*          *          *

Dear Miles,

I can’t believe it’s nearly been six months. I’ve been sitting in a Dominion prison for six months.

Just yesterday, the General had remarked on how he didn’t have the faintest idea how long we had been prisoners for already.

I wish I didn’t know, but this traitorous genetically enhanced mind of mine refuses to stop counting the seconds and the hours and the days and adding them up. That eternal clock ticks away the seconds somewhere in the back of my mind where I can’t reach it to turn it off, no matter if I’m sleeping, screaming, eating or hauling buckets of ketracel-white powder down the tunnels. I loath that clock more than I loath the Dominion.

That frightens me, Miles. The fact that I loath a part of me more than I loath our captors and our enemies.

It frightens me, but it doesn’t surprise me. After all, every morning, we wake up when the klaxon starts wailing and then we face the front of the rooms we’re kept in and pledge our eternal allegiances to the Dominion.

The oath is second nature to me now and I can mutter it in thirteen different languages, all the while calculating cubic roots in my head. Sometimes, I almost believe the words that come out of my mouth. That the Dominion really is my empire and I would sacrifice my life for it.

On days that hunger and pain and despair cloud my mind, I find myself feeling aghast that the Federation is fighting the Dominion, our savior and our empire. The only true empire. Why would anybody try to fight such a wonderful empire  which feeds me and clothes me and lets me work for it everyday, helping it grow in strength?

You see how twisted my mind has become? That’s what captivity does to you. Anybody who’s been a prisoner would be a liar if they say they’ve never symphathized with their enemy or had days when they resented their own side for fighting that enemy, to whom they’ve started feeling a certain sense of loyalty.

That frightens me, Miles. I don’t want to feel that loyalty. I don’t want to have this small tendril of hate for the Federation simmering inside of me. I don’t want to feel privileged to take the oath everyday and eat the food the Dominion provides for me. But after six months, it’s becoming harder and harder to remember whose side I’m on.

That’s why we never discuss the war. Not only do we have no idea how the war is going or who’s losing, but we’re all afraid that we’ll start hating our side and hoping that their—our—their side will win. We can’t allow ourselves to do that. So we don’t discuss the war.

We discuss our childhoods, our lives before the war, our families, which Jem’Hadar guard we loath the most, what the Vorta overseer was saying to someone, and who we think will be executed that evening. Everything except for the war.

On some days, I even forget the war is still being fought. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe we already lost and the entire Alpha Quadrant had been overrun and turned into a ketracel-white producing prison like this one. The idea that we’d win doesn’t ever enter my mind. The Dominion is too powerful and too wise and too strong. We don’t stand a chance. You see? There I go again. Spouting Dominion propaganda which my traitorous mind has started to believe in.

This is why we avoid discussing the war.

A small cluster of Romulans in the corner of our room—Pod number 17—are whispering to each other.

Apparently, a Founder is coming to do another inspection. I frown. I hate inspections. The Jem’Hadar become obsessed with making sure everything is perfect for when their God comes. Usually, they’re obsessed about order and cleanliness anyway, but before inspections, it turns extreme.

People are shot for spilling a tiny bit of ketracel-white powder on their way to the collection bins.

People are denied their meals if they accidently break a bowl or spill a tiny bit of the mush. I’m always careful during meals when the Jem’Hadar are glaring around at everyone. I make sure to keep my precious spoon hidden in my sleeve and only pull it out when it’s time for another bite.

The General knows we have to be careful with our precious spoon. He always checks to make sure nobody is looking before I slide it out of my sleeve to give to him for another bite of the mush. We’ve fought hard and risked our necks to find our spoon and there was no way we were going to have it confiscated because some Jemi thinks the Founder won’t approve of it.

The Cardies couldn’t care less about the Founder coming. In fact, they become a lot more lenient than they usually do, letting people get away with being slow or whispering to each other during work shifts. If the Jem’Hadar catch them at it, those people are shot right away and the Cardies just widen their eyes and innocently say they had no idea. This change in the Cardies attitude is the only reason I like inspections.

Usually, I like the Jem’Hadar guards much better than the Cardies, for one simple reason. The Jem’Hadar keep things impersonal. For them, we’re merely prisoners and they’re our guards and it’s their job as soldiers to keep order and make sure we do our work efficiently and on time. If somebody is too slow or disobeys one of them, they are shot and disposed of, not because the Jem’Hadar hate them but because they were interferring with efficiency.

