Author's Note: This is written having only seen her first 3 episodes, which was close to a year ago now, which is how long I've been intending to write this.
****
She looks at Quark and some other part of her remembers the games of double entendre and salaciousness she used to play with the ferengi when she was Jadzia Dax. He still plays the game with her, but Ezri doesn't enjoy it anywhere near as much, and most of the time it feels like she responds to him on an automatic pilot set by someone else.
One of those voices that are her, but aren't.
"Is my holosuite ready?" she asks, smiling because he has no idea what she's thinking.
"All ready and waiting," he answers, smiling because she hands him the latinum strip for the use of it.
A nod, and Ezri turns away. The bar is full of people coming off their duty shift, and she is jostled a couple of times before being able to climb the stairs to the sanctuary of the suites. A glance backwards shows Quark in conversation with Morn, and a flash of red that probably belongs to a passing bajoran's uniform, then the doors close and the rest of the station is gone. She is alone, apart from herself.
She moves over to the control console, booting up the system with Jadzia's practiced familiarity and a little of her own. Reaching into the little bag she's brought with her, she pulls out the data rod that has been her companion in the holosuite for the past week. All of her past selves reside within the almost luminous orange intricacies of its structure, like genies waiting to be summoned.
Nothing too complex, just reconstructions Jadzia had made to help herself after becoming Joined. You were meant to do it in your head, when you wanted to talk to a past host, but her severe lack of training makes holograms easier to deal with. It was something the rest of Dax had under- stood, so backed away to let her get her head around the people who would spend the rest of her life being her.
It had helped, but since then, she's discovered her need has changed.
Locking the doors, she slots the rod into the console and runs the final programme, summoning the last digital ghost: Jadzia, less than a year before she died.
"Hi," the taller woman beams, stretching in the manner of someone cooped up far too long. It is an agile, graceful movement of the body that Ezri misses.
"Hello Jadzia," she greets the hologram with a little nod of the head, a shy smile on her lips as she moves towards the centre of the room.
"Are we alone?" There is something playfully conspiratorial in Jadzia's voice as she asks this.
"Yes," Ezri nods again. "Computer, please load file Zero-Seven Delta- Sigma-Nine. Passcode: culture shock."
"Working," the dull feminine voice replies.
"Still haven't asked her?" Jadzia asks as the hologrid is replaced by Ezri's programme. The lighting becomes a little darker, constantly rippling reflections from the grotto pool painting the walls.
"No," Ezri shakes her head, her words touched with trepidation. "I... I tried, but just couldn't. Again. She barely knows me."
"She knows me," Jadzia offers helpfully in the way someone does when the advice they give has been offered - and rejected - before, an exchange that has gone on often enough to have become ritual. "Knew me. We loved each other, and I don't think my having married Worf or becoming you will have changed that."
"But is it me or you that wants her, that she'll want? You're a part of me, but I'm not you," Ezri sighs, stepping behind the ornamental paper screen and undressing. "You don't know what it's like because you were never surrounded with Curzon's friends, and because you wanted what happened to you!" Aware of how the last bit sounds, she adds "Wanted to be Joined, I mean."
"I know what you mean," Jadzia answers kindly.
"All of them look at me, and when they do they want to see /you/. All except the Captain, and especially Worf. I think he hates me for not being you and being you too much."
She sighs, letting her jacket fall to the ground instead of hanging it up, and sits on the little wooden bench to remove her boots. "She does it too. Shies away from me ever so slightly like I'm your ghost instead of my own person. And I'm not even /that/ anymore."
"They'll come around," the hologram says phlegmatically, walking around the edge of the screen and resting a hand on the top of it. "Why do you always change behind this? Is it imagery, the personification of trying to keep Ezri apart from Dax?"
"Yes," she answers simply. "I was the middle child in a large family, and it was hard enough to have my own identity stand out amidst everyone else." She drops the rest of her clothes on top of the jacket, too agitated to worry about being neat the way she used to be when this started. "But I could get away from my family when I had to, which is why I joined Starfleet. But I can't run away from Dax. I can't run away from myself."
Jadzia sits down next to her, the replicated material of her uniform raising goosbumps where it brushes against Ezri's bare skin. "We don't have to do this, Ezri, not if it's making you feel this way. I'm probably the last face you want to see; after all, I wanted to be Joined so badly I wouldn't let them wash me out."
More of the ritual. Little things different each time, but always the same. It's that in which she finds a comfort she desperately desires.
