#shakaar

Im being so serious bareil enjoyers who embrace his strangeness as a virtue are genuinely based as fuck. And yes hes butch.

Another time, she came into his room while he was still shirtless, having just risen, and she touched the back of his neck, like she always used to, where he had that flat scar. The one he told her was from a fish trying to chew his head off when he swam in the lake as a child. She brushed his hair back into place when she was done, like he always wore it, handed him a shirt, straightened his collar out. He let her dress him like a doll. And she didn’t try to kiss him. In truth, she was thinking about Antos. About his hair getting brushed for the last time, before the funeral pyre. (ao3 link)

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did he forget to flub his aim? did he want, just once, to nail a shot without faking it?

For pride, or something

They get together relatively early on and Bareil is cool with to cause he’s a nice guy. Kira is new to polyamory so sticks to doing romantic stuff with each of them separately rather than together, not wanting to cause any jealously or problems (a lot of this timeline is swayed by Kira’s personal angst lol).

As they were always fairly casual, Jadzia was also having her hookups here and there as the more sexually active of the two, which Kira took no issue with. Leeta helped Jadzia introduce Kira to threesomes.

Eventually Bareil dies of course and Jadzia does her best to comfort and console Kira in private, but they keep things mostly platonic-seeming publicly because Kira doesn’t want to disrespect his memory by seeming to have moved on so quickly. But behind closed doors, Jadzia was her rock, to the point where she started to feel a little guilty about it.

Jadzia is also the only person Kira talked to about the complicated attraction she felt towards the Intendant.

In her grief over losing Bareil, Kira ends up clinging to Shakaar because he’s familiar despite not loving him romantically deep down, and she doesn’t want to put the entire burden of her grief on Jadzia. Shakaar is ok with Jadzia but gets super jealous and threatens when it comes to any other men, namely Miles.

Kira and Jadzia take a break when Kira becomes the surrogate for the O’Briens and takes up living them, mostly because Kira is so busy now. As Kira discovers her attraction to Miles and Keiko she realizes that loving multiple people simultaneously rather than “in shifts” is possible for her, something she tells Jadzia about as soon as she gets the chance, and which Jadzia is eager to explore once they’re back on.

I don’t have anything interesting to say about it but I’m just going to mention Kira breaking up with Shakaar for completionism. Kira and Jadzia swiftly went back to being each other’s primary partners after that. Kira still isn’t sure what to do about her feelings for Miles and Keiko at this point.

Oh they were on a break during phasing planet episode too to explain why Jadzia was willing to leave everything for that guy lol.

Not sure where else to fit this but they were probably dating during Rejoined, but Kira was giving Jadzia her space given the situation. Obviously she had no issues whatsoever with sharing Jadzia with Lenara and their love was so evident to her that she likely would have willingly stepped aside if Jadzia and Lenara wanted to be monogamous. Kira just has SO much compersion for Jadzia and Lenara. She of course comforted Jadzia as best she could after Lenara left.

Jadzia later gets with Worf and because of his traditionalist views about being a good partner in the Klingon way, Jadzia must be obligately monogamous and breaks it off with Kira again, promising to get back together once she gets Worf to be more open minded.

That… did not work out.

After Jadzia’s death, Kira wanted to give Ezri her space and not put any burdens of her prior relationship with Jadzia on her, but couldn’t stop herself from starting to form feelings for her as they became friends themselves, feelings Ezri gradually began to share. Because Kira didn’t want to treat Ezri like a replacement Jadzia and Ezri didn’t want to come across like a ghost come to haunt Kira, they stayed platonic and kept that boundary for the duration of the series, Kira consummating her love for Odo in the meantime and Ezri getting over Worf before deciding to pursue Julian, partly because he was the opposite of Worf. Ezri also became attracted to Leeta but did not act on it as Leeta appeared to be monogamous with Rom (they would eventually open up their marriage post-series, Rom is a maximum compersion wife guy).

Kira and Ezri would finally decide to try out dating each other some years after the end of the series, partially motivated by the distance from each other created by (borrowing from the novels here) Ezri transferring to and becoming Captain of the USS Aventine and Kira retiring from active service and becoming a Vedek for some time. (per my girlfriend @laneleeta ‘s idea, she would later be reactivated/drafted by Starfleet ala McCoy in The Motion Picture because drama)

They’ve kept in touch and occasionally met up throughout, and decided that they’ve waited long enough and are ready to act on their feelings.

Happy ending :)

They also both start dating Leeta. Julian teases Kira about snatching up his ex girlfriends.

'So this is a coup?' - winn

'No, it's a free election.

Shakaar is going to enter the election, and you are going to lose.

You'll still be Kai, the spiritual leader of Bajor. But your days in this office are numbered.

So if I were you, I'd start packing.' - kira