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The night starts out fine, wonderful even.
After a lovely dinner, Keiko and Miles both get on the floor. From her chair, Kira glances to the carpet, wondering perhaps if something dropped from the table and her two partners have now taken a knee to look for it. Then Kira recalls a small detail from the reading she’s been doing on human courtship rituals (she’s been uncharacteristically optimistic lately) and blurts out, “Oh. Oh my. You’re…”
Miles fishes out a small black box from his pocket, popping it open to reveal a ring made of the same metal as his and Keiko’s. The box trembles slightly in Miles’ shaking hands.
Keiko lays a hand on Mile’s wrist, and gazes up at Kira with such open adoration that Kira is afraid she’s looking at someone else.
Keiko smiles. “Nerys, will you do us the honor of being our wife?”
Kira doesn’t know how to respond. She knows she wants to say yes, but for the life of her, she cannot recall what the human customs book said about responding to a proposal. Not wanting to keep Keiko and Miles waiting, Kira goes with her best guess: kneeling on the floor beside them. “Yes. Of course. Yes.”
Four arms envelope her, Keiko’s lips meeting her own as Miles buries his face in her neck. Kira suspects he’s hiding tears.
Kira plans on skipping the next part when telling this story to her grandchildren (and she knows she will; for the first time in her life, having descendents is a certainty). They don’t need to know about Miles blowing out the candles and Keiko leading them to bed. Or Miles finding new ways to express his affection for Nerys physically, but not sexually, not as he would with Keiko. His arms tighten around her, hands caress her hair, kisses trail from her temple to the tip of her nose. All while Keiko loves her with reckless abandon and as much trembling passion as their first time together but with none of the hesitancy. Kira blooms under Keiko’s touch again and again like an orchid waking from dormancy until it’s too much and she rolls Keiko onto her back, leaving her at the mercy of Nerys and Miles’ affections. (As Miles is fond of saying, they make a good team.)
For her grandchildren, Kira will pick up the story afterwards once they’ve changed the sheets, put on pajamas, brushed their teeth, and Keiko has completed her evening skin routine (she has a habit of formulating her own botanical treatments), and Miles has put katterpod butter on all the stretch marks Nerys can’t reach. (They may be wildly in love, but they’re still, by Molly’s account, “old and boring and old.”)
Lying in bed, Keiko’s chin rests on Kira’s head, Kira’s left hand drapes across Keiko’s body, Miles spinning the ring on Kira’s previously bare finger. (The ring will need to be sized down tomorrow.)
“It’s funny,” Kira says, nestling closer to Keiko’s collar bone. “Ours will be the first human wedding I’ve ever been to.”
“You don’t want a Bajoran ceremony?” Miles asks.
“Yeah, but seeing how outnumbered I am, I assumed our wedding would be at least two-thirds human.”
Keiko’s arm curls around Kira’s back. “Nerys, Miles and I—we’ve already had our dream wedding. Now it’s your turn.”
Kira hesitates, plotting out a plan of attack for discovering what exactly a “dream wedding” is without the embarrassment of actually asking. She goes the considerate route. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” Kira asks.
“Absolutely.” Miles intertwines their fingers. “We’re marrying you, and you’re Bajoran. As long as I don’t have to pierce my ear, we’re happy to have the Bajoran dream wedding you’ve always wanted.”
He says it so simply, so matter-of-factly, as if it’s a given that Kira knows what a dream wedding is (much less having always wanted one), that Kira is afraid to ask what exactly they’re going on about. To be clear, she’s not afraid of any repercussions for their relationship should she question them, but rather afraid of looking silly. Like when her crewmates in Starfleet throw around untranslatable human words, like “karaoke” or “polka.”
