round the doorjamb and peered at me suspiciously.

“Yes,” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Mrs Eugenia Fellaman?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“My name’s Peter Grant. I’m a police officer and I wondered if I might come in and have a quick word.” I showed her my warrant card - she wasn’t impressed.

“I’ve already spoken to the other one,” she said.

“Yes Ma’am, I know,” I said. The ‘other one’ being Sergreant Bill Crosslake who had called me in.

“He asked me to talk to you. He thought I might be able to help.”

She stepped out of her front door the better to chase me back up to street level.

“Well he thought wrong,” she said, and as she came into the daylight I saw the faded purple of a bruise on her left cheek.

“Can I ask how you got that bruise?”

I watched as she carefully didn’t lift her hand to her face.

“I walked into the door didn’t I?” she said. “You get like that when you’re a bit older.”

“We both know that’s not true,” I said.

She folded her arms. She was wearing a green woollen loose-knit jumper, clean but with frayed cuffs. Her hair was grey, thinning and gathered back into a pony tail. There was a pair of red framed reading glasses hung around her neck on a black beaded cord. She had grey eyes and a good line in belligerent defiance.

“It was them upstairs that called you in,” she said. “Wasn’t it?”

Actually it had been the couple upstairs, but also the Romanian students next door and a member of the public who’d happened to be walking his dog outside. All had dialled 999 within five minutes of each other, which had prompted an India-Grade response from the area car, which arrived within three minutes. When the responding officers talked their way inside the flat, they found Mrs Fellaman and definite signs of a struggle, but no trace of another person or persons on the premises.

Mrs Fellaman claimed that she was completely alone and that she’d merely fallen against the chair, which had broken, causing her to reach out in an involuntary fashion and pull down a row of ceramic elephants and an antique ormolu clock.

Violent crime, like charity, begins at home. Twenty percent of all murders occur in the home and forty percent of all female murder victims are killed by their partner. Which is why the responding officers gently, but firmly, insisted on searching the flat. They found nobody, and Mrs Fellaman, with a certain amount of satisfaction, sent them on their way.

“We’re concerned about your safety,” I said.

“That’s nice,” she said. “But it’s my patience you should be worried about. That other one, the big one, has been round here two times already and he never found nothing either.”

The Camden response team had passed the details onto the local neighbourhood safety team which was headed by Sergeant Crosslake. He’d talked to the neighbours and confirmed their stories, made a follow up visit to Mrs Fellaman, found nothing, and in frustration sat outside, in his own car, on his own time, the next evening until he heard the argument for himself.

“There was proper rowing,” he’d told me. “And there were definitely two voices.”

But again, when he’d talked himself inside, there was just Mrs Fellaman entirely on her own.

“And there was something else,” Crosslake had said. “There was something off about the flat.”

“Third time lucky,” I told Mrs Fellaman.

“With all this crime around,” she said, “I don’t know why you bother.”

Because when we’re not ticking boxes and achieving performance targets, we actually try to prevent the occasional crime. Not to mention ‘Granny beaten to death after police visit three times - shocker!’ is not the sort of headline you want hanging over your conscience, let alone your career.

“It’s no bother,” I said.

“It is to me,” she said. “And I’m sick and tired of it. Have you got a warrant?”

I admitted that I had not.

“Then you can piss off,” she said, and locked herself back inside.

Crosslake had said there was something off about the flat.

“Your kind of weird bollocks,” he’d told me. “That’s why I called you in.”

Crosslake was career uniform and had been doing neighbourhood policing since back in the days when it was just called ‘policing’. He didn’t have ‘instincts’, he had thirty years of experience - which was much more reliable.

There was no way I was going to get a warrant because part of the Folly’s arrangement with the rest of the criminal justice system is that we don’t bother them with the weird shit and in return they occasionally look the other way when the weird shit happens. But if I was going to barge into Mrs Fellaman’s flat then I’d better make sure that there was actually some weird shit going on so that they could ignore it.

This was a job for Toby the Wonder Dog.

*

I don’t know whether it was because he was exposed to magic during the Punchinello case or whether all dogs, particularly small yappy ones, have an instinct for the uncanny, but I’ve always found Toby a pretty reliable magic detector. I’ve actually done controlled laboratory experiments that indicate he can detect magical activity up to ten metres away, although false positives can be generated by cats, other dogs and the remote possibility of a sausage.

That’s why I fed him a sausage before we started the stakeout, although that did mean I had to keep the car window open. I parked outside the flat at seven in the evening and settled in. Toby curled up on the passenger seat with his feet twitching, intermittently nudging me in the thigh, and presumably dreaming of squirrels, while I cracked open Juvenal and laboured through the last part of Book III: Flattering Your Patron Is Hard Work. It had been my set text for months and had led me to think of the Romans as a bunch of Bernard Manning wannabes with an empire. At nine fifteen Toby woke up with a start and stared about suspiciously - I put down my Latin homework. Was it going to be police work or sausage?

