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Quark's One Good Deed	By : Shezan Category: Star Trek > Deep Space 9 Views: 2594 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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- 1-Quark's One Good Deed
- 1
Quark's One Good Deed

by Shezan

Disclaimer: Viacom is Borg, right? Just call me Locutus.
Your collective is safe with me, I will return it intact and having made no
profit whatsoever after this.
Timeline: This takes place during Season 4 of DS-9, at
the very end of the episode "Return to Grace", when Gul Dukat, now in
command of Klingon Bird of Prey, leaves his half-caste daughter Ziyal on the
station with Major Kira, before embarking on a Cardassian Maquisard's career
fighting the Klingons. Damar is his young second-in-command.

I watched them making their goodbyes on the
Promenade, my Gul and the half-caste girl, father and daughter. He was leaning
towards her, so close that the metal ridges of his armour nearly touched
Ziyal's hair, under the Bajoran major's watchful eye; talking quietly to her,
reassuring her, or so I wanted to imagine. Comforting her that if he was
leaving her again, so soon after rescuing her, it was only because he wanted
the best for her. Her life should be more than spending months at a time
imprisoned in a small rogue warship, chasing Klingons across the Badlands, with
half a dozen Cardassian crew, having traded one jail for another. Here, on
Federation-held Terok Nor, she would live freely, normally, or as normally as
the only Cardassian/Bajoran in that community could. She would make friends,
she would�
From where I stood, just at the entrance of the
Ferengi's bar, I couldn't see the expression in the major's eyes, but I didn't
need to--I knew this to be her work, and I could feel her satisfaction. We owed
her the Bird of Prey. Ziyal owed her her new life--her life at all. I owed
her--
My nails bit into my palms, and I made a
conscious effort to unball my fists. I owed Kira Nerys my undying hatred, for
snatching away the only consolation I'd ever found in my twenty-eight years.
In the months we had spent on the Groumall, I
had come to know Ziyal as I never would have on a larger ship, or indeed on
Cardassia. On the former, as my commanding officer's daughter, she would have
remained off-limits, unattainable. On the latter, her half-caste status would
have set her aside more surely than any purdah--I would never have braved my
fellow-Glinns' snickers, or simply the looks of other citizens in the street,
in a caf�, in a shop. But within the confines of our disgraced freighter, where
hard work at least alleviated our resentment for having to share Dukat's
shameful demotion, Ziyal did her share with touching enthusiasm, and not a
little energy--six years of backbreaking slave labour had given her the wiry
musculature of a coalminer, and an instinctive feel for team effort. She did
more than pull her weight, whether in the cargo bay or helping in
engineering--was there a single Klingon control that didn't require an amount
of brute force to be engaged? If yes, we never found it, so that we went to
sleep exhausted in the evenings, aching from muscles we never knew we had.
Sleep. Or not, as more and more often I lay
awake in my hard Klingon bunk thinking of her. That she could still laugh, and
laugh often, after what she had gone through, enchanted me. I was touched by
the way she'd stare unblinking at her father for minutes on end, as if filling
her eyes of his presence. I noticed the meticulous way in which she ate, never
leaving the least scrap on her plate, cutting off bits of her meat that were
precisely all the same size. Every detail came back to me at night, and I only
went to sleep reluctantly, because that meant relinquishing my heightened
awareness of her to the insubstantiality of my dreams. Sometimes I did see her
in my dreams; but there I could not control her, and she would pass me by, not
unfriendly, but never lingering. Awake, I could contemplate her luminous
pearl-grey face for hours in my mind's eye, every low-relief ridge on her brow;
all five sharp, serrated, alien crests on the bridge of her nose; again and
again.
She did speak to me during the day, more
unself-consciously perhaps than if we'd met in other circumstances: she must
have been aware that that none of us would have insulted her, or simply risked
cold-shouldering her, on her father's ship. And so, free of that fear, she was
friendly enough with all of us.
She eventually became aware of my attraction
for her; I did not hide it very well. I suppose the other Cardassians, the rest
of the crew, commented on it in the small, low-ceilinged mess room in our
absence: mine, Ziyal's, above all Dukat's. I didn't think about this at the
time. When Ziyal started sharing confidences about her father and her dead
mother with me; telling me about her childhood on Terok Nor or the unhappy
months she'd recently spent on Cardassia witnessing her father's disgrace, I
thought of nothing else but her, her closeness, her guileless charm.
