Symbiosis
This is me.
This isn't me, not really. There is no me, there is an amalgam of me and someone - something - else.
Today my name is Ezri Dax, but there's no guarantee that I'll still be her tomorrow. Not that I am her, not really.
I can't really remember who I am. I know that I used to know, but I also know that too much time has passed for the memory to have survived.
I live vicariously, and my thoughts are merged with those of something else, something different. And sometimes I wonder exactly what my people were thinking why they decided on symbiosis.
Or do I? Is it someone else who wonders for me?
I never used to get space sick.
But now I am Ezri Dax, the woman with two brains, and I feel queasy when we hit warp speed. We, not I. We are, we were, we will be.
Actually, we don't do too badly these days. There were some problems at first, when we didn't quite see eye to eye (whose eyes?), but now we can think and act as one.
Now we have a human lover, who doesn't quite understand what we really are. And when our eyes meet (and again, are they really my eyes?) I can see what he thinks. Almost. I've grown very good, over the years, at reading words and actions. But it's nothing like what we, Ezri Dax, have.
I can tell that it bothers him - the fact that he'll never know us the way we know each other, that when's he's inside her I am too, that I'm his lover as well.
Sometimes, I really don't think that he likes me.
Ben understood. More or less. But it took so many years of Curzon Dax, and then so many of Jadzia Dax, before he really started to see us for what we are.
We are, we were, we will be.
And I'm the part that no one sees, the blip on the scanner and the problem to be worked around. Enigma, they tend to call me, not quite realizing that they know me, that they've spoken to me on so many occasions.
Sometimes I think it would be nice to go back, and swim in the pools with my own kind. But then I -- we -- remember that they aren't my own kind anymore, that we are something very wonderful and strange. We're special now, we are the Joined.
So we lie in bed with our human lover, and each of us worries that our dreams are not our own. It's strange, those moments before sleep when we slip from synchrony to tandem, when we can't hear each other anymore. For a minute, maybe less, I am Dax and she is Ezri. But we know that both of us are changed, that the thoughts we have in that brief flicker of time are no more our own than they are the thoughts of Ezri Dax. Who knows what I would be thinking about in that gap if I had never been joined?
And with us, in a way, are all the previous hosts, the living ghosts of the dead. So that part of us is still Emony Dax, and a part is still Torias Dax. They aren't quite memories, but they aren't quite with us either.
We know that in a bright room I am really in darkness, and she's the one standing in the light. But it blurs and merges, and both of us are grey.
But this is me. This is Dax. Not that I can tell my story, because I am always we. And in the gaps... who knows who I really am in the gaps.
Right now we are in bed, and our lover stirs beside us, seeking a union that will never be as perfect as our own. I want to indulge, Ezri wants to sleep. We really don't know what we want. I could stimulate our body, make the blood flow and make her want the same thing I do. But that might not be fair, so I'll wait, see what the human does to make our mind up for us.
A hand slips over her abdomen, over me, and she starts to change her mind about sleep. A kiss on the throat that isn't really mine and once again we think the same thoughts.
And afterwards, as we fall asleep, we'll spend a few moments apart, and miss each other more than I can ever articulate.