So, Kira does what any normal, not ridiculously stubborn, newly-engaged person would do: let the confusion gnaw at her long after Miles and Keiko have fallen asleep. Finally, after a good deal of inner turmoil, Kira concedes that she will not be able to puzzle this strange phrase’s meaning out on her own. Her best guess thus far is that a “dream wedding” is a kind of romantic vision humans experience in something like a trance state. But she dismisses that as far too Bajoran to happen on Earth. After all, the Prophets didn’t bless that planet with orbs of any kind.
Kira untangles herself from Keiko’s arms with little difficulty; Kira has years of stealth training from her Resistance cel, and Keiko, Prophets bless her, sleeps like a petrified log.
Picking up a certain PADD on human courtship customs on the way out, Kira steps into the living room. After a few moments of searching, Kira discovers that the term “dream wedding” doesn’t make an appearance in this book. She scans the section on wedding ceremonies and there’s no mention of dreams or sleep or visions or prophecies or even hallucinations.
Remembering the words of Kai Unadwi (“If the answers you seek are not at hand, you must take to your feet.”), Kira stands from the couch, changes into civvies from the laundry basket, and heads for the door. Stepping into the corridor, she takes a breath and attempts to free her mind, allowing her feet to lead her where she needs to go. That’s the method Unadwi wrote of, but Unadwi had the entire planet to roam and much more general answers to seek. Walk four kilometers in any direction on Bajor, and you’re bound to bump into someone with strong opinions on the meaning of life, the nature of the divine, and which springball player’s racket is surely blessed by the Prophets.
On the station, when seeking answers about obscure human customs, the options and acreage are much more limited.
Still, far be it for Kira to question the teachings of one of the greatest Kais in Bajoran history.
Sticking to her faith and keeping her mind clear, Kira’s feet take her through the habitat ring.
She passes Dr. Bashir’s quarters. Apparently, even her feet know that Julian, while a fan of human culture, is no expert on his species’ social customs. (Not to mention other species’ social customs.)
She walks by Jadzia’s quarters without slowing, losing the benefit of centuries of experience amongst humans but also the risk of the entire station learning about Kira’s engagement by breakfast tomorrow.
Kira sees the door to Captain Sisko’s quarters, but doesn’t stop. Surprising, but probably a good thing. The captain likely has his hands full watching Molly and Yoshi (that should have been Kira’s first hint that Miles and Keiko had something more elaborate than a romantic dinner planned for that evening).
Kira’s feet halt in front of a narrow, unmarked door a few meters from Captain Sisko’s quarters. Thankfully, she’s never had to use this door before, but she knows what it’s for: direct access to the Defiant’s docking pad, designed to get the captain and senior crew to the ship quickly in case of an emergency. Tapping her access code into the panel, Kira dimly wonders (her head is a little foggy from the spiritual journey) if her feet will urge her to steal the Defiant and fly off in search of answers. If that’s the case, she hopes she can make it back on the station before Worf wakes up and notices how far he has journeyed in his sleep.
As she makes her way through the restricted corridor, Kira feels her presence of mind slowly return—a sign, she hopes, that her search for answers is nearing its end. Stepping on board the Defiant, her mind switches back on like a dimmer switch suddenly pushed upward, just in time to kick the dagger out of Worf’s hand.
Crouched low, panting, ready to pounce, they stare at one another for a few tense moments before sighing and returning to their full heights.
“Never sneak up on a sleeping Klingon,” Worf admonishes, flexing his wrist. “You will not succeed.”
“Sorry to wake you,” Kira says. “I was doing a Kai Unadwi walk, trying to find answers.”
Before Kira can explain what that means, Worf nods and says, “Then it could not be helped.”
“How’s your wrist?” Kira asks.
Worf crouches to pick up his dagger. “It will heal.” He turns the blade over in his hands, inspecting it from point to pummel. He frowns at a ragged scratch across the leather handle. “I will need to find a reputable tanner.” Worf stands, holstering the dagger, because of course Worf’s pajama pants have a holster.
Kira shrugs. “It could have been worse.”
