Is There Not Rain Enough?

Story Notes:

Rating: PG-13

Type: Drama, angst

 

             It never rained on Deep Space Nine.  Not a bad thing necessarily.  Kira Nerys imagined rain drenching the proprietors and customers of the Promenade, and a corner of her mouth tilted up.  She did miss the warm splash of Bajor’s summer rains, though, and the pungent smell of freshly-washed earth.  During the Cardassian Occupation, rain had cleansed the stains of shed blood, as if the Prophets wept for the sins that war had forced the Bajorans to commit.  Rain was a blessing from the Prophets.

             She had chased Jake and Nog from their customary perch above the Promenade, taking perverse pleasure in watching them scamper away, and now stood in their place.  She understood why the boys liked the location.  From here, she could observe the arrivals from the recent shuttle and wonder which ones would attend the Rain Festival.  Silly as it seemed to hold a Rain Festival on a space station where it never rained, the Bajorans who couldn’t attend the actual event on Bajor, herself included, were looking forward to their own celebration.  Vedek Pilar Tiegan, a childhood friend of Kira’s who had arrived earlier in the day, would officiate the temple service.

             She idled a few more minutes, watching the ebb and flow of everyday business.  Finally, she scolded herself for the waste of time.  Odo would be waiting with his weekly security report.  She started to turn away when a familiar profile caught her attention.  She whirled around and scanned the crowd, her heart laboring to recover from several skipped beats.  Her hands went numb as she clenched the railing.

             The face she thought she had seen was gone.

             When she sat in Odo’s office ten minutes later, the phantom face clung before her eyes.  Odo’s words drifted, unheard, past her consciousness while she struggled to grasp the impossible.

 

             I saw a dead man.

 

             Although she tried, she couldn’t argue herself out of it.  As children, she and Tannis Orren had always had that connection between them, a way of knowing when the other was near.  They had discovered it during the happy days, the days before the Occupation had truly penetrated.  In those days, she and her brothers, Orren and his sister Liri, and Orren’s best friend, Pilar Tiegan, had played long games of Tetrarch Says and Catch Me, Blindman.  They had danced in the rain, laughed at life, and whispered about the Celestial Temple while gazing at the stars.  She couldn’t remember the exact moment when the Occupation’s reality intruded on their idyllic childhood, but it had changed everything and everyone.

             Kira realized the Cardassians were not going away and they were killing people.  Terok Nor claimed adults who had been fixtures in her life, including her mother and Orren’s parents.  Starvation took children who were her friends.  Orren and Liri moved in with her family.  Liri cried during the nights.  Orren stopped smiling.  Kira joined the Resistance.

             As much as possible, Kira kept her family and her work in the Resistance separate.  When the war began polluting her soul, her family was her escape.  For a brief time, she could lose herself in the innocence of their lives and forget what it was like to kill a Cardassian.  To have his blood gush hot over her hands.  To watch the hate drain from his eyes while life drained from his body.  Later, killing became a necessity of war, but at first, it had hurt as if she had plunged the knife into her own heart.

             Orren understood.  During one of her rare visits, after a mission that had turned gruesome, Orren had taken her hand and tugged her from the protection of their home.

             “It’s raining!” she protested.

             He kept hold of her hand and lifted his face to the rain.  Droplets clung to his eyelashes and the ridges of his nose.  “The Prophets weep.”

             “They’re angry.”  She glared at the clouds, ignoring the splatter of water.  She was angry all the time.  It was easier to kill that way.

             Orren shook his head.  “They’re sad.  They don’t like to see us suffer.”

             “I know a couple of prime targets for their lightening bolts if they want to help,” she said bitterly.

             “They are helping, Nerys.  They send the rain.”

             “How does rain help?” she scoffed.

             His eyes stared into her soul.  Rain coursed down his cheeks like tears.  “The Prophets send the rain to wash away the blood.”

             She had never looked at rain the same way.

             The pitter-patter of memories faded, and her mind finally accepted what her heart had known all along.  Tannis Orren was on the station, and he needed her help.

 

#

 

             She couldn’t find him.  None of the shuttles’ passenger manifests showed his name.  He hadn’t been assigned quarters.  He had vanished, once more a ghost.  She began to doubt her sanity.

             “You’re brooding, Nerys,” Vedek Pilar said.

             The sound of her name penetrated through the general hubbub of the Replimat and startled her.  She looked up to Tiegan’s wide grin.  Tiegan had never bothered with the solemn demeanor most clerics tended to adopt.  He had the face of a man who loved to laugh and the personality a human would call “happy-go-lucky.”  Kira had always thought the introspective Orren would be more suited to a religious life than the endlessly jovial Tiegan.

             “May I join you?”

             “Yes, of course, Vedek.”

             He settled into the chair across from her.  “Tiegan, please.  I can hardly expect someone who used to nurse my scraped knees to call me by a more lofty title.”

             As if sensing the reluctance of her answering smile, he studied her with a more serious expression.  “What’s troubling you, Nerys?”

             She tipped her mug of raktajino and watched the dregs swirl at its bottom.  “I was thinking of Orren.  I know I said I didn’t want to hear it, but…what happened to him, exactly?”

             The mention of their long-ago friend erased the good humor from Tiegan’s eyes.  He sighed heavily.  “You heard that he retired to a monastery after Liri’s death, didn’t you?”

             Orren’s sister and Tiegan had run afoul of a Cardassian patrol.  Tiegan had been beaten senseless, while the Cardassians had their sport with Liri.  Liri hadn’t recovered from that night.

             When she nodded, Tiegan continued, “I tried to visit him several times.  He refused to see me.  He blamed me for not saving Liri, you know.  When I finally managed to arrange a meeting, he threatened to kill me.”  Tiegan paused.  His head drooped with the sorrow of remembered pain.  “A few days before the Cardassians withdrew from Bajor, they razed the monastery.”

             “Was his body found?”

             “There was nothing left to find.  The monastery was completely obliterated.”  He reached a hand toward her, extending its comfort without actually touching her.  “I’m sorry, Nerys.  I know you and Orren were close.  That’s why I wrote you of his death myself and offered to tell you the details.  I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”

             But he’s not dead, her heart protested.  She didn’t verbalize that conviction.  Tiegan would merely think she was denying her grief.

             She wondered why Orren was on the station.  Why now, a year after his supposed death?  What had drawn him from his self-imposed exile?

             She glanced at Tiegan, who absently stirred his Tarkalean tea.  The melancholy on his face suggested he was remembering the day he and Liri were attacked.  She thought of Orren, always careful of his sister’s fragility, and the anguish he must have felt when Liri died.  An anguish that had perpetuated itself through the years and wounded Orren so deeply that he had blamed his best friend for his sister’s death.

             Cold seeped into her.  She knew why Orren had come to the station.

 

 

 

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Disclaimer:  The Star Trek characters all belong to Paramount Studios.  This fanfic is not intended to infringe on those rights and is meant solely for the purpose of entertainment.  All other characters, the story idea, and the story itself are the sole property of the author.