The Jem’Hadar never yell. There is no reason to. If we don’t obey them, we are killed because we were inefficient and disrupting the smooth operations of the prison. They don’t hate us, nor do they like us. They simply have a job to do and nothing interferes with it. I find myself having a grudging respect for them.

But the Cardies are a different story. They hate each and everyone of us and love the fact that they can do whatever they want with us. They insult us, beat us, torture us, laugh at us, humiliate us and make our lives as miserable as possible. That’s why I hate them. They make it personal.

I wish I could say the Vorta keeps the Cardies in check, but she couldn’t care less what they do as long as they don’t kill enough prisoners to disrupt our production rate.

We don’t get to see ‘ma’am’ very often. She despises the mining tunnels and the constant dust and sharp stench of chemicals which clog the air down there and refuses to go down. She mostly stays in her office, ordering everyone around.

The only time she can be seen everywhere is before an inspection. Then I sometimes see her five times a day, in the morning during the pledge, during our morning meal, down in the tunnels and later, during our evening meal.

We always have to stand up straight and never say a word unless she asks us a question in that sickeningly polite voice of hers with that phoney smile and those empty, eerie violet eyes. Then we have to answer her, ending with a very polite ‘ma’am’. Then she smiles at us again while her eyes glare and then turns away, dismissing us as the filthy animals she treats us as.

She always addresses us as ‘its’ and refuses to touch us. If someone accidently gets any dust on her clothes, that person is shot immediately. The only part of the day she enjoys is the evening after our last meal. Then she picks a random pod number and takes the creaky old turbolift to that pod level and finds the right room. Everyone inside has to lie down on their stomaches, their arms and legs flat on the floor. Everyone has to close their eyes and not utter a sound. Then she instructs the Cardie who accompanied her to randomly find a person and shoot them.

I can’t begin to describe how utterly terrifying it is to lie there on the floor. Since your eyes are closed, your ears become so harshly sensitized to listen to the direction those clunky boots are walking along the floor that you end up hearing every tiny sound, every harsh breath, every shaky sigh, every tiny sob. Sometimes, the Cardie takes hours, slowly walking amongst the rows of silent, shaking people. He never makes a sound, only pauses from time to time behind someone, making that person’s heart leapt into their throat until the Cardie takes a step past them. The person always lets out a shaky sigh of relief, suppressing sobs.

I know. I can’t count the number of times my mind has become clogged with such a numbing fear that I couldn’t even think anymore and all I was doing was paying attention to hear those feet behind me and mentally begging those feet to keep moving. A few months ago, ma’am had used a Jem’Hadar as her executioner, but the Jem’Hadar obviously didn’t understand the point of the exercise. He would randomly walk up behind someone and shot them and then shoulder his rifle, stand up straight and ask the Vorta for other orders.

Ma’am didn’t like that. There was no hate, no maliciousness, no cruel enjoyment. So she started using Cardies. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.

I take a moment to re-read what I’ve just written and I force a strangled laugh past my lips. I have ten minutes until curfew and I’m sitting here in our corner, the itchy cloth bag I use as a blanket tucked around my legs and I’m madly scribbling on the brown cloth with a piece of white ketracel powder chunk I snuck up from the tunnels.

I must be mad, Miles. Surely, I must be. You’re thousands of light years away, in another quadrant and you probably already accepted the fact that I died long ago. But then again, maybe I’m not so mad.

The General constantly laughs and has long conversations with the Lady Sirella and the Romulan Colonel who sleeps on my other side constantly declares what her husband would think of a certain situation. Maybe we’re all a bit mad. After six months, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were.

Your friend,

Julian

*          *          *

I hear the distant clanging of the klaxon and the light in our pod dims, indicating that it was time to sleep.

I hide the piece of ketracel chalk in a tiny hole in the metallic wall where I also keep my precious hard won spoon. Then I shake out my blanket, sending the words I had so carefully scribbled onto it flying around me in a cloud of white powder which makes the General grumble and cough.

