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Occupation of the Mind	By : Jack-O-Lantern Category: Star Trek > Deep Space 9 Views: 666 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek: DS9, nor the characters from it (save for the OC I created within the bounds of the established universe). I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Twelve
I was born during the occupation, grew up in it. It was the only thing I’d known. Yet I felt the despair palpable in the air. I knew it wasn’t right. I knew, despite knowing nothing else, that this was not happiness. Growing up, my belief in the Prophets was the most powerful thing I had. One of the only things I had. I suppose it was the same for many others. I’d grown up knowing that though things were tough, the Prophets would guide us. Just as they always had in times I was not alive to remember. They would get us through. We just had to hold out.
But as I shed my childishness, I noticed that people were dying around me, starving, working themselves to the bone. They were lashed, tortured, disappeared. My own family finally met their end, bodies lined in front of our house. I hadn’t been there when it happened. When I returned, they found me. I’d begged for my life. They’d laughed at me, threw me to the ground, rolled me with boot heels as they jeered at me. They spared me for interrogation. I never knew what exactly my parents had done, but they—or one of them—had been involved in something they shouldn’t have been. They tied me and beat me, digging for answers I didn’t have. I was lucky they realized that before I’d expired. Surely the Prophets had stepped in to save me. But if they spared me, why had they not spared others?
Displaced as I was, I was sent off to Terok Nor. And there I stayed. I grew out of my adolescence into an adult in that dim, hazy place. Cardassians scoffed at us and our beliefs: “Where’s your Prophets? Why won’t they save you?” There’s a purpose for everything. The prophets are meant to guide us. But I’d began wondering: why are they letting this happen? Why will they not speak to us and tell us what must be done? Then that became “Have the forsaken us?” and then: “Are they even out there?”
How many different gods did the peoples of the universe believe in at the exclusion of all the others? Maybe there aren’t Prophets. Maybe it had all been a lie. Or maybe I am not worthy of communing with or knowing them. I don’t know what to believe anymore. It had been comforting, holding out hope that they were watching over me. But maybe the Cardassians were right. Maybe it was a silly childish fantasy.
The door slid open and I turned my head. Odo entered, hands held carefully behind his back, face grim. “Gul Dukat wishes to see you. Shall I tell him you’re sleeping?” I sat. He’d come? Had he really gone out of his way to check on me? Could he not stand to have me out of his reach? What would I even say? I couldn’t avoid him forever. And I couldn’t lie. He’d know. It was torture having the option for protection from him, knowing in the end, when I’d finally been freed from this cell, that it would backfire.
“No, it’s fine. He can come in.”
“Are you sure?” He was skeptical and why shouldn’t he be? I don’t suppose he’d know what it was like for me. The sort of irrational hold he had on me.
“I can’t hide forever.”
“As you wish.” Tears already brimmed as he disappeared. I knew I would not win this battle. I would crumble to dust in his hands.
That familiar poise exuding calm confidence, ownership of the space he crossed through, entered the holding area. His gaze was on me immediately weighing down my own. “I received a message,” he said, drawing nearer. “They said you were unwell. They refused to tell me anything else. After I arrive, I find that not only are you not in the medical wing, but you’re in a holding cell.” His voice lowered as he stood just feet from the energy barrier. “How did you end up here?” My chest hitched and I pressed my lips together against the pending sobs. “It’s okay. You can tell me.” I blinked a tear down and sniffled. It was happening. “Look at me.” I did. I wept openly.
“I really don’t want to say,” I pleaded. “It’s embarrassing.”
“You don’t need to hide anything from me. Tell me. Let me help you.”
“I don’t know what you’ll say…”
“I promise I’ll be supportive and compassionate. As I always have been.”
“Ha! A Cardassian! Compassionate! And a Gul no less.” Dukat turned towards someone I couldn’t yet see.
“Do I know you?” I drew farther back.
