DS9 and Back Again - The Silencing of Jexa
Posted on Mon Dec 22nd, 2025 @ 4:54pm by Commander Rosa Coy
2,102 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
For Bajor!
Location: DS9
The deck plating of the USS Sunfire felt different from DS9 the moment Rosa’s boots touched it, less like a bustling port, more like a creature in controlled slumber. A ship’s heartbeat. Predictable. Contained. Safe in all the ways her own body wasn’t.
The Trill delegation followed her down the ramp of the runabout. Commander Coy walked ahead, distant and silent, performing the duty he was assigned: deliver Olaris, Toval, and the young trainee, Jexa, to the Sunfire’s medical bay so they could begin preparations for the transfer of the mirror-universe Coy into the symbiont extraction container. Rosa could feel her own symbionts restraint like a cold wind at her spine.
Medical accepted the delegation with crisp efficiency. Biobeds lit. Scanners hummed. Doctors greeted Olaris with professional deference. Toval immediately found something to critique on a console display.
Rosa finished the transfer-of-care report quickly, tapping in the final authorization code. The moment she stepped back from the terminal, Jexa’s presence folded in beside her like a shadow wearing bright colors.
“You don’t have to escort us further, Commander,” Jexa said, hands clasped behind her like she was mimicking Rosa’s posture. “We’re in good hands here.”
“That’s the idea,” Rosa answered, already preparing to leave.
“Commander?” Jexa whispered, small voice, big intent. “Actually…” Jexa took half a step closer. “I was hoping you could show me a bit of the Sunfire. I’ve only ever been on civilian vessels.”
Rosa didn’t sigh aloud, but the impulse skimmed across her ribs. “Sunfire is nothing to see. Just like any other Starfleet vessel.”
“That’s fine,” Jexa said, too quickly. “I just like learning how Starfleet crews move. Adapt. Function. You all seem so calm. Professional.”
Rosa gave the trainee a long, quiet look. Jexa’s smile tightened—too studied, too hopeful. Something else was happening here. Something curious and overeager.
Behind Rosa’s eyes, Handzon stirred. She likes you. Or she thinks she does. Don’t run from this one, sweet body. She’s practically offering herself up for conversation. Take it.
Rosa set her jaw. The last thing she needed was him waking.
Still, Jexa wasn’t leaving, and Olaris and Toval were already deep in discussion with the medical staff. Staying would avoid questions later. “Fine,” Rosa said. “Five minutes.”
Jexa lit up. “Perfect! Could we maybe… talk somewhere quieter? I want to ask something and not look foolish.”
Rosa narrowed her eyes, but she led the trainee out into the corridor anyway.
They walked in quiet to an observation stretch, where a narrow viewport revealed the slow drift of stars. The lights were dim in the corridor—night-cycle levels—casting soft blues across Jexa’s spots.
The young woman leaned against the bulkhead, fiddling with a stylus like it was a nervous tick. “Commander…” Jexa began. “Can I ask you something personal? Not… intrusive. Just something I’ve been curious about.”
“You can ask,” Rosa said, with no commitment to answer.
“I just wanted to say first... I admire you." Jexa bit her lip. “You’re joined. I mean, obviously. Your file mentions it. And you… carry yourself like someone with history.” Her eyes traced Rosa’s posture, studying her as if trying to read the echoes of the symbiont beneath the surface. “I was just wondering… what kind of transition you had. Was it difficult? Was it… smooth?”
Rosa’s pulse thudded beneath her ribs.
Difficult? Smooth?
Let me answer.
No. She pushed back mentally, but Handzon’s presence swelled at the edges, warm and slick like heat rising from a closed fist.
“I managed,” Rosa said curtly.
"I mean, Emergency joinings are rare. The fact that you recovered so quickly... ”
Rosa’s jaw flexed once. “Recovered,” she echoed, with all the grace of someone chewing glass.
Jexa, oblivious, nodded. “It takes incredible emotional fortitude to adapt without the guidance of a Guardian. Especially when the integration is... complicated.”