Eventually we kissed; there was an
inevitability to it, but it still was a shock and a thrill to me. It was
certainly her first kiss: she had been thirteen when the Breen had enslaved the
Ravenok's survivors. It felt like my first too: nothing had prepared me for the
surge of protectiveness I felt when she yielded her lips to me in the engine
room, after the last of the ageing Groumall's engines had been painfully coaxed
into line again. She still had a stain of engine grease on her cheek, and raven
stray hairs fell on her sweaty brow. She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever
seen.
We never took it much further than kisses, and
long talks while the others slept. It was as if a second life had been suddenly
given me, more vibrant and coloured and open-ended than the first. She, who had
never talked of her captivity, did so, in halting sentences that made me
smother her hands with kisses. I slowly opened up to her, dragging into the
bright light of her ready compassion the hard cadet years, and before, the
coldness of my parents' house, my father's barked orders, my mother's
indifference to all that wasn't their joint ambition: they were partners in
their social ascension, every move calculated, every child a pawn in the joint
design of their aggrandisement. My sister Seyra had been married off to a
Detapa Council member, forty years her senior; my brother Lenat worked in Gul
Chakayan's staff; my older sister Toket, who had only wanted to study at the
Hebit-kor monastery, also married, to a worldly Secretary of State who often
mocked her religious inclination in public. It felt as if I had never been able
to say these things before, and in fact it was true, I hadn't; but Ziyal
listened and understood.
In turn I listened to her memories of Tora
Naprem, of the couple she and Dukat formed; my love for Ziyal unlocked my
acceptance of their cross-species romance as if nothing, anywhere, could ever
have objected to it. If I'd been asked to recall my earlier prejudices, I would
have found it difficult even to formulate them; they had melted away,
insubstantial. Somes ths the Dukat she described bore little resemblance to our
ship's captain: then, both cohabited effortlessly in my mind, without a slip,
each answering a separate and absolute necessity.
And now I could see both Dukats, Ziyal's adored
father and my Gul, two shadows merged into one, kissing Zione one last time,
then walking down the metallic steps to the Promenade's lower level, towards
the docking stations. In a few hours the Bird of Prey would leave, chasing
Klingons across this Guls-forsaken stretch of space. I did not want to be on
it.
I walked toward them then, my beautiful Ziyal
and Major Kira. Ziyal's eyes lit up.
"I was hoping you'd come to say goodbye,"
she said, at the same time that Kira spat out my name. "Glinn Damar.
Shouldn't you hurry back on board?"
"Our departure slot is at 15:00. I
wanted�"
"There are almost no Cardassians on DS9.
People here aren't much used to the peace yet, and they have long memories. I
wouldn't stroll just anywhere if I were you."
Selective would best have described Kira's own memory,
the ten days she'd just spent fighting on our side on the Groumall forgotten
the minute she set foot on DS9 again. Now I would have told her exactly that,
in fewer words even; but at the time, in the presence of Ziyal, I just found
myself tongue-tied. If this was the atmosphere in which Ziyal was supposed to
live--
"I wanted to see Ziyal," I stammered.
"I'm so glau cau came," Ziyal said
shyly, taking my hand. "You will take care of my father, won't
you?"
Me, take care of Dukat? I could not bring myself to tell her that
this was the world in reverse; and over her shoulder I caught Kira's wry
expression: hostility had given way to a measure of amused understanding. But I
knew what Ziyal meant: watch out for Dukat, guard his back; perhaps even take
the phaser blast or battleth blade intended for him. It was there in her
blue-grey eyes, quite plain to see. Perhaps it was only natural; perhaps tact
did not enter into it yet: she was fond of me; but her father was a miracle
restored to her. She hadn't even stopped to think of how it would sound to me.
"Yes," I said.
Her eyes closed for an instant in silent
thanks; then her smile illuminated her face. "I knew you would. I could
never have left him if I hadn't known you'd be there."
After that, of course, my half-formed dream of
deserting the rogue Bird of Prey dissipated like a tachyon shadow. I would have
braved Kira's hostility without a second thought, and stayed on DS9--but if it
meant disappointing Ziyal, where was the point now? I left them shortly
afterwards, kissing Ziyal's cheek chastely, stilling the leaden weight of
longing in my heart. There would be plenty of time for regrets on the Bird of
Prey in the long weeks and months ahead, assuming a Klingon ship didn't blow us
out of space. I had close to six hours left before our departure, and I didn't
plan to show up until the very last minute--what could Dukat do to me? Our
normal staterooms were even smaller than the ship's minuscule brig. I decided
to return to the Ferengi's bar.