Given their unique, bloody childhoods, it’s a miracle that they didn’t kill each other just now. Unadwi was right; the Prophets really do look out for those in search of answers.
“Did you find the answers you seek?” Worf asks.
“No.” Kira pauses. “Does the Defiant’s database contain information about human social customs?”
“Defiant-class vessels have very limited datastores.”
“I guess information on human customs wouldn’t get priority.”
“Not on a ship designed by humans.”
“Right, because why would anyone find human customs confusing? They’re so universal,” Kira says, not liking the bitterness and frustration creeping into her words. She should be happy right now, not vaguely resentful under mounting stress. The seeming failure of her Unadwi walk isn’t helping her mood. She sighs. “You wouldn’t happen to know what a ‘dream wedding’ is?”
“A dream wedding?” Worf’s stance shifts, making him taller somehow.
“Yeah. Miles and Keiko keep saying that they want me to have my dream wedding, but I have no idea what that means. To be honest, at this point, I don’t know if it’s a human custom or some inside joke they have.”
Worf takes stock of the ring on Kira’s finger. “I hadn’t heard you were engaged.”
“They only proposed a few hours ago.” Kira realizes that the first person to learn of their engagement is Worf. Not Julian, or Keiko’s android friend, or Odo, or even their own children, but Worf.
“I see.” Worf nods. “May your hearts beat in time for many glorious years.”
“Thanks. But first I have to figure out what a dream wedding is.”
Worf looks over his shoulders as if someone else could have snuck onboard while they were talking. “Can you keep a secret?”
Kira looks at him blankly, not knowing what one thing has to do with another. “I was in the Resistance for most of my life. So, yes.”
“Good. Follow me.”
Kira feels her mind drift back down into her feet as she follows Worf through the halls of the Defiant.
“Ever since I was a boy, I have dreamt of having the perfect Klingon wedding,” he says.
“Is that normal?” Kira asks, fighting the fog enveloping her brain. “For a Klingon to have visions about their future wedding?”
“Not visions.” He pauses to punch in the access code to his quarters. “Plans.” Once inside, Worf kneels in front of a footlocker, one of the few personal effects in the cramped space. He places his palm over the lock and then winces. “Blood seal,” he explains.
“Of course,” Kira says, feeling her wits return to her.
From under an impressive pile of melee weapons, Worf removes an oversized book, its contents spilling out from the edges. Worf holds it out, gripping the cover tenderly. “This is a dream wedding.”
Kira takes the book, which is even heavier than it looks. Flipping open the cover, she finds something like the “old family albums” Sisko showed her once, but there isn’t a single personal photograph inside. Instead, the book teems with advertisements for gagh vendors, strips of fabric, sketches of building interiors, and earnest attempts at Klingon calligraphy scrawled on napkins from Quark’s. And that’s only in the first few (immaculately color coded) pages.
Kira looks up at Worf, who seems to be doing his very best not to appear anxious for her approval. (It’s an expression Kira has worn many times herself.) “You’ve been working on this since childhood?” Kira asks.
“No,” Worf says, and a wave of relief washes over Kira. This dream wedding thing looks like a lot of work, but maybe Kira isn’t so far behind after all. Worf continues, “The original binder was destroyed with the Enterprise. I’ve tried to reconstruct it here from memory.” Worf’s fingers trace over an ink-splattered napkin. “My calligraphy was much better as a boy.”
A sudden welling of guilt and inadequacy overshadows any amusement spurred by Worf’s lifelong (and somewhat endearing) obsession. Worf, a man who speaks either in clipped monosyllables or formal pronouncements, has devoted more time and care to planning his dream wedding than Kira ever could. When the time comes, Worf can hand his betrothed this book that whispers, “I’ve been waiting for you. You are my dream.”
By comparison, Kira will go to Miles and Keiko empty-handed.