Then I wrap my precious blanket around me and curl up on the hard metallic floor, the General still sneezing quietly on one side and the dark haired Romulan Colonel curled up on my other side, always unconsciously moving closer to me during the night since she gets horribly cold from the floor.

*          *          *

Dear Julian,

I don’t have the slightest idea why I’m doing this. Well, actually I do. Keiko threatened to force me to go see Ezri if I don’t find ‘closure’ some other way. I had retorted that I didn’t need to find any bloody closure because I refused to accept that you were dead.

Finally, she said that I could cling to that ray of hope as long as I wanted as long as I got on with my life and stopped spending every minute of my day pouring over recently liberated POW lists. So she suggested I write you a letter. I thought she was mad. How in all of God’s green meadows would writing a letter help when I know very well you’d never get it and that it was a ridiculous waste of time? But, I know and trust that Keiko knows what she’s doing so I agreed to write this letter.

Well, where to begin? I looked at a calendar the other day and I realized it’s nearly been six months. Six bloody months. I can’t believe it.

It’s been eight months since you left the station to go serve on the front lines. Eight months since you grinned at me and told me that I had two months to practice my bulls-eye shots but not to get too comfortable because as soon as you were back, you’d have me back in my place sooner than I could blink.

Truth be told, I did practice for those two months. Then the Captain called me into his office and told me in a very quiet, strained voice that our front line in the Rulian system had collapsed and the whole system was under Dominion control. I had stared at him, not really understand why this piece of military information was any of my business.

He had quietly stared at me before saying that General Martok’s troops, the third division of the Starfleet Marine Corps and all assisting medical personnel had been taken prisoner. The Jem’Hadar First who had been there had written down everyone’s names and ranks and had sent the list off.

It was a habit the Jem’Hadar had always stuck to and one which Starfleet themselves had adopted but which the Cardassians, Klingons and Romulans still sneered at. Well, I have to say that that day I was very glad that Jem’Hadar are so efficient and organized. Otherwise, we’d have never known whether you were taken prisoner or killed when the line fell.

That was the day I stopped playing darts. I even went so far as to rip the dart board down and throw it across Quark’s bar a few months ago, but Quark had quickly shoved a drink in my hand and had gone to put the board back up. I still don’t understand why he did it, but he claims it’s because the board ‘lit’ the place up a bit. Maybe he meant that the board lit the bar up in the same way that you had lit everyone’s lives up. The way you’d always smile and laugh and care about everybody and make everyone your friend, even if they thought you were a spoilt, arrogant brat.

Since the captain told me, I’ve been obsessively monitoring the POW lists for any news.

It’s been easier finding news about General Martok, since the Cardassians always liked gloating over their higher ranking prisoners. According to the nuggest of information Odo and I had been able to dig up, the General was sent into the Gamma Quadrant to a ketracel-white prison along with his troops and the other prisoners captured with him. I have clung to the desperate hope that you have been able to stick with the General and got transferred together.

I know that technically, this doesn’t help you a bit. You’re still stuck thousands of lightyears behind enemy lines and I don’t have a clue which prison you’re being held in, but at least this allows me to believe that I have a slight idea where you are.

It’s better than thinking you’re being held on Cardassia Prime and so easily within reach but there still being nothing I can do to help. I know it’s selfish, but it makes me feel slightly better and less worried that you’re so far away. At least you’re away from the fighting and hopefully don’t have to deal with too many Cardies.

Your friend,

Miles

*          *          *

I slowly lower the padd. A part of me thinks I’ve gone mad, but another part of me is feeling surprisingly soothed. Although I know that I wasn’t really writing to you, it still feels as if I was and I can imagine you sitting somewhere—even if you’re thousands of lightyears away—and reading this and shaking your head and chuckling that I’m losing my mind.

I take a deep breath and toss the padd onto the table my feet are propped up on. Well, I have to admit, I do feel slightly better. I yawn and ask the computer for the time. It’s 1946 hours. Odo would still be in his office.

Getting up, I head towards the door, mentally preparing myself for pouring over that days POW lists, searching desperately for any tiny bit of news.

*          *          *

Dear Miles,

The inspection went better than I had hoped. The Founder appeared to be very pre-occupied and rushed through the tunnels without even glancing at our quota lists or how nicely we were all lined up, with our heads respectfully bowed. I found myself feeling slightly irritated.