I was not yet drunk when, returning from
Quark's surprisingly palatial waste extraction facilities, I bumped into a
strange personage, rather hard. I heard the "oomph" when my armour
hit the pit of his stomach, and saw him teeter before righting himself by
clutching the edge of one of Quark's tables. I stared at him belligerently. He
was standing between me and my Forvish whiskey. Perhaps I could pick a fight here.
"Watch where you're going, will ya?"
"You are being illogical. I was standing
here, you were moving. Do you have, perhaps, an equilibrium
problem?"
"Do you have an attitude problem--" I
started to growl, but the Ferengi hurried between us. "No fights!
You--Cardassian--what makes you think you can insult Federation Ambassador
Spock? Do you think you still own this station? There's plenty of people here
willing to show you otherwise."
My stare went from the unpleasant-looking
bartender to the Ambassador. A Vulcan. I'd never met one, but the ears were
unmistakable. The reference to logic in his speech was, too. This one was more
than middle-aged, tall and slender but slightly stooped, his dark hair lightly
touched with white at the sides, the expression on his somewhat lined face
sardonic but not unkind. The Ambassador was dressed with great understated
elegance, in black with a short gold-piped jacket that bore a Federation
pin--perhaps a commbadge--on the left of his straight collar. He was looking at
me.
"Ah, a Cardassian officer. But not from a
regular unit, surely?"
His uncanny clairvoyance defused my
aggressivity far better than Quark's admonitions. How could he have guessed
Dukat's so recent decision to turn pirate?
"Relations between Cardassia and the
Federation haven't reached a stage where military starships can travel to
either world without prior authorisation. I would have known."
I felt stupid. "I, er, I am sorry", I
said, and tried to pass him to get to my table, and to my still half-full
g.
"You like Cardassian food?"
"It's not unpleasant. I am getting used to
it."
Belatedly, I put two and two together.
"Your next mission will take you to Cardassia."
"Indeed. I can see you are capable of
logical deductions."
"Don't patronise me, Ambassador," I
hissed in a low voice. "I may be the only Cardassian here, and I may no
longer belong to a regular unit, but that doesn't mean everybody gets to kick
me like a football."
He raised his left eyebrow at that. "I
fear you will prove as emotional as the Terrans. More complications ahead. And
no, you are not the only Cardassian on this station, Mr�"
"Damar."
"Damar. I, as you may have heard, am
Ambassador Spock."
"You said there was another Cardassian on
this station, Ambassador. Why not ask him questions instead?"
I had intended my ungraciousness, but wasn't
prepared for the look of sheer lassitude that crossed the Ambassador's thin,
aristocratic face. "I have. It was not very effective."
"He wouldn't talk?"
"On the contrary, he never stopped. With
most people, even lies are instructive, because they point at what's being
dissimulated. With him�"
Had he been asking questions of Gul Dukat? But
Dukat's lies were usually quite brazenly transparent.
"Never mind. Tell me, Mr Damar, is lying
part of the normal Cardassian conversational give and take?"
I felt patronised again. I may only have
attended a military gymnasium in preparation for the Academy, but they did
teach us the rudiments of syllogism there. "As a matter of fact, it often
is, but you can't accept that answer, can you? If I what I say is the truth,
then we Cardassians do lie; so as a Cardassian I must be lying to you.
Therefore we are not liars, and I was telling the truth. And so forth�"
Spock closed his eyes briefly, waving a tired
hand as if to ward me off. "You too. I foresee an exhausting
mission." He turned to the Kanar bottle and the two clean glasses the
Ferengi had brought. "May I?"
"Thank you, yes."
It was the real stuff, not replicated; I
drained my glass thankfully. The taste bought back Cardassia Prime, the Sessara
gardens where I would have loved to take Ziyal--
Stop it.
"Your rogue operation, is it directed
against the Klingons? The Dominion? Or us?"
"For someone who wasn't going to ask about
military secrets, you're pretty forthright."
"Mr Damar, if you're here on DS9 in
uniform, it's logical station authorities should know about you."
He had a point there. Kira knew all there was
to know; she had practically set our crusade in motion.
"Klingons."
"Your idea?"
"Guls, no. My commander's. Gul Dukat."
"Dukat. Ah,
yes, the former prefect."
I nodded sullenly and poured myself another
glass. "Ambassador, I apologise, but I'm not going to chat much longer
with you. Nothing personal, but I didn't come to this bar for companionship, I
came to get drunk.&q
- 1
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Quark's One Good Deed

Quark's One Good Deed