“Nooo! No, not me. You wouldn’t know little ol’ me. But I know you. Don’t you have somewhere to be? Didn’t they tell you you don’t own the station anymore?” It was another prisoner. They’d brought him in earlier. I don’t know for what, but he’d been rather vocal as they escorted him in.
“Odo,” Dukat called, holding the man in his gaze. “Can’t you keep control of your prisoners?”
“What do you expect me to do? He can prattle on all he likes. As annoying as that may be.”
“Shame. Not like how it was in the old days, is it? When you could do what was necessary to command respect.”
“Yes, such a shame,” the Bajoran prisoner quipped. “If only you lot hadn’t run away with your tails between your legs. The mighty Dukat begging a Bajoran security chief to tell the mean, nasty prisoner to shut his mouth. Am I bothering you, Dukat?”
“Alright, that’s enough,” Odo sighed gruffly. “You don’t want to get into any more trouble do you?”
“What, am I not allowed to talk?” he turned and sat down on his cot.
“Just mind your business.” The prisoner scoffed, but fell silent. As Odo walked away from him, Dukat gave an appreciative nod, before returning his gaze to me.
“Now tell me,” he lowered his voice. I squeezed my hands. He’d asked enough. I shouldn’t test his patience. I bowed my head.
“I didn’t do anything bad,” I whispered. “I just,” tears welled up over my lashes, “I couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t want to be here.” I wiped my eyes. “I tried to end myself.” I hunched my shoulders, burying my face in my hands.
“You what?” His words shot through my chest. I was miserable with shame. “Tamir…” My breath hitched as he let my name hang in the air. “Why did you never tell me? I had no idea. I would have helped you.”
“I don’t want help,” my voice trembled. “I just want to go away. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I thought things would be different, but I don’t feel any better. I feel worse. I can’t move on, I can’t make my own way. I feel so lost and confused and miserable. I feel trapped. Nothing makes it better, and I realized it’ll never change. I just want to go away. But they won’t let me. I…I had prepared everything. I almost made it…” Dukat looked to Odo. The security field disappeared and Dukat stepped through. His hands rested heavily on my shoulders.
“I’m glad you didn’t. I would have missed you terribly.”
“Please, don’t lie to me. I’m nothing to you. To this day, I don’t know why you associate with me. But you have your family, your career—how could I possibly measure up anywhere close to that? How can I not be disposable?”
“You think it’s all a lie after all the time we’ve spent together? You think I don’t care?”
“I don’t know,” I sobbed. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
“I care deeply about you. I want you to be happy. Haven’t I always tried to make you happy?” I knew it was a lie. Whether he actually believed it or not, I didn’t know.
“Yes…”
“You must be honest with me, Tamir. You have to let me help you.”
“How could you possibly help? Especially now? You can’t be here like you used to be.” Why am I making it sound like I want him here?
“No…but I can be here as often as I can. I can speak to you every day like we have been. I just need you to tell me what’s going on so I can guide you. Let me be your anchor.”
“I can’t be left on my own. I wanted to be independent so badly, but…” I shook my head. “I don’t know why, but for some reason I just can’t…function by myself.”
“I know. And that’s okay. You don’t need to.” In my lowest moment, he sunk his claws in deeper. I could never be free of him. I didn’t have the strength to fight. “Let me be your pillar. Like I was before.”
“It’ll never be like before. You’re too far away. Even if you could, the Bajorans here will never accept your presence nor my closeness with you. And even if I could…I don’t believe Cardassia is any place for me. I think as soon as your back was turned, they’d eat me alive. And, now that things are different, I don’t know if your superiors would accept your guardianship of someone like me. You can’t be here for me the way you used to. I’m completely alone. No one can save me, and no one will let me die. I don’t know what to do.”
He gripped my shoulders, touched my face. “I will help you through this.” I wept as he held my face, smoothed my hair back. Though I hated him, I think I… I missed having someone always there, protecting me from the worst, caring for me. I mourned the realization that even the man I hated could no longer give me that. He wiped my tears with a thumb, hands warm in stark contrast to the cold cell.