Kira wants to lash out, snap at Worf about how nice it must have been to grow up so safe and cozy inside the Federation, to have all that time and energy to work on silly craft projects undistracted by the growling of a hungry belly. She fights the impulse. Worf may have never wanted for food, but he was deprived of his people, a kind of starvation Kira can’t even begin to imagine.
Their childhoods were very different, but neither could be called easy.
And, yet, Worf managed to compile an entire book of wedding plans, while Kira never gave weddings a second thought until a few hours ago. Looking down at the page Worf so carefully arranged, all straight lines and right angles, Kira once again feels unfixably crooked.
Kira’s shoulders slump, and Worf, fearing the endangerment of the precious cargo in Kira’s hands, takes back the book. Kira collapses into a sit on the bed, earning a panicked look from its owner.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Kira says, shaking her head. “Why would you, of all people, spend so much time making that?”
Worf closes the book, cradling it in his arms. “I realize many cultures have ideas about masculinity and wedding planning, but amongst Klingons—”
“It’s not that. It’s…” She sighs. “You haven’t had an easy life. I don’t know much about you, but I know that you survived the massacre at Khitomer, but your parents didn’t, and—I’m still not sure how this was allowed to happen—you were taken away from your people and raised by humans. And through all that pain and loss, you still dreamt of not just surviving and things maybe getting better one day, but of having the perfect wedding. With sustainably sourced gagh and handwritten invitations. How did you have the time, the space to do that?”
Worf pauses for a beat. “I multitask.”
Kira barks out a laugh more out of surprise that Worf has just made a joke than from the humor she finds in it. “You can be funny when you’re trying to avoid your feelings.”
Worf bows his head. “It is a skill.”
Kira stands from the bed. “I should let you get back to sleep. Thanks for showing me your book. I won’t tell anyone about your dream wedding.”
Worf nods. “I hope you found the answers you sought.”
“I did. Just not the answers I wanted.”
Kira takes her leave of Worf, exiting the Defiant the way she came. Once in the docking pad, Kira eschews the restricted corridor connected directly with the habitat ring, choosing instead to take the long way home.
She needs time. In the extra twelve minutes added to her journey, can she come up with a dream wedding to rival the one that took Worf a lifetime? Doubtful. Can she unpack whatever emotional baggage from ongoing trauma that has always kept her from ever dreaming about a future (much less a wedding) for herself? Definitely not. Will she try? Half-heartedly, assured that failure will meet her at the end.
Kira thought she had changed, grown, become someone more than the angry girl who joined the Resistance before she could drive a ground car, or the righteous young woman who yelled at her new commanding officer the first time they met. Hasn’t motherhood softened her? Doesn’t love make her feel brand new? Haven’t the years between today and the Occupation stripped away her armor?
She smiles more now. People tell her that.
But on the inside?
At her annual physical, Julian always lists at least two or three readings that are “outside the normal range for someone of your age, but to be expected for someone who experienced food insecurity during childhood.”
The things that happened to Kira and her people—the things she had to do—scar in ways that can’t be seen. Ways she’d let herself forget about until this evening.
How could Keiko and Miles have any idea of what they’re getting into?
Kira arrives at her door without answers, without a plan, and without a dream wedding. Exactly the way she left, but clouded in dread rather than confusion.
Kira steps into a fully-lit living room. Draped in robes, Miles and Keiko stand from the couch at the sight of her.
“Nerys,” Keiko says.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Miles says. “I woke up and you weren’t there and you hadn’t left a note and when you didn’t come back, I thought…” He shares a look with Keiko.
“Are you…” Keiko starts. “Are you having second thoughts? About getting married?”
Too exhausted to speak anything but the truth, Kira answers, “Yes.”
Miles scrubs his hand across the stubble forming on his face. “It’s me, isn’t it?”
