Archive of Our Own

It's just after lunch when Joseph's transport arrives on the station; by the time he's shown his grandfather to his guest quarters, Jake is ready for dinner and bed, in that order and preferably as close together as possible.

He'd complain about it to Nog, except Joseph is right there and that would be rude. And Nog is too busy these days, doing actual work. And also he's already complained to Nog enough times about this visit that his friend doesn't even pretend to listen, just cuts him off with "I thought you wanted to see your grandfather."

And I did, Jake thinks, half-listening to Joseph tell the story of his travels from Earth. There may have been a dramatic showdown with a Klingon at some point. Jake's not really lifting his part of the conversational weight. Fortunately, Joseph has never met a silence he couldn't fill. But I didn't want him here, in my life, giving himself organ failure.

"Can you believe Judith thinks that I'm too old for space travel?" Joseph asks.

"That's what you always said, Grandpa," Jake tells him, before he thinks better of it.

He does manage to leave off that's what you always said to Dad. Which is something.

"You'd think a man's not entitled to change his mind, the way you young folk go on about it," Joseph sniffs. "There's nothing wrong with me that a cold drink and a quiet place to sit won't fix."

This time of day, the Replimat is crowded, so Jake steers him to Quark's, which may not ever really be a quiet place, but isn't too busy and is close enough to the infirmary that he could probably bring Doctor Bashir running with one good shout.

"Here, Grandpa." Jake lowers Joseph into a chair at the table nearest to the door. For all his big talk about his travels and his health, Joseph holds tight to his hand even after he's sitting.

Or at least, he does until he gets a chance to show off for a new audience. Quark bustles over to take their order and likely as not offer them some bargain rate booze, but before he can get started, Joseph jumps on the chance to introduce himself to a fellow restaurateur.

"You must be Quark! Nog told me his uncle was the most devious Ferengi I'd ever meet."

Jake snorts, because if Nog has ever said that, to anyone, it was within Quark's earshot and entirely for his benefit; but Quark puffs and preens and swallows the story, hook, line, and sinker. Jake thought con men weren't supposed to fall for other people's cons.

But Jake's not here to worry about Quark's heart.

"Are you sure you want to get jambalaya?" Jake asks after Joseph orders, thinking about his father's mutterings about spices and meats and how certain restaurant owners needed to take better care of themselves. "Quark's replicators aren't going to make it as good as you do," he adds on, hastily.

Joseph doesn't buy it for a second, if the look he gives Jake is any indication. "What a man needs after a trial is some comfort food! It's good for the soul."

"You should listen to your elders," Quark admonishes him. Joseph smiles; Jake stares at Quark, hard, to remember to get him back somehow later. "The customer is always right, Jake."

"You know, I think I heard Nog say something like that," Jake says in a flat tone of voice, so that Quark knows that he knows damn well that the Rules of Acquisition state the customer always thinks he is right.

Quark clears his throat. "Two jambalayas, coming right up," and he dashes away before Jake can point out that he hadn't, actually, ordered.

Joseph does find the jambalaya lacking, but his response is to pull Quark into a long, winding conversation about why he ought to hire a real chef, or at least reprogram his replicators with new recipes.

Quark very clearly wants to excuse himself and go back to the rest of his paying customers, but can't quite squirm his way out of the situation. The immovable object and the unstoppable force, Jake thinks, hiding a smile, and tries to figure out if he can call Nog down here to join in watching the scene, without giving away what he's doing. Probably not, he thinks, equal parts entertained and disappointed.

He's less entertained when a Bajoran woman he doesn't know approaches their table and says, "Mr. Sisko?" in a reverent voice that can only mean one thing.

Quark jumps on the opportunity to make his get away, and Jake has to fight the urge to do the same.

But Joseph just smiles at the woman, that slow, wide grin that he uses for customers and family and old acquaintances and everyone in between.

"Now, I don't believe we've met," he says. "And I'm not used to being recognized by beautiful young women."

She blushes, but Jake figures it's as much from the awkwardness of the situation as it is from Joseph's flattery. For a second he entertains the thought that she'll think better of this and walk away.

Instead, she tells Joseph, "I heard that the father of the Emissary was coming to the station." Her eyes dart over to Jake, for a second. Of course; he's lived here seven years, anyone could recognize him, and it wouldn't take a Vulcan's mastery of logic to guess who the older human dining with him was.

"You heard right," Joseph says. "Here, draw up a seat."

She voices her surprise at the same time that Jake does, which he hopes takes some of the harshness out of his exclamation.

"Oh, I couldn't," she says, but her eyes are already searching for an empty chair.