“Who is that? Is that the traitor?” I flinched, gaze darting to the opposite cell and the previously-vocal Bajoran man peering out of it. “Oh well now it makes sense.” I drew away from Dukat’s touch. “The spoon-head has come to see his beloved pet. He come to bail you out traitor?” I retreated, turning my face from him. “You can’t hide! I know you’re there! You’re a disgrace!” He was right.
“Don’t listen to him,” Dukat told me. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“After everything they’ve done to us! After everything he did to us! You’re palling around, making him feel welcome you goddamn sympathizer!” I hid my face in my hands, nails digging into my scalp.
“Alright, settle down,” Odo growled.
“It’s about time,” Dukat hissed.
“You can’t silence me! I’m a free citizen! No thanks to traitors like him! I can say whatever I please!” he screamed.
“Not in here, you’re not. And if you don’t want that to change you’ll calm down right now.”
“You’re just as bad as him, shifter!” he shouted. “This isn’t justice!”
“You better knock it off before you find yourself in here indefinitely.”
“On what charges!” Odo chuckled.
“Keep pressing your luck and you’ll find out.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Can’t I?”
“I’ll file a formal complaint.”
“Ha! Not from in there you won’t.” The man banged his fist against the wall. Odo paced over. “Why don’t we relocate you a little further away?” Odo nodded down the hall.
I was placed in another cell and Odo gave us a little space once more as Duakt sighed and tried to pick up the thread. “When do they let you out?”
“When they don’t think I’ll try again… But I see no other way,” I whispered. Without anyone to see, he took my face again.
“I beg you to have a change of heart… Do everything you can to get out. I promise I’ll help you.”
“I don’t know how—” He put a finger to my lips.
“Try… For me…”
What could I say, but, “Yes, sir…”
-*-
Dukat and Odo stepped back into the security office. Dukat circled around Odo’s desk, tracing a finger over the edge.
“If what he told me was true, then he has committed no crime. I would like you to release him.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Odo sat. “He hasn’t been cleared yet. He’s still a suicide risk.”
“You can’t possibly believe that keeping him confined in a cell with other criminals who shout insults at him is going to make him better?” he blinked. “This is not an ideal environment for recovery. If anything he’ll get worse.”
“That man will be released within the next 24 hours. As for environment, we have no ideal holding for his situation, but he has to be confined somewhere where we can keep an eye on him to ensure he doesn’t try anything else.”
“When will that be? You can’t keep him locked away forever and he’s not going to improve being isolated like that.”
“He’s allowed visitors and is evaluated and treated daily by medical staff.”
“So when will he be released?” Odo leaned forward, tilting his head.
“I can’t say.”
“That’s unacceptable,” he scoffed.
“What is your interest in him, Gul Dukat? Why is he so important to you?”
“Obviously, he needs me.”
“Why you? Why not one of his spiritual leaders? Why not the medical professionals? What makes you think you can and should help him?”
“He trusts me. I’m the only friend he has. I protected him before, made his life more comfortable. Just because the occupation has ended, doesn’t mean our friendship has.”
“Are you sure that friendship is mutual?”
“Of course. You don’t think a Cardassian and a Bajoran can be friends?”
“It’d be a hard-won friendship. Not something that can be bought with power and coercion.”
“I never coerced. My power allowed me to mandate our initial meetings of course, but that was necessary to facilitate the opportunity for understanding. He grew to trust me. He learned that I am a noble man, despite what his people might have said behind my back.” He paced away from the desk. “Now he’s been set free in a world he knows nothing about. He’s alone. Suffering without me.”
“Oh yeah? And what is a marauding warship commander going to do about that?”
“You leave that to me to worry about. Just see to it he’s released soon.” Dukat smiled and left.
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Occupation of the Mind