We had spent weeks scrubbing and cleaning everything and being yelled at and kicked and punched and ordered around in order to get everything ready for his majesty’s visit. And his majesty hardly looked interested.

I wasn’t the only one who felt slightly irked with this lack of attention which made us feel even more like dirt. But it was the General who lifted all our spirits by roaring through the pod that we were all idiotic p’taq and that the Founder was probably pre-occupied with the war going badly for the Dominion.

Everybody except the Klingons and a few other multi-lingualists like myself were staring at the General as if he had lost his mind. This was the problem of being locked up with different species who had had their universal translators confiscated upon capture and who had never learned how to speak Standard.

The Romulan Colonel and I always dutifully played translator, helping to solve cultural misunderstandings and petty bickering. This time, I carefully translated what the General had said into half a dozen languages, and immediately, smiles stared spreading across gaunt, pale faces and the mood in our pod improved considerably.

Of course we have no idea if the General was right or not, but we preferred to think so. None of us had any hope that we’d ever win this war and that we’d ever be free again, never mind go through the wormhole and see the Alpha Quadrant again, but if our bastard captors were finding it slightly harder to beat the Alpha Quadrant to its knees, then that was fabulous news for us.

The prisoners of our pod amazed our Jem’Hadar guards the next day when we set to work hammering at the tunnel walls and scraping ketracel-white chunks and powder out of the rock and into buckets at a record pace and made our quota with two hours to spare.

Of course the stony faced soldiers never asked why we were all smiling, but we didn’t care. The Founder was pissed off and that was the only thing that mattered. It didn’t matter that we’d never be free again and that we’d eventually lose and the Founder’s mood would soon improve. All that mattered was that we had found a tiny reason to smile again.

Your friend,

Julian

*          *          *

Dear Julian,

Well, today’s the day. Today’s the day which Quark had so elegantly named ‘Snot kicking day’. Today would either end with us kicking the snot out of the Dominion and winning this damn war once and for all, or it would end with them kicking the snot out of us and the Alpha Quadrant finally crumbling to its knees.

You should see the station, Julian. It’s amazing.

Klingon birds of prey and Romulan warbirds and Federation Galaxy, Intrepid and Nova class ships and warships like the Defiant have been gathering here for days. All the docking ports are jammed and hundreds of ships are hovering around the station, their crews beaming onboard the station to join in the preparations.

Romulan Colonels, Klingon Generals, Chancellor Gowron, Captain Sisko, numerous Federation Admirals, Vice-Admirals and aides have been holed up in the wardroom for days, going over last minute details and exhaustive planning.

Quark had to hire ten new waiters to help serve the hundreds of battle hungry crews crowding the dabo tables and drinking themselves silly, since most of them know that this might be the last time they’d ever step foot into a bar.

The promenade and most of the corridors are crammed full of talking, laughing and yelling people, half of them in uniform and the other half either being civilians from neighboring planets who came to wish the troops well or cargo crews who would accompany the enormous fleet today dragging medical supplies and spare repair parts with them.

I’ve been going mad getting all the ships ready for battle. Most of them had nearly been torn to shreds already and were hanging together by a dully glowing warp core, plasma coolant pipes and one—maybe two—nacelles.

But finally, after months of planning, we’re ready to get underway. By the end of today, I’ll either be joining you in a Dominion prison, or we’ll finally have finished this mess and once we do, I swear to you that I’ll take the first run-about I can get my hands on and tear the Gamma Quadrant apart until I’ve liberated every last prisoner.

Your friend,

Miles

*          *          *

Dear Miles,

I’m sitting here and scribbling on my faded, filthy uniform jacket. I can hardly breathe. The General’s elbow is digging into my ribs and a Bolian who was in the pod beside ours is sitting on my other side, humming some horrid song under his breath.

We’re all sitting crammed in a small cargo bay in a transport vessel. We were rounded up two days ago and shoved into this hold and the door had slammed shut behind us. Then we had flown off, going somewhere for some reason which hadn’t been told to us.

The past few weeks have been strange. Not only had the Vorta been even more agitated than normal—ordering the Jem’Hadar to kill anybody who even sneezed when she was around—and the inspection which had been scheduled had never taken place.

