Work Text:
Dr. Weld locked the sample tube inside of the centrifuge, closed the lid, and made a couple of taps on the computer keys. The machine kicked on with a gentle hum, the table underneath it vibrating slightly as the machine began to build momentum and spin the sample for analysis.
The noise caught Dr. Mora’s attention and he looked up from his report just in time to catch Weld heaving a jaw-popping yawn. Weld knuckled the sand from his eyes and shook himself, trying to wake up. Mora frowned, surprised to see Weld so tired already. They still had much to do and though Mora knew it was after dinner hour, he thought it early yet for such a display. They were, after all, research scientists, and were used to long, arduous hours in the lab.
Mora looked more closely at his assistant and his frown deepened. Dr. Weld’s eyes were reddened, his posture slouched. His clothes were rumpled and just as tired-looking as his face. Weld made a minor adjustment to the centrifuge, scratching at the thick stubble of dark beard coating his cheek, and yawned yet again. Just how late was it, anyway, Mora wondered?
Mora consulted the timepiece on his wrist and winced with guilt. The hour had grown so late that it was fast approaching a new day, and as usual, Mora had blocked out time itself, and thereby any and all consideration for anything else as he toiled away at his research.
“Dr. Weld,” Mora began, “if you are finished setting up the sample, you may retire for the day. I'll complete the analysis.”
Dr. Weld turned his bleary gaze on Mora, blinking at him dumbly. “Are you sure, Dr. Mora? You said you wanted to review the mitochondrial anomalies again, and I can wait for the centrifuge to-“
“Dr. Weld,” Mora said, cutting him off. “I'm sure. You look exhausted, and it is quite late. I’ll wait for the centrifuge to finish and return the bio-matter to the odo’ital." He managed small smile. "Go on, Ram, and get some rest. You've done enough for one day."
Dr. Weld sagged with relief and made his way to the door. He paused at Mora’s worktable, burying his hands in his lab coat pockets.
“Dr. Mora,” Weld began, “really, I can stay a little longer if you’re not ready to leave. I know what today is, the date, and it hasn’t exactly been the greatest day otherwise, and I…That is, well…I should stay, Dr. Mora. I shouldn’t leave you here alone.”
Mora was touched that Weld had remembered the date, and its importance, but he kept his expression carefully neutral. “Dr. Weld, I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine, I assure you. There’s no logic in both of us having a sleepless night. One of us should have our wits about us tomorrow. The overseer is, after all, expecting a full progress report and I think we have enough to please him, but I must be sure it’s enough…Besides,” Mora smiled and pointed the writing stylus in his hand at the wall behind him, “I’m not alone. The odo’ital is here.”
Dr. Weld looked over Mora's shoulder and the steady, blue gaze of the odo’ital. It was sitting quietly on a tall stool set against the wall, wearing its unfinished, work-in-progress, semi-humanoid form.
Weld raised an inquiring brow at the odo’ital and tilted his head at Dr. Mora. The odo’ital returned the gesture. It had heard. It would stay right where it was and keep Dr. Mora company.
“Alright, boss,” Weld said to Mora. “But don’t let Odo stay up so late this time. Our unknown sample gets uncommonly cranky when you do that.” He clapped Mora’s shoulder. “I’ll see you both in the morning."
“Prophet's rest, Dr. Weld.”
“Prophet's rest, Dr. Mora.”
Dr. Weld threw the odo’ital a casual salute and left the lab.
After Dr. Weld was gone, Mora turned back to his data pad, intending to review his report. He was anxious that it was written in a language their Cardassian overseer could appreciate this time. Everything was hinging on this report; his life, Weld’s life, even the life of the odo’ital. This was, perhaps, the single most important report he’d ever written in his entire scientific career, and Mora had to be certain every phrase and every citation contained therein was perfect, was understandable to a layman, and might finally get his point across to his Cardassian jailers.