Toby’s head stopped swinging with his nose pointed directly at Mrs Fellaman’s flat and he started to bark, the proper watchdog bark which was what got those original wolves invited to share the fire in the first place. Not a sausage then.

I left Toby in the car and slipped down the iron stairs to the basement. I stopped at the door and listened. A raised voice, definitely Mrs Fellaman’s although I couldn’t make out the words. Then a response, younger, deeper, male. Then a crash of breaking crockery.

I banged on the door and called Mrs Fellaman’s name.

“It’s the police,” I shouted. “Open up.”

It went silent inside.

“You might as well let me in, Mrs Fellaman,” I called. “I know you’ve got a ghost in there.”

Toby stopped barking. The door opened.

“What do you know about it?” asked Mrs Fellaman.

“I have reason to believe that you are consorting with a spirit in contravention of the Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits 1604,” I said. The Witchcraft Act had actually been superseded in 1736 but I find quoting it helps break the ice on the doorstep.

“No I ain’t,” said Mrs Fellaman. “And in any case he ain’t wicked, he’s my husband.”

I waited until she’d figured out what she’d just said.

“Bugger,” she said, and sighed. “You;d better come in.”

I followed her into a mean little corridor which opened into a mean little living room/kitchen combination. She’d done her best, but the whole terrace had been built cheaply, and the basement had been where the Victorians had stuck the kitchen, the servants and the coal bunker. Nothing could disguise the low ceiling and permanently moist walls. I doubted it got a lot of sunshine either.

“I’d offer you a cup of tea,” said Mrs Fellaman. “But I don’t think I’ve got any cups left.”

There was a scatter of broken pottery spread across the floor.

I suggested that we sit down at the kitchen table, but she insisted that she wanted to sweep up first. I sat down and let her bustle about - I wanted her relaxed and talkative. From under the sink she produced a white enamel camping mug and the kind of plastic cup that comes as the top bit of a thermos. So she made tea after all and, even better, offered me a custard cream. It’s hard for even the most hardened criminal to maintain a belligerent tone with someone who’s eating a custard cream biscuit. Although I suppose a chocolate digestive might do in a pinch.

Once she had a cup of tea in her own hand I asked whether she was sure the ghost was her husband.

“Of course I am,” she said. “I knew him as soon as he appeared.”

“And when did he appear?” I asked.

“About three months ago,” she told me vaguely, but I pinned her down to a specific date and made a note. You never know when precise information will come in handy.

“So the ghost of your husband appears,” I said. “And you decide to have an argument with him.”

“I didn’t decide,” she said. “We always used to fight, you know, some people you just row with - I suppose that him being passed on couldn’t change that.”

“Did he hit you?”

“Don’t be stupid. How could he hit me?” asked Mrs Fellaman. “He’s a ghost.”

“So how did you get the bruise then?”

“I was a clot and ran into the wall,” she said.

“How did you manage to do that?”

Mrs Fellaman looked sheepish. “I forgot he was a ghost and he made me so angry -” She made punching motions with her right hand. “I ran right through him. Hit the wall, fell over. You know how it is, you grab the nearest thing and that was the cupboard, and that fell over and the next thing I know I’ve got the Old Bill knocking on my door.”

“And what happened tonight,” I pointed at the smashed cups with my pen.

“I was throwing them at him,” said Mrs Fellaman. “Well he makes me so cross, he always did. It was his fault, he was always so stubborn.” She gave me a defiant look.

I decided to see if we could have a word with ‘Mr Fellaman’.

“What was your husband’s name Mrs Fellaman?” I asked even though I already knew.

“His name was Victor,” she said. “His parents were a bit la-di-dah.”

“Can you summon him for me?”

“You’re joking,” she said. “He comes and goes when he wants - always did.”

I knew how to get a ghost’s attention, although I’d been hoping to get through the case without doing anything too overt. Still, Mrs Fellaman had been consorting with a ghost for at least three months so I doubted I could shock her any further.

I conjured a werelight and stuck it to the centre of the kitchen table.

Mrs Fellaman’s were round. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Ghost-nip,” I said. “This should bring your husband out.”

Normally when you feed a ghost they drain the magic quite gently and the werelight dims slowly, but this time the ball of light darkened to a dim crimson almost instantly. I looked around quickly and found the ghost, standing by the side wall staring at me in apparent amazement.

He was young, early twenties, wearing a rather nice suit and a slim shirt with a button down collar. In the 1950s it was called the City Gent look, and my dad probably had a suit like that - at least up until my Mum got the keys to his wardrobe. That was a Mod suit.