Rosa’s steps stopped. Not abruptly. Just enough that the corridor seemed to tighten around them. “What makes you think my integration was complicated?” she asked, too softly.
Jexa nodded, but her brows knit. “I didn’t see any record of your Zhian’tara. I assumed it was classified, but...”
Rosa stiffened.
Jexa didn’t notice. Or maybe she did, and mistook the reaction as encouragement to keep speaking. “...since you’re hosting a symbiont with such a... varied lineage, I thought I might study the compensatory patterns in your neural integration. It would be incredibly helpful for my thesis.”
“Your... thesis.”
“Yes!” Jexa perked up. “Joined host adaptation models. It would really help...” She hesitated as she suddenly realized Rosa's facial expression was clenched. “I didn’t mean... I only meant that emergency hosts often experience... dissonance. Especially if the previous host’s impulses are strong or unresolved. I’m studying the ways early behavioral cues can...”
Rosa moved before she thought, stepping closer, crowding Jexa back against the wall, not touching her, but close. Intentionally close. “Jexa,” Rosa said. “This is a topic you should approach with caution.”
Jexa flushed. her words, swallowed. Her voice went softer. “I didn’t mean to offend. I was just... excited. You’re fascinating.” She did. But only with the innocence of a student poking at a star chart, unaware it contains black holes.
See? Handzon crooned. She wants you. She wants us. Let me shape this. Let me protect what she discovered. I can keep her quiet. Let me speak.
Rosa felt her lips part, almost involuntarily.
Jexa’s eyes widened. Not afraid. Something else. The air thickened with the quiet static of unspoken things.
“You don’t have to tell Olaris,” Rosa murmured. The words were her own, but the cadence wasn’t. “Whatever concerns you think you’ve stumbled into… you don’t speak of them lightly.”
Jexa’s breath hitched. “I didn’t mean, Commander, I wasn’t trying to expose anything. I...”
There it was. Not an accusation. Just an observation so gentle it carved her open.
Rosa’s pulse thudded against her throat. Her breath caught... subtle, but enough for Jexa’s eyes to widen. And that flicker of recognition, that accidental moment of truth, was the first ripple.
She’s unraveling herself for us. Handzon slid forward, not fully in control, but feeding Rosa’s instincts. Confidence curled through her spine, lifting her chin, softening her mouth in ways she hadn’t allowed in years.
The second ripple was Handzon. She knows. His voice coiled up her spine like a slow exhale of smoke. She sees you. She sees us. We need to stop her.
Rosa’s fingers curled against her thigh. She took a single backward step... distance, control, breath... but Handzon filled the space she tried to create. You’re losing her. A word to Olaris and your life becomes a committee report. Is that what you want? Someone dissecting you? Judging you? Forcing you to kneel before the memories you’re not ready to see?
Her throat tightened. Jexa mistook it for emotion. “Commander,” she said, stepping closer. “I didn’t mean... truly, I didn’t. I just want to understand. Emergency joinings are so...”
She won’t stop. Handzon pressed forward... not in words, but in posture. Rosa felt her chin tip down, her shoulders loosen, her stance shift into something softer, warmer. She felt her breath grow slower, deeper.
Jexa noticed. She thought she had wounded Rosa and now sought to comfort her. “I’m sorry,” Jexa whispered, reaching gently toward her elbow.
Rosa lowered her voice until it brushed Jexa’s skin like warm exhalation.
“You’re curious. I get that. But curiosity can cause… complications.”
Jexa’s pulse fluttered under the pale skin of her throat. “I can keep quiet.”
Rosa didn’t remember deciding to take Jexa’s hand. Handzon remembered for her. Her fingers closed around Jexa’s wrist...feather-light, deliberate. The contact cracked through Jexa’s composure like a heat surge.
“Can you?” Rosa leaned in, close enough for their noses to nearly touch. Her voice slipped into a darker register she rarely permitted herself. “Truly?”
Handzon pulsed with approval. There she is. My fearless little flame.