The last week had been one of the worst weeks of Mora's life. Under the strong encouragement of his Cardassian jailers, Mora had returned the lab’s focus to the odo’ital’s DNA origins, leaving its cognitive development to the wayside as he pushed every member of his team to their limits to get what the Cardassians were looking for. The Cardassians had accused Mora and his lab of slovenly work, or incompetence, or both, in their inability to identify the origins of the odo’ital, of where it might be from, and if there were others like it out there. Mora was suspicious of the Cardassian’s impatience, assuming the Cardassians’ haste in wanting this information was part of some vicious plan of theirs, potentially looking for yet another race to exploit, much as they were exploiting Bajor and her citizens. Dr. Mora had held nothing back from the Cardassians about his research, but the Cardassians seemed to think he had. And of course, fates of a dire nature had been implied if the scientists didn’t find more concrete answers, and soon.
It was unfortunate- and possibly fatal- that Mora was reporting his findings to the Cardassian military, and not to scientists like himself. He’d been begging the Cardassians to send their own scientists to Bajor for years, experienced scientists who could validate his work, and recognize just how ground-breaking, how exhilarating, his team’s research of the odo’ital had already been, and who could understand just how long and how much labor it would take to fully unravel the mystery of their unclassified lifeform. That was, if they could ever unravel it. After two years of studying the odo’ital, its DNA chains were now so well known to Mora that he could have recited their sequence from memory, but that still didn’t mean he understood a single thing about how those chains made any sense at all. The odo’ital was a scientific bafflement, and in some instances, a biological impossibility. The odo’ital truly was an incredible specimen, deserving of careful and well-documented study by a team of interstellar scientists, and unfortunately for all concerned, Mora’s Cardassian overseers were too blind to see it and pass his findings to the right people. And Dr. Mora Pol had to find a way to change that.
Mora’s stylus was still clutched in his hand, hovering above his data pad, but he'd lost the path of thought he was following before he’d dismissed Weld. He closed his eyes and let the soft rhythm of the still-running centrifuge calm him, trying to find where he left off, but in the quiet, darkened lab, at this late and final hour, all that would come back to him was that last thing Dr. Weld had said.
“Prophet's rest, Dr. Mora…”
Rest, Mora thought, sighing wearily. When was the last time he’d had any actual rest? The last time he could remember getting a full night’s sleep, Lorasa had still been alive, sleeping soundly next to him in their bed. Only Lorasa had understood the full gravity of their situation with the Cardassians. She was the only one of the scientists Mora had allowed to share that burden with him. The other scientists of the institute, who had been trapped in the lab like Mora at the start of the occupation, had no idea just how close to death, or worse, they were every day. Mora made certain they never knew, taking the bulk of the responsibility on himself when the overseers started asking their questions and making their threats. Only in the small hours, with his wife’s arms wrapped tightly around him, could he unburden his fears and find some peace from it all.
But, like much else Mora held dear, the Cardassian occupation of Bajor had stolen that from him, too.
Mora could still hear the chant of the vedek’s funeral prayer for Lorasa, as if it were yesterday. “May the Prophets keep you, and guide you to a gentle rest…”
The flames of Lorasa’s pyre had shot high, bright, and hot when the vedek chanted those words, and even you, Pol, had wondered if the Prophets were really there, reaching for her…
Mora sighed heavily and cleared his head. Best not to think about that day.
He turned his thoughts to the odo’ital’s anomalous mitochondrial structure instead. Science would, as always, fill the space Lorasa’s death had left, the space it had occupied before she was there, the one before the Cardassians had invaded his life, and his home. Yes, even Bajor herself was lost to him at this point, but no matter what calamity befell him or his people, there was always the research. The work. And he needed to focus.