“He’s a bit young isn’t he?” I said.

“He looks just like he did when I met him,” she said. “There’s no reason for him to look old, is there?”

Except, generally speaking, all the ghosts I’d met looked the age they did when they died. Lesley says to always check the shoes, so I did - they were old, worn, too big for his feet and an unpleasant brown colour. No Mod would have been seen dead in those shoes.

“Hello Victor,” I said. The ghost looked at me blankly.

“Talk to him, Victor,” hissed Mrs Fellaman. “He’s a policeman.”

“What do you want?” asked the ghost. His accent was wrong too, not sixties cockney but older - I recognised it. He wasn’t what he seemed, and I didn’t want to prolong the conversation and feed him magic for much longer.

“What’s your mum’s name?” I asked.

The ghost hesitated. “What do you want to know that for?”

“No reason,” I said. The hesitation had told me all I needed to know. I shut down the werelight and the ghost suddenly went transparent.

“Martha,” said the ghost in a whisper and then he was gone.

“Bring him back,” said Mrs Fellaman.

“Was Martha the name of his mother?” I asked.

Mrs Fellaman shook her head.

“He didn’t know the answer did he?”

“Well he’s dead,” she said. “You’re bound to forget stuff once you’re dead.”

“That’s true,” I said, and it was. Most of the ghosts I’ve met always give the impression that they aren’t all there mentally. My theory is that they are echoes, near-sentient imprints in the stone and concrete around them. But that’s just a theory.

“See,” she said.

“But the thing is, Eugenia,” I said, “before I knocked on the door I requested what’s known as an ‘intelligence package’ on you, and it turns out your husband left you thirty years ago and is currently living in Prestatyn, Wales, with a woman called Blodwyn.”

“I knew that,” said Mrs Fellaman. “I’d just assumed that he’d died recently, left the Welsh bint to her own devices and come back home where he belonged.”

“I had the local police call round,” I said. “He’s alive and well.”

“Pity,” she said, and slumped in her chair.

I told her to stay put while I fetched some more equipment from my car, but she barely acknowledged me. Toby was pleased to see me and I gave him the requisite amount of encouragement for being a good boy. I grabbed the little and the big hammers from the boot and went back down to see how Mrs Fellaman was doing.

She was still slumped in her chair.

“So who was I talking to?” she asked.

“Definitely a ghost,” I said. “Just not your husband.” Victorian terraces were pretty much all built with similar design features, and if you know any architectural history at all it’s fairly easy to spot when something is missing. Like the pantry alcove that should have been to the left of the bricked-up fireplace. Very close to where the ghost had materialised - I did not think that was a coincidence.

Mrs Fellaman sighed. “He did look like my Victor.”

“I believe you,” I said. “He must have changed his appearance to suit you.”

“How would he know?”

“Good question,” I said and banged the small hammer on the wall until I got a hollow noise. I swapped for the big hammer. “I’m afraid I’m about to make a bit of a mess,” I said, and got a good two-handed grip on the long shaft.

“Wait a minute,” said Mrs Fellaman, too late.

It was an awkward swing, what with the low ceiling, but the iron head of the hammer went through on the first blow. I knocked out the loose plaster around the edges, got out my key-ring torch and had a look. As I did I got a strong flash of carbolic soap and fish guts, the smell of sweat and a blast of cold that made my fingers numb. The vestigia pretty much confirmed my suspicions and so I wasn’t nearly so surprised as I might have been when the beam of the key-ring torch fell upon the empty socket of a skull. I swept the light around and thought I could make out the rest of a skeleton collapsed at the bottom of the void.

I told Mrs Fellaman that she would need to find somewhere to stay for the next couple of days.

“Whatever for?” she asked.

“Because I’m about to tell my colleagues at the Major Investigation Team that I’ve found a body and they’re going to be round here mob handed to investigate,” I said.

“What kind of body?” asked Mrs Fellaman.

One that I suspect was walled up, judging from the shoes, in the late 19th Century. Some domestic worker whose employer got a bit heavy handed one day - one of those little Victorian stories that didn’t get talked about. I looked at Mrs Fellaman who was staring morosely around her kitchen/living room area. Or perhaps there had been somebody after the first Mr Fellaman decamped to the Welsh seaside. She obviously had a temper did our Eugenia. As I said - crime often begins at home.

Fortunately that question was not my responsibility. Nine times out of ten, once the bones were gone, so was the ghost. Although I might take Toby for walkies past the house for the next couple of weeks - just to be on the safe side. I turned on my phone and keyed up Belgravia.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider leaving him in place would you?” asked Mrs Fellaman.

“What for?”

“I rather liked the company,” she said.

THE END