"Course you can," Joseph says. "You aren't going to make a man my age stand up and greet you properly, are you?"

"Oh -- no," the woman says, and ends up squished up against their two person table, looking like she's not sure how she ended up there.

I don't know why I bother being surprised, Jake tells himself, as Joseph gets the woman's name -- Kana -- and livelihood -- student at the University of Bajor, studying wormhole physics -- and the fact that she's from Dahkur Province. If they've made a sentient being that Joseph Sisko can't charm, I haven't met them.

"Dahkur Province," Joseph says. "Isn't that where our Colonel Kira is from, Jake?"

"That's right," Jake answers, because he can't quite manage to tune out the conversation completely.

"So I've heard," Kana says, blushing again. "Of course, she's a great hero of the Resistance..."

"And you are a great scholar of physics," Joseph says, and Kana demurs that no, she's just a student. "Don't argue with me, I'm too old and too stubborn," he advises her, and looks at Jake.

Jake knows his cue. "Don't bother," he tells the interloper. "I never get anywhere with him, either."

She looks down at the table. "I should go," she says softly, and Jake's not going to disagree. "I just wanted to let you know -- your son meant so much to us."

"He means a lot to us, too," Joseph says.

Kana stands and takes her leave, politely refusing to try the jambalaya, and Joseph gives her a warm farewell. Jake manages a nod.

He's poking at his dinner in silence, not really hungry, when Joseph speaks up again.

"Thinking great thoughts, Jake?"

His father had asked him that, too many times to count, when he'd caught Jake staring out at the stars, thinking about a plot problem or trying to come up with the best synonym for an overused word or even just remembering a good game of dom-jat.

But he's had about a thousand hours with Ezri, in her office and in transparently orchestrated "casual" time, and he's sick of talking about his father. He's even more sick of talking about the Emissary.

So he summons up his best Sisko lazy grin, and tells Joseph, "Starfleet Intelligence should've recruited you ages ago. I bet you could have charmed the whole Dominion defensive plan out of a Jem'Hadar or a Vorta with ten minutes of small talk and a good home cooked meal."

"From what I hear, the Jem'Hadar aren't much for home cooked meals," Joseph responds. "Might've have better luck with a Vorta, I suppose."

"I knew a Vorta once," Jake says. Words have power; some words have the power to take raw painful wounds and make them seem old and healed over, not wounds at all. Once upon a time. "He didn't have much in the way of taste, either."

"Never trust a man who doesn't appreciate the simple pleasures in life," Joseph advises. "If a man's not eating, he's not really living, and if he's not living then there's no telling what he's doing."

Jake laughs it off, and like that, they're out of the danger zone, back on safe ground.

Or so he thinks. He takes Joseph for a tour of the station. At the first sign of Joseph slowing down, Jake halts for a break. Fortunately, they're right near his and Nog's old hangout, looking down at the people going about their lives on the Promenade, and Jake thinks he's pretty casual about coming to a stop.

"Odo used to chase us away from here all the time," Jake says.

"It's good for a young man to have an opponent," Joseph answers, but he's watching Jake closely out of the corner of his eye.

Jake's expecting to get chastised for babying his grandfather who is old enough to take care of himself, Jacob Isaac, so he's caught off guard when Joseph asks him, "Is it all Bajorans that make you uncomfortable, or just the ones that want to talk about your father?"

"They all want to talk about Dad," Jake says, before his brain can catch up with his mouth. When it does, he feels his face flush, and he grips the railing, stares down at the people on the Promenade. Feels like he's fourteen years old and getting up to trouble again.

"Your dad was quite a man," Joseph says, non-committal.

"Not to hear them tell it," Jake says, and he can't keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Dad wasn't a man to them. He was the Emissary. He wasn't someone who had a life and a son and - "

He manages to stop himself, rubbing at his forehead. He's pretty sure there was no one around to hear but his grandfather. But that's bad enough.

"I just don't know how you can shrug it off so easily, that's all," he finishes. It sounds feeble and incomplete in his ears.

Joseph shrugs. "I'm no philosopher, Jake. I don't know an 'emissary' from a hole in the ground. But it seems to me, if the Bajorans think your father is a good, smart man that they ought to listen to, well," he waves a hand expressively. "They're only noticing the obvious."

"Yeah, well," Jake starts. "Sometimes it's just a lot to have someone say to you, that's all."

They stand in silence for a long moment, watching the crowds move below them, the push and pull of living beings going about their own business.

"You know, we don't get many Bajorans back on Earth," Joseph says. "Could be when I head back, you head with me."

