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Monument

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"Already working?" asked Kira as she staggered out of Dax's bed. It was far too early for Dax to be awake, dressed, and tearing out the wiring in her replicator, but she did look cute with her power tools, so Kira supposed she didn't mind.

"I guess it's a little silly," said Dax. "But my replicator's never really worked since I got here, and I hadn't gotten around to fixing it. And then I realized you might want a raktajino, so, well--"

Nerys laughed. "And you didn't want to see me uncaffeinated? Am I really that scary, Lieutenant?"

Jadzia smiled. "I just wanted to be a good host. Anyway, I think I've finally found the problem." She reached behind a cluster of wires and wrenched out a piece of twisted metal. "What do you suppose that is?"

Kira answered very quietly. "That's sabotage." She took the metal from Dax's hand. "During the Occupation, the Bajorans here had to use whatever they could as weapons. If you were in the Resistance, you had smuggled phasers, but if you weren't, then you used anything you had. Hairpins, belt buckles, anything. That's a hairpin, by the way. Sometimes, if you needed a Cardassian out of the way or distracted for a few minutes, you could jam the replicator."

Jadzia nodded. She was still learning what it meant to live on what had once been Terok Nor.

She would never forget the way the universe shifted when she had first been joined. She spent her first few weeks as Jadzia Dax in a state of constant surprise, stumbling through the new familiarity of so many places. Suddenly, everything was carved into deep time. The worlds around her were rich with memories, and her memories were centuries older than she had ever been. The universe unfolded to her with the depth and contradiction of seven lifetimes.

Knowing Nerys, she realized, would be like this. She lived with Nerys's memories now, and her universe would always keep shifting.

She took Nerys's hand. "Do you want to keep that, or should I?"

"I'll keep it," she said. "None of the monuments they're building on Bajor are about this kind of resistance. But it's what I'm most proud of." She smiled at Jadzia. "Sorry to bring all this up before breakfast. You'll see I'm not always a lot of fun."

"You don't have to be," said Jadzia. She smiled back.