This episode clearly represents those shades of Grey that are hard to define when a person who has basic "Black and White standards" is confronted with the very things they have stood against and even despised when they see it in other people.
For Kira Nerys, it had always been simple: A person who accommodated The Cardassians during the Occupation of Bajor, were "collaborators" or Quislings. A person who resisted the Cardassian Occupation was "In the Resistance" - Perhaps the French citizens of Occupied France, during World War Two had the same thoughts, and they were as wrong as Nerys had been.
The problem is that some information came to Nerys in the form of a communique from Dukat. Information about the fate of her mother, who Nerys had always thought had been killed as a member of The Resistance.
In fact, her mother was not killed while in a labor camp- She had been tapped by Cardassians to be a "Comfort Woman" for Cardassian Soldiers in the "New" Space Station orbiting Bajor: What was called then, Terok Nor, but we know it as Deep Space Nine- And in fact became Gul Dukat's personal Comfort Woman/Lover for the next seven years.
Kira is angry - And takes it out on her co-workers, including Doctor Bashir. And it takes one Odo to get her to deal with it instead of taking it out on everyone else.
And so we get to see the proper use of the Bajoran "Orb of Time" - The Prophets must be consulted and it is they who will determine if they will transport Nerys back in time so she can see first hand- The Prophets agree it is a worthy quest and they send her to the Labour Camp where she was as a child. We have to account for the Orb's first appearance in "Trials and Tribbleations" - And conclude that it was the will of the Prophets for that to occur as well. Thomas Kopache reprises his role as Kira Taban (with more hair) and Leslie Hope is Kira Meru, her mother.
And so Nerys becomes face to face with her younger self - Becoming a part of her own past history. And of course, both Nerys and Meru are tapped as Comfort Women, they are transported to Terok Nor and immediately, Dukat moves in on Meru, who moves her into his quarters with no time wasted. The Legate who Nerys was with mimed Dukat's whole act perfectly, so while Nerys saw Dukat's deception Meru did not. Nerys had the luxury of actually knowing Dukat - Meru did not. And so as a mother making the only decision she could to benefit her starving children, she agrees to live with Dukat - And Nerys can't face this, she storms out and decides to live with the slave Bajorans who work in the ore processing plant.
The Music of this episode is drastically different than the generic strains which usually play out in Next Generation and Deep Space Nine - There is a haunting melody that plays as Nerys walks among the Ghosts of her Past. Which puts an accent on this episode and makes it a pivotal piece of the Deep Space Nine Mythos.
Because Nerys has marked her Mother as a Collaborator and potential Collateral Damage as she plots to kill Dukat. So she plants a bomb given to her by the leader of a resistance cell disguised as a part of her Earring Ornament into Dukat's Quarters. Nerys was clear in this purpose as she decides to do it, but at the last minute she sees Meru reacting to a Message Crystal from Taban - And that in fact the reason why Nerys survived starvation as a child was directly due to Meru's involvement with Dukat.
Nerys performs an 11th-Hour rescue of Meru and Dukat as the bomb goes off - And she finds herself back in front of The Orb of Time.
This episode clearly speaks to anybody who has defined ideas of absolute wrong or right - Or good or evil. There is simply no such thing as absolute wrong or absolute right - And Meru's actions had saved Nerys' Life. These are the rules of the Universe, who are we to argue with The Prophets - Or God?
There are other things that need to be addressed:
Neres could have and should have been a lot smarter at the beginning of this debacle, during her first outing as a "comfort woman", she had created an association with a Cardassian Gul who could have been an ally for her, as he was no fan of Dukat's. Instead of nurturing that relationship, she immediately reacts to Dukat's quisling, and gets herself tossed out of the protected Cardassian area of the station, putting Meru out of her reach for several weeks- during which time she accumulates the complete wrong impression of what Meru had been doing.
This is because Neres had her own definition of right and wrong as well as her own beliefs as to what constituted a full-blown quisling or collaborator, versus a resistance fighter.
In fact, her mistake was to fall back into her "resistance fighter" personality which included punching, kicking, and fighting. Which did not do her any good in her immediate situation. Now, we know that Neres has some level of intelligence where she could have acted more as a "secret agent" to find out what she needed to know... but instead, she plots to take vengeance against her mother! She did not approach this issue with any form of wisdom whatsoever. In the end, she gets a severe wake up when she witnesses Meru's reaction to Taban's message on the Optronic Data Rod, and we can only hope that this served as a butt-kicking from the Prophets themselves, and that Neres may have finally thought, "oh my Prophet/God, what am I doing"?
There is one final thing: Dukat must have put it together after all of these years, that he had met Neres earlier in his life when she was pretending to be Luma Rahl, which may have caused him to instigate the message to Neres that started this whole ball rolling. This is another "times arrow" situation, where events in the future had repercussions back to the past and then back to the future again.
There is so much in this episode, I mentioned the music which begins as Neres opens the orb, I have never heard anything like that in deep space nine.
Neres had told The Sisko that she was going to do this under the complete authority of the Prophets, yet within minutes of arriving in her own past, she had reneged on that goal. I don't think she intentionally reneged, I believe we have stepped into the area of "foreknowledge and predestination"- Neres had no choice but to act the way that she did, despite her foreknowledge of Dukat's character... we can simply say that she was predestined to act like this.
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