Jake just shakes his head. Some things are too big, too obvious for words. Water is wet; space is cold; Jake Sisko belongs on Deep Space Nine.

-

They're catching a transport down to Bajor in the morning, but the timing works out such that Joseph has to spend a night on the station before he can make it down to the little house that Benjamin Sisko and Kasidy Yates built.

And he doesn't like it on the station, Jake can tell. He doesn't say as much, but it's clear to Jake from the way he eyes the architecture, the crowds, the uniforms all around them, Starfleet and Bajoran and Klingon and Romulan.

But Jake can't regret it, almost wishes they weren't leaving in the morning, weren't leaving ever. Because this place, this station, is something his father created. Oh, his father, and Cardassian architects, and Bajoran laborers more than anyone, but his father, too. He kept the residents from fleeing after the Occupation ended. He found the wormhole. He defended it time and again. It would never have been here without him, and as long as it's here, he's not really --

Anyway. Jake is proud to show Joseph around the Promenade, and the Habitat Ring, and up to Ops, where Kira still has his father's baseball on her desk.

Joseph came all this way out from Earth to spend time with his grandchildren; there's just one more of those than he'd realized, that's all.

-

"I thought the next Sisko baby I'd be holding would be my great-grandson," Joseph says, bouncing Rebecca Sisko on his knee. "And from the way your father always moaned about you running around with those older women, I thought it wouldn't be too long, either."

Joseph has a twinkle in his eye when he says that, trouble, and when Jake yelps "Grandpa!" at him, he just laughs.

"I'm not ready to have kids," Jake says. Not that long ago he would have said, I'm just a kid myself, and it might even have been true.

But he's seen battles with the Klingons, with the Cardassians, with the Dominion. He's seen the bodies, after. He's seen kids his own age die for nothing but hubris.

He's lost his mom, and lost her again, that woman that everyone said wasn't his mom but who had died for him anyway.

And now he's lost his dad.

Sometimes Jake feels so desperately lonely, so starved for connection and history, that he can't speak.

But he's not sure how to tell his own grandfather, sitting with his step-mother and his half-sister, sometimes I feel like I don't have any family at all, so he just rolls his eyes like he's still that sullen kid, and says, "Mardah wasn't that old, anyway."

"Well, your father was always worrying about you for some reason." Joseph bounces the baby, and she gurgles, happy. "For the longest time it was Nog! Ranting on about how he was such a bad influence on you. Like your father hadn't been running around with that Babineaux boy when he was your age. Lord, you've never seen a bad influence until you've seen that Babineaux boy..."

It's a good story, the way Joseph tells it, and Jake and Kasidy laugh in all the right places. The baby even chimes in out of some family feeling, or just mimicking the sounds of joy around her.

Jake plays a game with himself, ever since he realized the gator in Sisko's wasn't really in stasis, where he tries to pick out which parts of Joseph's stories are true. When he was really young, he'd swallowed every word. When he'd been a little older, he hadn't believed a word of any of them.

Now, he thinks the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

He might not have believed this story, even in his young and gullible days. But as he gets older, Jake has reconsidered 'Uncle Curzon'. And if his father could be friends with Curzon Dax, some New Orleans punk who kept him out late watching girls is nothing.

Though Jake's pretty sure that his father never helped steal an old fossil fuel powered automobile out of a museum and ride around town in it.

"What ever happened to him, anyway?" Jake asks, as the story winds down.

"Oh, I think he moved out to a colony world somewhere," Joseph says. "Mining, I think, or maybe it was farming. That's the problem with people these days."

"Which is?" Jake asks. "Mining? Or farming?"

"Enough of your attitude, Jacob Isaac Sisko," his grandfather says. "If you didn't go around interrupting old men, you'd know that I only meant it's a shame how people up and leave you in the middle of a good story."

"Yeah," Jake says, numb. "It's a shame."

-

It's late, or rather early, when Jake wanders out into the communal spaces of the house.

He'd woken up maybe three or four times in the night, not used to the sounds of the house around him, the air blowing through minuscule cracks in the walls. There's no draft on the station.

He doesn't bother with the chronometer, not willing to negotiate his mind around the local time in the Kendra Province versus the 26 hour clock on Deep Space Nine. It's dark in his room, but when he pushes the curtain open a crack, the sky is just a bit brighter than it had been the last time he'd checked.

"Good enough," he mutters, and gets out of bed.