Mora got back to it, revising his report, scribbling away in his neat and careful script, trying to let his scientist’s mind blot out everything but the research, and his blasted report, blot out Lorasa and the child that had been growing in her womb when she fell ill. But tonight, especially on this night, even science wasn't enough. Lorasa’s child had died with her, a faceless, nameless child that Mora had loved before it even drew a breath. No one but Mora, Lorasa, and the vedek who’d presided over her funeral had known about that child. About his lost future. And today, on the two-year anniversary of the death of his wife and unborn son, with his people and his planet dying slowly around him, with a glinn’s boot on his neck, insisting he work scientific miracles or watch what little he had left to him also go up in flames, Mora felt their loss more keenly than he ever had before.
Mora dropped his stylus in defeat and gave up on the report. It either would, or would not, be enough to save them. No amount of puttering from him would change that at this point, and if it wasn’t enough this time, Mora would take full responsibility and hope he could convince the Cardassians to send the rest of his staff to a labor camp instead of executing them.
As for the odo’ital, he would have to convince it to hide itself, and eventually escape, and try to blend itself into the Bajoran population. Mora knew, though, the odds for Odo’s survival on its own were narrow. Odo simply wasn’t ready for life outside the lab. The Cardassians would likely find it and kill it within a week. Their new and one-of-a-kind life form would be destroyed by Cardassian ignorance and lost forever, like much else on Bajor.
Mora dropped his head in his hands and covered his eyes. Oh, Lorasa. I miss you so, especially at times like this...But maybe it is better that you and our son did not live to see such times…
“Dr. Mora,” a gravelly voice said, “you are losing your shape. Are you alright?”
“Losing my shape?” Mora said. He spun around on his stool to face the voice’s owner. “Whatever do you mean, Odo?”
“Your face," Odo replied, raising a wax-plastic, unfinished finger to point at Mora. “It is turning liquid. Do you need to regenerate?”
Mora swiped at his tears, embarrassed, but not as embarrassed as he would've been if Weld were still in the lab. With the odo’ital, he found he wasn’t as ashamed of his unusual show of feeling- and his momentary wallow in self-pity- as he might have been. Still, it was unseemly, so Dr. Mora collected himself and focused his attention on the odo’ital’s curiosity instead. If they were all going to die tomorrow, it seemed an appropriate last wish for a biologist like himself to share one last lesson with his favorite research subject.
“I'm not losing my shape, Odo,” Dr. Mora said. “As I’ve explained, humanoids cannot change shape. We are in one shape, all the time. These,” he said, showing Odo the wet tips of his fingers, “are called tears.”
Odo leaned forward on its stool to look closer, as hungry for new knowledge as any scientist Mora had ever worked with. It studied the tears on Mora’s fingertips for a time, tilting its head in that odd side-to-side way it had when confronting something unknown.
Mora smiled a little, watching Odo study. Once the odo’ital began taking humanoid form, physical forms of communication were one the first things they taught it; shaking its head yes or no, waving, pointing, raising its hand to be noticed. Dr. Feldar had thought it quite amusing to teach Odo an abominably obscene hand gesture. Mora had not been amused, especially when Odo had shown what he'd learned to the overseer. Thank goodness the brute had actually found it amusing, too, or they would have all been dead. But this strange side-to-side rolling of Odo’s head was a gesture that belonged entirely to Odo, and reminded Dr. Mora all the more of Odo’s otherness.
The odo’ital stopped its studying and looked up. It held Mora’s eyes in a direct stare. “Tears-tears-tears,” it said softly.
A shiver ran up Mora’s spine at that recitation. He was unnerved by that ice blue, human-but-not-human stare, but he hid his discomfort. After all, Odo was only doing as it was taught. Odo had never seen tears before, and it was taking in this new word, its concept, repeating the word three times as Mora had taught it to do, to get the feel of it in spoken form.
“That’s right, Odo,” Mora said. He closed his hand and hid it in his coat pocket. “Tears-tears-tears.”
“Odo does not understand these…tears. Why does Mora leak his liquid?”