But what was most unusual was what had occurred a week and a half ago. In the middle of the night, we heard some muffled shouts and angry cursing from outside our pod. None of us had dared to get up and go closer to the door to listen more closely, but the next morning, we discovered that all our Cardie guards were gone for some reason.

A few days later, we woke up and prepared for the oath and our morning meal as usual. I had gotten up and carefully rolled up my blanket and put it beside the General’s and then I had clutched my precious spoon inside my sleeve, ready for breakfast.

The General was busy chuckling with the Romulan Colonel over something and then he turned to me, asking if I had my spoon with me. We always shared it. I nodded and stood up straight, ready for the oath and breakfast and another long, uneventful day as a piece of Dominion property.

But instead of the automated voice grating over the intercom that we should all stand straight and get ready to repeat the oath after her, the doors were thrown open and Jem’Hadar guards burst in, loudly demanding that everyone get out of the pod and march towards the turbolift.

After being jostled and carried along with the surging crowd, I found myself being shoved into a cargo hold. The General had grabbed my arm and snarled at an Andorian who was trying to wedge his way between us. He had long ago vowed never to leave my side and I had always sworn to do the same for him. So we had been shoved into the same cargo hold and were now sitting crushed side by side while our transport flew away.

It was only on the second day of sitting there with grumbling stomaches and a thudding headache from hunger and the stench of unwashed, filthy bodies crammed into such a small space that I realized I was still madly clutching something in my hand.

It was my spoon.

Your friend,

Julian

*          *          *

Dear Julian,

Captain Sisko and that arrogant bitch of a being have finally reached an agreement. Keiko looks over my shoulder and reads that first line and frowns, muttering that I shouldn’t use such language.

Fine. Let me re-phrase.

That arrogant female Founder bitch and the Captain have finally reached an agreement.

The Dominion has turned into being a very sore loser. Not only did they keep throwing their genetically engineered buffoons at us while they were already in hard retreat, but they delivered a last, crushing, brutal blow to Cardassia Prime.

True, I’ve never liked Cardies, but when those Cardie ships turned around and started firing on Jem’Hadar ships and joined our side, I felt like hugging every last one of them. I could hardly believe my eyes. There we were. Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians all fighting side by side for the first time since the birth of the Federation.

And we did it. We kicked the snot out of them. We kicked and kicked until they were slinking back to their wormhole and went back to their own damn quadrant.

But they didn’t go quietly. First, they tore Cardassia Prime to shreds and killed millions of innocent Cardassian civilians.

And then, the Founder had refused to return the prisoners of war who were being held in the gamma quadrant, claiming that they were dominion property and had been collected as spoils of war and were ‘non-returnable’.

Not only that, but she had no need for 253 million solids who were all thin, filthy and worked to the bone, so she decided to have them all executed. But she promised their bodies would be returned to the Federation or the Klingon or Romulan Empires.

This had created a scream of outrage which echoed wildly around the entire quadrant. Celebrations which had erupted on the eve of our hard won, bloody victory quickly ceased and triumphant cries of triumph turned silent.

The entire Alpha Quadrant was outraged that the Dominion would do something like this. They couldn’t kill millions of people just because the war hadn’t turned out the way they had hoped. But the Founder had disagreed. They had already gotten away with their childish, bloody revenge on Cardassia Prime and she swore she’d get away with it again.

At the end, no amount of haggling, pleading, begging or threatening would make her change her mind and she swept off to the wormhole to begin the executions.

What happened after this isn’t too clear. Apparently, the first group of prisoners had heard about us having won the war and at the same time, were informed of their imminent execution. Apparently, all 3756 prisoners violently revolted at this and fought their Jem’Hadar guards so brutally and violently that the Founder decided it would be safer and faster for everyone involved if the prisoners were just shipped back to the Alpha Quadrant.

So now I’m sitting here, every few seconds glancing up at the wormhole which I swear I can glimpse amid the distant stars. I know it’s an unrealistic hope that you have survived six months in captivity and the long passage back home, but there is a small glimmer of hope shining within me that you have.

Your friend,

Miles

*          *          *

Dear Miles,

I’m sitting here in another cargo vessel, crammed into another cargo-hold with my spoon still clenched in my hand and the Colonel on my left side, but this time, the General isn’t on my other side.