She shakes her head, looking away then into Jadzia's eyes. "No. I /need/ this, Jadzia. Everyone else, the way they look at me and want you, they make it all the more important to me that I keep in touch with who Ezri is, because I don't want to be lost in Dax, and I need you to help me remember."
She reaches out and touches Jadzia's belly. Even though there is nothing at the end of her fingertips but forcefields and light and a little replicated matter, the gesture is gentle, almost reverent. "Jadzia made you with the memory of what it's like to suddenly find your head alone after years of it being filled with our past hosts. You are the opposite I need to hold myself in contrast against, my opposite in so many things. Until I'm ready for her, and I know myself."
Nodding, Jadzia stands and offers Ezri her hand. "Then, little one, let us know you better."
Taking it, Ezri allows herself to be guided into the centre of the cavern, the slight drop in temperature this causes sending another ripple of goosebumps running across her skin. The ripple spreads further, consuming her completely as Jadzia's fingers brush down her spots from behind, following them down, down to the place they grow from and finding her naked there. Eyes fluttering closed, she whimpers plaintively as the fingers leave that place and continue their journey until they touch her ankles.
"You are beautiful," Jadzia's voice floats upwards.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," she answers, the words coming so easily to her now.
"I behold you." The voice is huskier, coming from above her again.
"I belong to you," she replies as the soft leather of the collar touches her throat. It wraps around her neck in an intimate caress, sending a tremor of arousal through her like it always does. It is followed by another when the buckle is fastened and sealed with a kiss, the little rectangle of metal resting against the nape of her neck.
"You look dead sexy with a collar," Jadzia remarks, walking around her supplicant, surveying the woman giving herself over to her.
"I've always thought so, Mistress," Ezri nods, meeting the other woman's eyes proudly. This is who she is, and she will not hide it. Most especially not from herself.
"Would you wear it for her, where everyone can see it?" Jadzia challenges, removing her jacket as she continues to circle Ezri, brushing it against the young woman's skin. It makes the Trill shiver, nipples crinkling further into hardness but not there quite yet. "Let everyone, even Quark, know that you are her property?"
"Yes, Mistress," she nods again. "I love her so much I'd let her brand me, naked and on the Promenade, if that was her desire." She quivers as Jadzia's fingers fleetingly brush the very apex of her inner thigh.
"Not just her desire, I think, my Little One."
"No, Mistress. Not just hers."
Jadzia strokes her fingers down Ezri's back slowly, touching all the little blemishes and imperfections she can find, her caress making them special in a way they hadn't been. The memory of that same touch, applied to another woman's back, flashes across her mind's eye.
The hologram's fingers drift across Ezri's sides, once more caressing her spots.
"These hold so much promise, Little One," she croons softly. "I think I shall play that old children's game with them tonight..."
Ezri is unable to help either the little gasp of anticipation that escapes her lips at that teasing promise, or the beginnings of the aroused flush across her breasts. It provokes a chuckle and a series of strokes across her spots with the edges of Jadzia's nails that turn the gasp into a pleasurable, yielding, moan.
It's a sensation that causes Dax to shift in her belly, though perhaps \squirm\ is a better description of the symbiont's movement. It too has been learning from these encounters, experiencing for the first time the pleasures of submission after so many lifetimes of being Joined with people whose sexuality had ranged only in the one direction, from vanilladom to dominant.
"I see that idea pleases you," the hologram smiles at her submissive's reaction. "Oh Little One, I will make your body sing my tune, I promise. And then perhaps you'll be ready to let another play it, make it sing her tune."
"I want to be, Mistress, so much," Ezri moans softly, balling her hands into fists to avoid touching herself where she hasn't been given permission to. The moan becomes a sharp intake of breath as Jadzia's hands close firmly around hers.
"You want to touch yourself," the all too knowing voice whispers seductively into her ear. "You want to burn your fingers in the glowing embers of your arousal."
"Yes, Mistress."
"But you won't unless I say so, will you?"
"No, Mistress."
There is a sound that the suspicious part of her thinks might be disappointment, but it is made too softly for her to be sure. But her arms suddenly being pulled above her head, flattening her breasts against her chest, robs Ezri of the chance to think about it. When the leather cuffs are tightened around her wrists, she forgets the sound altogether, instead remembering what the cuffs are prelude to.
Memories and leather send another flush running across her body, each sensative nubbin of flesh made that little bit harder and more eager for attention she can't allow herself to give them.
"Standing comfortably, Little One?"