There's one light on in the kitchen, so he walks in that direction instead of heading outside like he'd planned.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Benjamin Sisko had designed the kitchen of his house to be large, open to the rest of the house, and absolutely crammed full of pots, pans, and every cooking implement imaginable, most of which have gone unused with only Kasidy and the baby living in the house full time.

Now, however, Jake can see that cupboard doors are open, there's a pot of something -- smells like broth -- bubbling on the stove, and half a dozen jars of spice open on the counter.

"Grandpa?" he calls softly, because he doesn't see Joseph, but there's no other explanation for who could be secretly cooking in the middle of the night.

"In here," Joseph answers back, just as quiet, and Jake steps the rest of the way into the kitchen to see Joseph sitting in a simple wood and wicker chair that had been a housewarming gift from Kira. The baby's sitting propped up on his lap and he's trying to interest her in a wooden spoon by waving it slowly in front of her face. "Getting your sister comfortable with being in the kitchen."

"Is she hungry?"

"She ate already," Joseph says. "I told Kasidy I'd take care of it so she could go back to bed."

Jake pulls up a stool to half-sit, half-stand by Joseph. "You should go back to sleep, too," he says. "You had a long day yesterday. I can take the baby."

Joseph waves him off. "At my age you're lucky if you sleep more than a few hours straight," he says, and the baby grabs onto the spoon and starts gumming at it. "Something this little one and I have in common! When you're at the beginning of your life and the end of your life, you don't like to sleep the night through. I've got too much to do in the time I've got left, and this little lady's just too excited about being alive."

"Yeah, well," Jake sighs. "Maybe it runs in the family."

"Got a case of that late night ennui, Jake?" Joseph asks him. "Here, hold your sister, I've got to prepare the chicken."

Jake takes the baby from Joseph and watches, half amused and half worried, as Joseph slowly pushes himself back on his feet. He does, at least, refrain from offering to give him a hand up.

Then Joseph makes it to the counter and amusement wins out; the chicken he's talking about isn't replicated -- Jake would never expect that of his grandfather -- but it isn't Bajoran poultry, or even the frozen meat that Jake can sometimes find this far from Earth.

"You brought dead chickens on the transport with you?" Jake asks.

"Had to," Joseph says, "live ones make too much of a mess!"

Jake can't help it; he laughs. "What did you do, hide it in your luggage?"

"Hired a smuggler," Joseph answers. "The nastiest Orion you've ever seen."

"You needed a smuggler and you didn't hire a Ferengi?" Jake asks. "Quark's going to be so disappointed."

"Well, I thought about it." Joseph begins plucking the meat off the bones. His hands are practiced and sure with the motions, and he hardly even looks at the work as he's doing it. "But then I thought, Nog would be more disappointed with me if I had. He's always saying we need to change how people think of Ferengi, I didn't want to contribute to a negative stereotype."

The baby drops the wooden spoon. Jake bends over to retrieve it, careful not to jostle or squish his sister as he does so, but when he tries to hand her back the spoon she gums away at one of his fingers, instead.

Jake shoots Joseph a helpless, pleading look, but Joseph laughs. "Just be glad she hasn't got her teeth in, yet."

"I think she's planning on keeping my finger hostage until she does get her teeth." Jake's not really sure how he's supposed to get free, here. It's not like he can fight a baby.

His dad always made this look easy. Benjamin Sisko loved babies, would hold and kiss and play with babies with that same confidence and ease that he'd done everything.

Jake is starting to suspect this is one more thing that his father did not pass on to him.

"It'll be good for your sister to grow up in a proper house," Joseph is saying, profound now that he's back in his arena. "Now, this isn't New Orleans, but still! Soil under your feet, sky over your head, that's how men were meant to live. Stunts your growth, growing up on spaceships and space stations."

"I've never had anyone call me stunted before," Jake says. Not physically stunted, anyway. Some of the dates he'd scrounged up for Nog in the old days had had certain opinions about his and Nog's emotional state.

"Just think how tall you could have been if you'd grown up on Earth." Joseph waggles a chicken wing at him. "Seven foot tall, you'd be. People would spot you coming from a mile away."

Jake shakes his head. "I don't want people to spot me from a mile away. A writer's supposed observe, not stand out. Blend in."

"I've got news for you, Jake. Siskos do not blend in."

"Yeah, I know." Suddenly, Jake feels tired again. Or more than tired; weary down to his bones. "I think I'm going to go for a walk."

Joseph studies him with a look, but Jake stays cool. He's too old to be forbidden from doing anything, even if he'll never be too old for his family to meddle.

"Put your sister back in the nursery, first," is all he says. "Someone in this house ought to get some sleep."