Mora rubbed his forehead, a physical gesture that mirrored his gathering thoughts. This was going to be yet another difficult conversation. The odo’ital, for all its intelligence and its rapid absorption of the Bajoran language, still hadn’t grasped the expression of emotions and the myriad of words and ideas that went with them. If Mora was being honest with himself, sometimes he hadn’t grasped them, either. After all, it generally took humanoids a lifetime to master their emotions and obviously, with tears still drying on the tips of his fingers and his face, Mora hadn’t mastered his own quite as much as he’d thought. Besides, how did one teach understanding of feeling, anyway? That had been Lorasa’s forte, not Mora’s. She had been their staff psychologist.
Mora’s tears started welling again, but he blinked them away. With Lorasa gone, they had all three missed such an incredible opportunity. She should have been the one to teach Odo these things. She had been an excellent teacher, a good and caring professional, and most skilled at handling stubborn cases.
Even the impossibly stubborn case of Dr. Mora Pol.
Mora cleared his throat. “Tears, Odo, are a humanoid biological response. A physiological reaction that can manifest during times of stress.”
The odo’ital touched its face, its eyes. “Does Odo have tears?”
“No, Odo,” Mora replied. “Not that we know of, anyway. And remember to refer to yourself in the first person, please.”
“Odo does not- I…do not…understand. Why do I not have tears, like Mora?”
“Well, we don’t know yet, do we? That is why we're both here, after all, in the lab. To find out all we can about you, Odo, and to learn. For humanoids, when they become filled with an emotion- like sadness, let’s say- there is a biochemical reaction that occurs within the body, producing the release of different hormones, and that can produce strong physical responses. It is a part of our evolutionary inheritance, another way a humanoid lifeform communicates its feelings. You may have your own form of tears, Odo. We just haven’t discovered it yet.”
Odo was silent, turning its gaze away from Mora, digesting all Mora had said. Mora waited patiently for it to catch up. Odo was still confused, Mora knew. Even in this early stage of its development, even without full command of facial expression or language, Mora had learned to read the ever-shifting moods of the odo’ital, even when no one else could. After all, he was the one who spent the most time with it.
“So tears mean…Mora…is sad? This is why he leaks his liquid?”
“Yes, Odo. Dr. Mora is sad. Especially today.”
“Why?”
“Oh, for a few reasons, Odo, but mainly...because today is the anniversary of my wife’s death. Do you remember the word ‘wife,’ Odo? What a wife is?”
“Wife-wife-wife…Yes, I remember. Female. Marital partner. Loved one.”
“Yes, Odo, loved one,” Mora replied. “My love, Lorasa. She died two years ago today, from Escarian fever.”
Odo tilted its head again, thinking. “Died-died-died,” it whispered, and looked up at Mora. “The word, I see it, the way the computer showed Odo, the way it is shaped, but I do not understand. What is ‘died?’”
“Humanoids die, Odo, when their physical body can no longer function. A person will cease to exist without their physical body. The brain will stop, and everything that they are will be gone.”
“Where do they go?”
“That depends on who you ask, Odo. Most Bajorans believe they go to the afterlife, to the Celestial Temple to spend eternity with the Prophets.” Mora huffed a small laugh. “Though perhaps you should ask Dr. Weld more about that, Odo. He would still go to Temple if the Cardassians allowed it, and could teach you far more than I could about the Prophets and their Celestial Temple.”
“Cel-les-tial Temple,” Odo mused. “It is nice to make these words…But Mora does not think as Weld does? That humanoids go to the Celestial Temple when they die?”
Mora raised a brow at the odo’ital, pleased with its quick perception. “No, Odo, I do not,” Mora said. “I am a scientist, and I’ve seen no evidence that we go anywhere after we die, or any evidence of a Celestial Temple, and I must believe in science, in its proofs, or what else would I have to believe in? When we die, we simply…stop. We are no more. We are gone, like I said.”
“And the humanoid is gone forever?” Odo asked. “It cannot come back?”