Ezri shuffles her feet a little, widening her stance in preparation for what is to come, and leans back ever so slightly. After nodding her readiness, she closes her eyes and starts taking slow, deep breaths. The sound of the chain connected to her cuffs being affixed to one of the walls a few moments later sends an anticipatory shiver down her spine and into the well of heat steadily growing between her legs.
She pauses in her breathing long enough to let out a husky purr as Jadzia dribbles warm massage oil over her shoulders. Long, knowing fingers that feel so unbelievably real then start a dance of strokes and deep rubs, working the oil into her back. They travel over her with an intimate knowledge of Ezri so very few possess, finding every knot and kink and easing it. But they don't stop.
Instead, they move up her arms, massaging them in the exact same way. Then down to her legs, filling her body and her mind with an incredible sense of warmth and pliancy. Then they trail up her spots again, sending another tremour of desire snaking through her that threatens to snap her out of the place she's going to. It's part of the game, part of the teasing and the build up Jadzia was always so good at when she topped her lovers.
"Keep your eyes closed, Little One," her voice seeps into Ezri's awareness as she moves around, her hands touching Ezri's temples and moving downwards in little oil-slicked swirls. Jadzia's perfume teases her sense of smell, a sweet fruity scent that mingles with the peatier musks of two very aroused Trill women to create something exotic and unique to them.
Jadzia's lips are soft and lush when they find hers, silencing the little sound of delight Ezri makes when the hologram's fingers brush the very periphery of her areolas that same instant. Torturously they circle outwards, leaving oily tracks in their wake that widen further and further until her hands have framed the little lump in her belly that is Dax.
The symbiont squirms again, shifting upwards towards those warm, knowing hands, its tail accidentily brushing against the deep core of Ezri's clitoris, making her jerk forward with a brief yelp of surprise and unexpected pleasure.
"Little One?" Jadzia asks, one hand resting just above Dax on the thin scar marking the point the symbiont had entered and claimed her, the other in the small of the young Trill's back to suport her should she need it. "Should we stop?"
"Dax..." she breathes, fighting to stay at that place in her head she has to go for what is to come. "I... I've never felt it move like that before, touch my inside like that!"
There is something in the hologram's voice that sounds like a smile.
"This is good, Little One," Jadzia says, gently kneeding her, returning her to a sort of equilibrium. "Dax is having fun. It's accepting that core part of you that the initial Joining can never truly capture, the part that's more than simple memory."
Jadzia's lips caress Ezri's belly as her hands stroke slowly up the tingling, damp length of the young trill's inner thighs, provoking a deep whimper of need and desire. There are words too, but they don't make it past her lips.
"You're ready I think," Jadzia remarks after a moment, fingers gliding up to stroke where Dax is with something that isn't oil.
"Yes, Mistress..." she answers, her breathing shallower now, her body quivering visibly with every intimate touch placed upon it. "Please..."
The hands leave her, and there is a final, intense kiss that steals her breath. She has just enough time to suck it in again before the doe skin of Jadzia's flogger strikes her across the shoulders.
More sharp sensation than actual pain, the impact forces her torso forward slightly as her head jerks backwards that same tiny amount. It never starts in the same place, making the anticipation of where the first blow will land part of the game Jadzia plays. And it's a game she's very good at, even as a hologram.
As with the massage that had prepared her for this, Ezri soon loses concept of time as her world contracts inwards to the simplest level of the flogger and herself. It dances over her body, marking it, claiming it, making it sing with a primal sound welling out of the deepest and darkest corners of her soul. And as with the massage, her Mistress is silent in the giving of it. There are only Ezri's quiet atavistic cries of need and release to compete with the painfully beautiful sound of suede striking willing flesh.
Somehow, lost in the depths of subspace, she notices that Jadzia has changed floggers, but how close to the event her perception of it is, she is unable to say. It has fewer tongues and they are longer, wrapping around her to nip and bite and lap her front. The fire in her spreads, a raging inferno consuming everything it is given, tendrils of it snaking outwards in search of more, its heat making the little trickles of her nectar that creep down her inner thighs even more noticable.
Her eyes fly open at the sudden feeling in her belly as Dax succumbs, spasming in an orgasm that has been a week in coming but that it hadn't been aware of. With each convulsion, its tail strikes the hidden length of her clitoris, exciting and tormenting pleasure centres neither of them have ever realised symbionts had access to. Each of them are helpless, trapped in each other's passion and unable to escape.
If she'd been anywhere else but subspace, Ezri might be worried that the inarticulate vocalisation torn out of her by Dax and by Jadzia could have been heard by anyone nearby, even with the dampening fields. But, lost in the depths of where her submission takes her, her world has shrunk down to the small sun that has taken up residence in her sex.