Jexa didn’t step back. She only whispered, “I won’t tell anyone. Whatever you ask… stays between us.”
Rosa’s fingers grazed the wall beside Jexa’s hip, trapping her without touching her.
“Good,” Rosa breathed.
Jexa’s lips quivered—desire, fear, both. The trainee looked up, startled, pupils widening. “Rosa,” she breathed, first-name slipping out like a confession.
Rosa’s lips moved before she approved the words. “I know you didn’t mean harm.” Her voice had a new timbre...lower, smoother, wrapped in velvet and smoke. Handzon’s timbre.
Jexa’s breath hitched. Rosa felt it as a tremor between their fingers.
Good.
Jexa stepped closer... unthinking, drawn. Rosa felt her own body leaning in like it had been pressed forward by invisible palms.
“There are things,” Rosa murmured, “that aren’t meant to be spoken in open corridors.”
Her lips hovered close... not touching... just the suggestion of intimacy. Jexa’s breath fluttered against them. Her lips quivered despite the gap between them.
Dominance doesn’t require contact, sweetheart. Handzon pulsed through her like a second heartbeat. Rosa’s abdomen tightened with the sudden surge of heat that wasn’t hers. Her fingers slid up Jexa’s wrist to her palm, tracing a slow arc that made the younger woman’s knees soften.
“Come with me,” Rosa said. Not an order. A gravity well. Jexa followed, helpless to resist the pull of something she mistook for need. They slipped into an unoccupied crew berth... small, dim, quiet. Rosa sealed the door. The soft hiss of it seemed to echo in Jexa's lungs.
“Rosa...” Jexa whispered, flushed, breath catching again. “I didn’t want to upset you.”
“You didn’t,” Rosa said, stepping close enough for Jexa’s back to meet the wall. The lights cast shadows across her features...sharp, sensual shapes that didn’t belong to her. “But you touched something fragile.”
Handzon smiled through her mouth. “Let me show you how to keep a secret.” The space between their lips vanished.
The rest unfolded like a gravity collapse... slow at first, then unstoppable, heat and panic and hunger tangled indistinguishably. It blurred, breathless, rushed, hands finding places that silence could hide.
And then... Soft thud of bodies shifting. Clothes disturbed but not described. A final pulse of Handzon’s victory, warm and terrible.
Later, Jexa walked three steps behind Rosa on the way back to Medical. Her hair was slightly mussed, her breathing controlled but delicate, her eyes carefully lowered.
Rosa’s uniform was immaculate. Her expression unreadable. But Handzon hummed contentedly in her chest, like a sated predator. No words were exchanged.
Hours later, the Mirror symbiont extracted for safe keeping, Rosa sat in the pilot’s seat of the runabout with the composure of someone carved out of ice.
Olaris sat behind her reviewing notes. Toval snored quietly into a PADD. Jexa sat in the co-pilot’s chair, hands folded too neatly, eyes darting to Rosa every few minutes like a guilty child checking her mother's mood.
Rosa kept her gaze fixed starward. Not once did she look at Jexa. She didn’t dare. Her skin felt borrowed. Handzon felt smug. See? Simple. Effective. She won’t speak a word.
Coy’s voice surfaced inside her, low and disapproving. That wasn’t necessary.
Rosa’s fingers tightened on the helm controls until the tendons stood out. She closed her eyes briefly. The trip to Trill stretched ahead of them... cold space, long hours, silence thick as static.
Jexa finally whispered, so quietly Rosa almost didn’t hear, “Commander... are we... good?”
Rosa’s breath trembled once in her chest. “We’re fine.” Flat. Controlled. Unreachable.
Jexa folded inward. Olaris didn’t look up. Toval didn’t wake. The stars didn’t care.
The runabout slipped into warp like a stone sinking into a deep, black ocean, carrying with it a secret neither woman knew how to hold.
Rosa didn’t know it yet, but the moment would echo later. In therapy. In guilt. In fracturing. A fault line she would spend months trying not to step on.
And deep within her, Handzon hummed like a satisfied predator.
TBC
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