“Correct, Odo,” Mora replied. “The humanoid cannot come back. At least not physically, but humanoids who have not died can remember those who have, like I do today, with Lorasa…So in a way, I suppose humanoids do live on after we die…”
Odo grew quiet again, pondering. Mora noticed the centrifuge had gone quiet, as well. He rose, and made his way over to the machine, downloading the data before lifting the lid. When the computer was finished, he opened the centrifuge, carefully removing the sample tube, and walked it back to Odo.
“Here you are, Odo. Your sample returned to you, as promised.”
Odo rose eagerly from its stool, holding out a lineless, flat palm. Mora poured the liquid amber contents of the sample tube into Odo’s hand, watching with utter fascination as the sample reabsorbed into Odo’s system.
The odo’ital shook its hand rapidly, like someone trying to waken a sleeping limb. “Dr. Mora,” Odo asked, “what it is like to stop? To die?”
“Well, Odo,” Mora began. He paused, trying to think of a frame of reference Odo could understand. “I guess it’s similar to your regeneration cycle. Your body tells you it can no longer hold its shape, your consciousness shuts down, and you stop.”
Odo's eyes widened and it scrabbled away from Mora, tripping over the stool. An amber shudder ran through it. “Odo dies when it regenerates? Odo can be gone, forever?”
Mora rolled his eyes, kicking himself. Pol, you moron…
“Odo, I’m sorry,” he said, laying reassuring hands Odo’s shoulders. “I’m making a mess of this, I didn’t mean to frighten you. You do not die when you regenerate, you are not going away. That’s not what I mean, but imagine if you did not wake again after you regenerated. That you couldn’t come back to us. That would be as close to dying as I can equate for you right now.”
Odo raised an almost-brow. “So Odo will not die when it regenerates?”
“No, Odo. Not likely.”
The odo’ital’s tension visibly eased. “That is good,” Odo said. It dropped back down on the stool. “I think I understand what ‘died’ is now…But why, Dr. Mora? Why do humanoids die? Why must they stop?”
Mora took his seat, as well. “For many different reasons, Odo, too many to count. The spark of life is far more fragile than humanoids would ever care to know. Lorasa, as I said, was sick. Her body failed her, and she stopped.”
“Sick-sick-sick,” Odo mumbled. “What is ‘sick,’ Dr. Mora? Why does it make Lorasa stop?”
“Sick, Odo, is something I don’t think you’ll ever have to worry about, not with your physiology. For humanoids, it is when the body's condition is degraded by another factor such as a microbe or a disease or injury, preventing it from functioning correctly. If the malfunction goes on for too long, or gets taken too far, the body cannot heal itself and it will stop functioning entirely.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Sometimes. Usually. But not always.”
“Did it hurt Lorasa to be sick?”
“Yes, Odo,” Mora replied, his eyes welling with sudden tears again. His jaw clenched and he swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Very much. She suffered terribly before she died. She was in great pain, and the damned Cardassians would let me do nothing to help her!”
Odo's sharp blue gaze softened. "Odo remembers great pain,” it said. “Lorasa was like Odo, in the protein decompiler.”
It was Mora’s turn to shudder in horror. He remembered quite well the day he’d nearly killed the odo’ital in his callousness, and his ignorance, before he fully understood that Odo was a lifeform. A primal scream of pain and terror from inside the protein decompiler had finally gotten it across. He couldn’t imagine putting Odo through such a trial now. It would be unconscionable, like putting an infant in a radiation chamber. Mora’s guilt deepened further as he realized that though he would never put Odo in that particular piece of equipment again and put him through that level of suffering, there were other experiments in the future that had to be done- if the Cardassians took his research seriously this time, and they made it through tomorrow still living- and that not a single one of those experiments was likely to be without some kind of pain for his unknown sample.
“Yes,” Mora replied, his voice thick. “Lorasa was like Odo, in the protein decompiler. Only no one took her out.”
The odo’ital looked away, silent again, absorbing, processing, in its sponge-like, child-like way. Mora leaned back against his worktable and took the quiet moment to observe more closely the changes in the odo’ital’s physical body, small advances in shapeshifting that Odo seemed to make every day as it developed, and that could be easily missed if one was wrapped up in other things. Like Mora lately had been.