She cries out again, the word 'please' hidden somewhere inside.
The flogger wraps up between her legs, striking her sex, forcing out another gutteral cry. It hits her again, the angle a little different so the impact strikes the throbing largeness of her clitoris, then again and again, once around each hip. The torture of being denied that final step over the precipice is worse than what has brought her there.
"Let it go..." Jadzia whispers, her arms unexpectedly wrapping around Ezri's waist, their touch so very very cool. One hand moves upwards, resting against her lips, the other down, down, a lance of ice plunged into her burning core.
Her sobbing scream is lost in the palm of her lover's hand, her small body arching until she thinks it will break. Those cool, knowing fingers are trapped moving inside her, pleasuring her, releasing her, supporting her, torturing her, rewarding her. She calls out again as Dax's orgasm begins to fade, that sense of peace ebbing into Ezri as she cries and moans into the hand so tenderly gagging her.
It takes a long while for her to subside, and only then do her eyes flutter closed, the name still on her lips.
Nerys.
* * *
When Ezri's eyes open again, Jadzia is cradling her in the grotto's pool, the hologram's nude body held tightly against hers, the deliciously cool water lapping against her breasts just above the nipples. The collar is still around her throat, where it belongs.
"Wha...?" she asks in surprise.
"Hush, Little One," Jadzia coos tenderly, brushing her fingers across her cheek, down the trail of spots, veering away at the shoulder to follow the curve of her throat back up to Ezri's lips. She kisses them, mildly surprised to discover she can still taste herself. "I will miss you, little Ezri, when you finally find the courage to give yourself to Nerys."
"Both of us can come and play with you, Mistress. When we miss you." She lets out a contented little sigh, resting her cheek on Jadzia's shoulder. "I have Jadzia, or at least a part of her, in me, alive in a way. But all Nerys has are memories, and memories aren't always enough."
"True," the hologram nods, stroking Dax softly. "But aren't you dwelling on Jadzia a little too much?"
Ezri shakes her head, softly kissing the spots beneath her lips, where Jadzia's neck and shoulder meet. "No. I think I've been exorcising her as much as I've been learning to accept her. You... She... I don't know how to put it in to words."
"Then don't," Jadzia instructs, tenderly running her fingers through her little submissive's hair. "Today's drained you, Little One, to balance the progress you've made, and we're almost out of time."
"But we've hardly done anything, Mistress!" Ezri protests.
The hand that has been caressing Dax drops lower, bringing a brief smile to Ezri's lips. But that smile vanishes as her body arches, those long knowing fingers pinching her clitoris unpleasantly hard in reprimand.
"This isn't only about pleasure, Little One. It's about you learning to get on with your new life."
"Yes, Mistress," Ezri nods, hanging her head.
"Good girl."
The hologram helps her out of the water, sluicing Ezri with her hands before toweling her dry with the softest, fluffiest towel it's possible to replicate. Even so, her back is still incredibly tender, more so than usual, leaving her guessing that the flogging might have gone on longer today than the previous sessions. She smiles, finding pleasure in still enjoying the experience of having her boundries pushed that little bit further. It makes pulling on her uniform easier, and this time she does it in front of the screen, not behind.
As always, the collar is the last to go, the last step in resuming her public face. She hands it to Jadzia, who uses holodeck magic to dry the sensual leather before placing it in Ezri's bag, alongside the floggers she brings for the hologram to use on her.
Handing Ezri the bag, Jadzia gives her a last, lingering kiss. "Go get them, Little One."
"Computer, save and end all programmes."
A shimmer of sound and there is only the empty holosuite again. It provokes a sigh of disappoint as she removes the data rod and slips it into the bag. She unlocks the doors and leaves.
Outside, Quark's isn't as crowded as it had been when she arrived. She can see the ferengi playing dabo with a couple of klingons in one corner, Morn still occupying the same seat at the bar and engaged in a vocal argument with a rihannsu science officer. Then she notices Julian and Miles, in their vintage flying attire, get up from their table and head towards the stairs.
Ezri almost runs out of the bar, unable to stand the thought of the two of them being close enough to see her still coming off the high the scene has given her. Or worse, that they might brush against her, making her hurt and making her high again all at once. Only one person on the station has that right, and Ezri has no idea where she is.
She doesn't notice the bajoran colonel sitting beneath the stairs, watching her leave with a thoughtful gaze.
~The End~
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