In fact, when I look around, I see a lot of familiar faces missing in the crowd of gauntly thin and dirty faces around me. Well, all I can say is that none of them died in vain. We’re going home. We’re finally going home.

As soon as our other cargo vessel had docked, the doors had been flung open and we were all ordered out. We were pushed and shoved along until we had all gathered in a large room where thousands of us were crammed together. We were all ordered to stand and face the front. In every corner of the room stood an armed Jem’Hadar with those familiar rifles clutched in their scaly hands.

There was a platform at the front of the room and our very own Vorta stood on it. When the people from our prison recognized her, we immediately bowed our heads respectfully and hissed at the others around us to do the same.

I glanced at ‘ma’am’ out of the corner of my eyes. She stood there, looking tall and proud but her jaw was clenched and she looked very angry. This wasn’t a good sign. Whenever the murderous bitch looked this angry it was because something hadn’t gone her way and we would be the ones to suffer for it.

I sincerely hoped she’d punish us with longer work shifts and not cutting rations. But knowing her, she’d cut our rations. She said she enjoyed looking at our hungry, pathetic faces.

She glared around at all of us. The General sighed softly and muttered that she could get on with it already. I nodded. Whenever we were transferred to a new prison it took a lot of time, bartering and fighting and yelling to acquire a good enough sleeping place and new blankets and information about the guards and work shifts.

The Vorta glared around one last time before she took a step towards us, her chin raised.

“You are here to be executed to fulfill the will of the Dominion Empire and to repay the Dominion the enormous efforts which went into this entire war which had turned into an enormous waste of our time.”

My eyes widened in shock as I stared at the floor. Executed? Why in the Prophets names would we be executed? They needed us! Who else would keep their precious soldiers drugged up with ketracel-white?

I heard ‘ma’am’ take a deep breath but hardly paid attention, still thinking over what could have prompted this sudden change of attitude. “The Dominion has lost the war.” She hissed.

I mean, the Vorta never worked and the Jem’Hadar were too big to fit into the smaller tunnels. They could never reach the largest quantity of the powder, which was always wedged into the smallest cracks in the tunn—what did she just say?

I carefully replayed what the Vorta had just said. The Dominion has lost the war. I froze, slowly allowing my mind to replay that sentence, making sure I wasn’t imagining it.

Stunned, I slowly raised my head and glanced at the General, who stared back at me, shock evident on his face.

All around me, people were shifting around and murmuring slightly, faces frowning in confusion or doubt or frozen in stunned disbelief.

The Dominion had lost the war. That meant we had won. We had won. The Alpha Quadrant had won. We had beat the mighty, powerful Dominion.

Suddenly, somebody in the crowd gave a small sob and whispered “We did it. We won” with such joy laced into the quiet words that immediately, they flowed through me and I was overcome by relief and happiness.

It was over. Finally. We had won.

Grins exploded all around me as people started sobbing and hugging their neighbors, clutching  other ragged dressed, thin figures to themselves.

‘Ma’am’ was still glaring around, a malicious smile on her thin lips. “I wouldn’t bother celebrating. You will all be dead in a few moments.”

At that, everything within me froze. They were going to kill us. We had finally won, we had finally beaten them and they were such damn sore losers that they couldn’t just crawl away quietly.

I realized I was shaking my head with pent up fury. No. We had struggled for so long, survived through so much and fought so hard. There was no way in hell we were going to die on the eve of our victory.

People around me were slowly straightening up, fury sparking in their eyes and hardening their faces. Smiles vanished and the sobbing stopped. Fists clenched and jaws were tightened as everyone glared at the arrogant, murderous bitch smirking at us from the platform.

The General beside me was so overcome by rage that I thought he’d fly to pieces. He slowly straightened up to his full height and he glanced around at the glaring, seething people crowded around us.

“We have won this war! We have fought for a long time for this victory and we will have our victory! Nobody—not Jem’Hadar or this Vorta p’taq—will steal that victory from us! We have won the war but we have one final battle to fight here! We will not die today! We will die after we celebrate and after we have set our feet back onto our home soil! We will live!” he roared.

And after that, all hell broke loose.