-

Dawn has come and gone by the time Jake returns to the house, and he finds Kasidy and Joseph sitting out on the porch, sipping coffee -- Joseph hadn't taken to raktajino, to Kira's disappointment.

"Morning," Jake says, stooping to give one armed hugs to first Joseph, then Kasidy. "You look bright eyed and bushy tailed."

Kasidy smiles at him. "You know, I don't think I've slept that well since your father joined the Prophets."

Jake is seized with the urge to go back out for another walk.

Joseph saves him. "Jake, go in and stir the gumbo, I don't want it sticking to the bottom of the pot," and as Jake nods and heads for the door, he hears Joseph's 'storytelling' voice, "That's the burden of the single parent. Why, when Judith was a year old, her mother went off to the moon for a month..."

Jake dutifully stirs the gumbo, then goes in to check on Rebecca. They've put her in a playpen with a number of toys -- including a beautiful stuffed animal from Dr. Bashir, that Jake privately thinks of as Kukalaka Junior. But rather than playing with any of these, she is trying with all of her might to eat the skirt of her dress.

"I don't think you're supposed to do that," he tells his sister. She stares back up at him with wide eyes and drools.

He sighs and gives her his hand. She happily gives up on her clothing and starts slobbering on his fingers.

"Glad someone's happy," he says quietly.

"You know, Dax sends me a message once or twice a month," Joseph says, from somewhere behind him. "She said she thought you were doing a lot better."

Jake doesn't turn around. "But did she tell you, better than what?"

"That's a writer's answer if I ever heard one," Joseph grumbles.

"If it's anyone's fault I'm a writer, it's yours," Jake tells him. "So you can't complain."

"I can complain about anything I damn well please," Joseph says. "Such as my grandson avoiding the question."

"As a journalist, I'd like to point out that you didn't ask a question."

Joseph sighs, and Jake can hear him walking away. He almost -- almost -- thinks that his grandfather is going to let this go.

But letting things go is not the Sisko family way.

After a minute, Joseph comes back into the room, and Jake hears the clunk of a chair's feet coming to rest on the floor.

"You want to talk about it?" Joseph asks.

"Talk about what," Jake mutters. Rebecca gazes up at him like she knows he's obfuscating.

"Jake." Joseph doesn't say anything more, and Jake doesn't either. He can outlast his grandfather. He doesn't need to say anything. He doesn't need to -- doesn't need --

Jake turns around, and is struck by the sight of his grandfather with tears on his cheeks.

"Jake," Joseph says, his voice thick. "It's been a year."

Jake swallows around the lump in his own throat, until he can finally speak. "Yeah." It comes out as a croak. "Yeah."

Joseph waves at him, beckoning, and Jake picks up Rebecca and carries her over to their grandfather. Puts her in his lap and rests his own hand, infant slobber and all, on Joseph's shoulder.

"I miss Dad," Jake says. It feels like a terrible secret, a horrible confession, but Joseph just shakes his head.

"Jake, I know," he says. "Do you think I don't know? Of course you miss your father. I miss him, too."

"I know," Jake whispers.

"Do you, now?" Joseph asks him, but he's looking down at his granddaughter, who doesn't miss her father, who has never met her father. "Do you know what it's like to be an old man who's outlived your son? There's no pain like that."

"He's not dead," Jake says, even though sometimes, in the middle of the night, he doubts, he wonders, if his father isn't really, if he might not as well be.

"I'm not a philosopher. I just know, he's gone, and the odds of my seeing him again get shorter every day." Joseph bounces his knee, and Rebecca gurgles, simple in her joy. "I thought -- if he was going to come back, it would be for her."

"Me too," Jake admits.

Joseph reaches up to cover Jake's hand on his shoulder. "You don't need to be ashamed that you miss him. We all do. Kasidy misses him, too. You don't need to shut her out."

Jake can't speak. He can't. It would be too hard to say. Too cruel.

But somehow, in this room, with the shattered remains of his family, with the Bajoran sun streaming through the window, he finds the words coming out of him anyway:

"He said goodbye to her," Jake admits. "Dad said goodbye to Kasidy, and he didn't say goodbye to me."

"Oh, Jake."

Kasidy is standing in the doorway, and when Jake finally makes eye contact, her eyes are huge, her hand is up to cover her mouth.

"I didn't get to say goodbye," he says.

"Jake," Kasidy says, coming forward to wrap him into a hug, but pulling away halfway through. "Jake, it isn't goodbye. He's coming back." She looks from him to Joseph. "He's coming back."

"I hope so," Jake says, and curls his fingers tight around Joseph's. "I hope so."