“What?” Kira asks. “That’s not—”
“Because you don’t have to marry me,” Miles interrupts. “I know you don’t feel that way about men, and if you’re not comfortable marrying me—I love you, but things don’t have to be arranged the way they are now. If you’re not happy, then you and Keiko—”
“I’m happy.” Tears sting in Kira’s eyes because it’s true. “I am so happy. I never thought I could be this happy. And I know marrying you—both of you—would make me even happier. But I can’t. I can’t be the kind of bride, the kind of wife you deserve. It’s not about you, Miles. It’s about me and how broken I am.”
Keiko reaches out. “Nerys, you’re not broken. Bad things have happened to you—terrible things—but you’re not broken. You’re an amazing, strong woman with an incredibly open heart.”
“On the outside, but inside?” Kira swallows her tears. “I am a broken child too scared to even dream, because whenever you dream, whenever you allow yourself hope, they come and take it away. The Cardassians come and annex your hometown, bulldoze your school, poison the drinking water. And you end up worse than when you started.”
“Nerys, the Occupation is over. You don’t have to worry—”
“The Occupation is not over! It will never be over! Not for me.”
“Then let us fight the Occupation with you,” Keiko says.
“I can’t! I couldn’t… It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“I think we can decide that for ourselves,” Miles says.
“And we want to marry you,” Keiko adds.
“I can’t marry you!” Kira snaps.
“Why not?” Miles asks. “And don’t give me any of that ‘you’re too human to understand’ bollocks. I’ve been through the wars, too.”
Kira finally comes out with it: “Because I don’t have a dream wedding.”
“What?”
“I’ve always been too scared of dying or losing the people I love to dream about getting married. I don’t have a plan or a binder full of catering advertisements and calligraphy and fabric swatches.”
“A binder?” Keiko asks.
“Who has a binder?” Miles asks.
Kira ignores the rhetorical question, keeping Worf’s confidence. “That’s not normal? For humans?”
“As far as I know,” Miles says, “that’s not normal for anyone.” Which would explain why Worf has one.
“I mean, you might pull together an organizer when planning the actual event, “ Keiko adds. “But no one does that kind of work before they’re even engaged.” Except for Worf, who Kira realizes uses the exact opposite coping mechanism than she does to combat a traumatic childhood.
“But you said you wanted me to have my dream wedding,” Kira says.
“Yeah, but we didn’t mean we expected you to have compiled a whole book of wedding plans before you even met us. That’s ridiculous!” Miles says. “We don’t care if you’ve never even thought about getting married until now. Right, Keiko?”
“Right. In fact, I find it a little flattering.”
Kira’s face stretches into a smile then constricts into a grimace as tears finally flow unrestrained from her eyes. Four arms envelope her before she has time to collapse into a heap on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Kira sobs. “I shouldn’t have…”
Keiko shushes her. “We’re sorry. We never meant to make you feel broken. We just wanted you to know that we’d be happy to follow your traditions. We know how important your faith is.”
“We don’t care how we get married.” Miles kisses the top of Kira’s head. “We just want you as our wife. If you’ll still have us.”
“Yes.” Kira nods, and turns her head from side-to-side to kiss the line of MIles’ jaw and the fullness of Keiko’s lips.
Miles pulls away, rubbing her arm. “Let’s go to bed. You look exhausted.”
“Did you sleep at all tonight?” Keiko asks.
Kira lets them lead her back to bed and, for once, she falls asleep unafraid of dreaming.
—
Many years later, at their golden anniversary (even now, Kira doesn’t entirely understand human anniversary traditions, but Quark seems very excited about this one), in his toast, Julian lets slip that Miles and Keiko only pushed the “dream wedding” thing so hard that night to avoid the work of planning another wedding.
This visibly outrages Worf, but enough time has passed that Kira’s temper flares only so high as giving Keiko and Miles two short pinches to the wrist and a whispered, “I can’t believe I went on an Unadwi walk because you two were lazy.”
She can’t be too mad at them for keeping this secret for so many years. After all, they still don’t know about Worf’s wedding binder.