Mora studied Odo’s sharp, prominent, as-yet unridged profile, the hint at what might become high, angled cheekbones, the long, lanky length of its limbs. Odo’s approximation of hair was taking on a darkened blonde hue, worn slicked back and away from its unfinished face. The height, the square of its shoulders, its general build, suggested Odo was starting to lean to the masculine in form, possibly displaying a gender preference which opened yet another series of studies for Mora’s team. And which would also finally allow them to settle on a proper pronoun for a sentient lifeform.
Mora took it all in, trying to envision what Odo saw itself becoming through its choices. A bittersweet ache swelled in his chest as that vision drew suddenly clear. None of the features Odo wore were completed, almost none of them fully recognizable as humanoid yet, but to Mora, they were already painfully familiar. When the day came that they were fully formed, and Mora was certain that day was not far off, Mora saw with total clarity that this odo’ital, this unknown sample, this mystery of the cosmos they had found, would end up very much resembling a certain Dr. Mora Pol, as much as any child of his and Lorasa’s might have done.
Lorasa, Mora thought, would have been fond of Odo. She loved children, had been so full of joy at the prospect of being a mother, and what was Odo right now, if not a child? Another faceless child that the Cardassians might destroy before it made its name, a wayward orphan of the stars they had left in Mora’s custody. A second chance he had been given to harbor a new life, to see it grow, and with every fiber of his being, Dr. Mora knew he would not, could not fail this time, even though it meant Odo would probably grow to hate him for what was to come. And that realization made everything that lay ahead of them that much harder for Mora to bear.
Odo’s blue eyes met Mora’s then, as clear and piercing as the ones Mora saw in his mirror every morning. Mora’s eyes the odo’ital had copied perfectly, on the first try, and already it knew how to say so much with them. At the moment, their expression was dark and accusing.
“Odo can be sick, Dr. Mora. The protein decompiler makes Odo sick. It can make Odo stop.”
Mora put up his hands in a gesture of yielding. “I know, Odo, I know, and I will keep my promise. You will never have to go in it again. It was never my intent to hurt you, or make you stop.”
Odo held Mora’s gaze a little longer, and then nodded once, firmly, trusting Mora’s answer. It rose from the stool, standing ramrod straight, and clasped its hands behind its back. Mora bit his cheek against a sudden bubble of laughter as Odo puffed its chest out a bit, just as Mora did when addressing his staff. Odo even borrowed one of his go-to phrases as it spoke.
“Let us review what we have learned today,” Odo stated.
“Go ahead, Odo,” Mora smiled. “I’m listening.”
“Lorasa,” Odo recited, “who was Mora’s wife, and who was Mora’s love, got sick, and stopped. Mora remembers Lorasa, especially today, on the anni-ver-sary. Mora leaks his tears when he remembers because he is sad that Lorasa stopped. That she is gone. That she died. And that she cannot come back to him.”
“Yes, Odo,” Mora said, his smile thin. “That’s it exactly. Well done.”
Odo, pleased with itself, relaxed its posture, but the expression in its eyes shifted to doubt. It apparently still had another question.
“Dr. Mora, there is another word I do not understand. What does it mean when Mora says Lorasa was his love? What is…love?”
Mora heaved a sigh, and stood. “Love, Odo, is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of humankind, and a discussion we must save for another day. It is entirely too lengthy a subject to explain at this hour, and I’m far too tired. Come,” he said, encouraging the odo’ital to follow him. “Let’s get you to your room. I’m for bed and so are you.”
Odo followed on Mora’s heels, out of the genetics lab, and to a small room across the hall where they kept Odo for the night. The plaque to the left of the door identified it as “Isolation Room No. 37.” Everyone in the lab, however, had stopped referring to it as the isolation room, and started calling it ‘Odo’s room’ instead.