Thousands of angry, screaming prisoners launched themselves on the Jem’Hadar guards and the Vorta, tearing their weapons away and dragging them into the crowds, kicking, clawing and spitting at them, letting months of brutal captivity out on their captors, who couldn’t accept defeat when it had been so nicely handed to them.

We must have looked a sight. Thousands of weak, thin prisoners of dozens of different species all rolling up their ragged, frayed sleeves and clenching their bony fists and attacking their captors. More Jem’Hadar came running in, firing on the crowd. A few of us crumbled and fell, but the rest of us surged forward, overpowering the guards in only moments.

When it was finally over, over two hundred of us had died, including the General and an Andorian I had been partnered with for a work shift a few months ago.

Just before he died, the General clutched my thin arm and smiled at me through blood stained lips.

“Today we have claimed our victory so today was a good day to die.” He whispered before surrendering to death and his rightful place in Sto-Vo-Kor.

I clenched my jaw to force back my tears as I knelt beside my friends body. I got up and dragged his body out of the way so I would be able to bring it with me when we were finally liberated. I left my spoon with him, asking him to please take care of it for me. I guess I was still in shock.

The Jem’Hadar and the Vorta had vanished, locking us into the large room.

At first, cheers and sobs and triumphant smiles had flown through the room, but soon reality set it. We might have won the war and we might have escaped execution, but we were still behind enemy lines and very far away from the Federation and we had no idea how long it would take help to come.

So here I sit, hungry, tired and exhausted, scribbling on my uniform jacket again with a piece of ketracel chalk somebody had forgotten in their pocket.

The General’s body lies beside me and my spoon is clutched in my hands. Help will come soon. We will be free soon. We have to be. After all, if I had managed to keep my precious spoon for all these months without having it confiscated or stolen, and if an entire quadrant of fighting, squabbling species can unite and fight off an Empire as powerful as the Dominion, then surely, anything can happen.

Your friend,

Julian

*          *          *

Archivists Note:

The Federation, Klingon and Romulan relief ships only reached the first Dominion prison two weeks after the Founder agreed to return the prisoners. By then, the relief workers were devasted to discover they had been too late. The Vorta and Jem’Hadar had abandoned the prisons, leaving starving, weak prisoners locked inside their pods.

Out of the 253 million prisoners who had patiently waited to be liberated, only 30,578 survived and were rescued. Most of these prisoners had managed to break out of their pods and find scraps of leftover food to survive on.

Dr. Julian Bashir’s body was discovered lying next to General Martok. The relief worker who found him said the doctor had died with a content, small smile on his face, with a spoon tightly clutched in his hands.

His body was returned to Deep Space Nine where Miles O’Brien collapsed in the airlock when the torpedo casket containing his friend’s body was wheeled out of the transport vessel. The coroner examining the doctor’s body had taken the rusty, bent spoon out of his grasp and given it to Miles O’Brien, who put it on a shelf in his quarters.

A few years later, a grey haired Romulan Colonel came by to see the Chief. She had heard about him keeping the spoon and then quietly asked if he really knew why he had kept it.

The Chief had said that he simply kept it because it reminded him of Julian. The Colonel had smiled sadly and lifted her chin proudly and said that the spoon represented much more than that.

Then she strode past him and sat down on his couch and told him exactly how that spoon came to be in Julian’s possession and what it truly meant.

When asked about its presence more than thirty years after he first put it up there, he said that the spoon was a symbol of courage, strength and hope and that it represented their victory over the Dominion.

Neither the General nor Julian had ever thought they could find a spoon of all things in the middle of a Dominion prison, but they fought and bartered and finally found one, and then managed to keep it through months of fearing every night that they would wake up to find it gone or that one of the guards would confiscate it.

But they hadn’t lost it. They hadn’t lost hope, no matter how dreary and abysmal their chances of keeping it had become. They had clung to that spoon the same way we had clung to the Alpha Quadrant, and at the end, despite all the odds, Julian Bashir kept his spoon and the Federation, Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians kept the Alpha Quadrant.

Closing Note:

These letters were compiled by the fragments which Romulan Colonel Runar of the Third Fleet remembers from her time in the Dominion prison, since she claims the doctor mumbled while writing his letters. The letters which Miles O’Brien wrote were saved by his wife and were gladly donated for this project.