Mora tapped the controls and opened the door. The pressurized, sanitized air behind it hissed out as the door slid back. Odo’s bucket was in one corner, the cell otherwise empty. The bucket was the only thing the Cardassians allowed the scientists to leave in Odo’s drab, narrow cell.
“In you go, Odo,” Mora said, careful to keep his tone cheerful.
The odo’ital didn’t obey. Instead, it planted its feet and crossed its arms over its chest.
“Dr. Mora,” Odo said, “before I regenerate, I would see Lorasa.”
If only you could, Odo. If only we both could, I’d take you right to her…
“A holo-image, you mean?”
Odo nodded his affirmation.
“Well…I don’t see why not, Odo.”
The pair moved down the hall to a near-by computer panel. Mora tapped in his codes, calling up a holo-image of Dr. Mora Lorasa, choosing one from his personal files, not the one taken for her official record. Lorasa had hated that holo-image. She’d complained it made her look fat.
Lorasa’s familiar, smiling face floated up on the screen, and Mora’s heart squeezed in his chest. Odo pushed its head in front of Mora’s to get a better look.
“She was…pleasing,” Odo said. “I like her face-form. Her hair. The color is called red, yes?”
“Yes, Odo,” Mora smiled. “A rare shade on Bajor, a true auburn. My Lorasa was considered by many to be a great beauty, inside and out. What she ever saw in me, I could never tell you. This image was taken right before she got sick. The day she told me she was pregnant. Lorasa had never looked more beautiful to me than in that moment when she told me she was carrying our child. I was adamant that moment be preserved. Lorasa scoffed at that and told me I was being awfully sentimental for a man of science, but she let me take the image anyway...”
Odo was still staring intently at the screen. “Red-red-red,” Odo chanted softly.
Mora smiled wider, wondering if Odo had heard a word of what he’d just said, though he didn’t blame Odo for being so fascinated. Mora himself had always been transfixed by the ember burn of Lorasa’s hair. And as Mora looked on that familiar red shimmer, as if she was really there, with him and Odo in the corridor, living and breathing, and not trapped forever frozen in a stolen slice of time, Mora could hear his wife’s voice whispering in his ear, warm and sure, and full of love.
Have faith, Pol. Everything will be fine tomorrow, you’ll see…Prophet's rest, dear.
I hope so, Lorasa. For all of us, I hope so…May the Prophets keep you, my love…
Mora heaved a sigh and logged off the panel. “Alright, Odo, enough delays. Time to regenerate.”
Odo pulled its attention away from the darkened panel and marched to its room. Mora followed and waited for Odo to go inside so he could seal the door. Odo paused, turning back to him, and reached down to take Mora’s hand.
“Dr. Mora, Odo does not--I do not have tears. But I do get sad. I am sad for Lorasa, and for Mora.” Odo’s grip on Mora’s hand tightened. “And sometimes, I am sad for Odo, though I do not know why.”
Mora returned Odo's squeeze, holding a reassuring smile for Odo’s sake that he didn’t even remotely feel.
“You’ll be fine, Odo,” Mora said. “Go on, and get some rest. Dr. Weld and I will see you in the morning, and as long as the overseer’s visit goes well tomorrow, I’ll let you ask Dr. Weld all the questions you want about love. I’ll give you the whole day to ask away. Love is generally a much happier subject than what we’ve discussed tonight, and I think Dr. Weld would explain it far better than I could, anyway. The only person I was ever any good at loving was Lorasa.”
Odo let go of Mora’s hand. “Prophet's rest, Dr. Mora,” Odo said.
Mora nodded, still holding tight to his smile. Odo effortlessly shed its humanoid form, reverting to its natural liquid state, and poured itself into the bucket.
Mora finally let his smile drop. He closed Odo’s door and locked it. He stayed for a while longer, watching through the observation window of the door as Odo slumbered.
Dr. Mora raised a hand to the glass, resting it there, over the odo’ital. “Prophet's rest, Odo,” he said, and turned away.