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eponymous_roseYuletide reveal! I was lucky enough to get to write in one of my favourite fandoms this year, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dress_fic, whose request was awesome and sparked a lot of fun ideas. Beta-wise, many thanks to velvetmouse, who gave several rounds of fantabulous feedback and much-needed corrections - in spite of technical difficulties, no less. ♥
You can read this fic at AO3 as well.
Title: And When the Night Is New
Word Count: 6,076
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Mila, Damar, Kira Nerys, Elim Garak
Summary: Four people and the Cardassian revolution.
1.
Mila had witnessed many strange things in her life, most of which, if asked, she would deny having seen in the first place.
It was the creative, careful ignorance that came from listening at the right doors, from lingering in rooms where the right people weren't likely to spot her, from maintaining the most detailed and thoroughly damning collection of records Cardassia had ever seen – mentally, of course. Some of these things she used to report to Tain, when he was still alive to hear them. Most she kept to herself, shoring up her own defenses, meticulously plotting counterattacks on the off-chance they'd someday be needed. It was a silly, childish game, but it kept her alive all those years.
Now, seeing Elim Garak for the first time in longer than she'd care to remember, all she could think was that even Tain could scarcely have predicted this.
"Hello, Mila," said Elim, just like that. Like he had every right to stroll up to the door after betrayal, after exile, after war.
She was quiet for a long moment, taking in the clothes he wore, the tell-tale catch in his breath, and the strange, glittering coldness in his eyes that telegraphed frustrated determination. He was open, far more open than she'd ever seen him. The mask was slipping.
Strange how, until that moment, it hadn't even occurred to her how bad the situation with the Dominion must be getting. Had Cardassia truly lost what little power it had managed to retain? That he was here at all meant something had changed. "Elim."
He cleared his throat, then made a show of glancing up and down the street. "Much as I'd enjoy having this conversation out where everyone can use it to form unnecessarily convoluted plots against us later-"
She gave an elaborate sigh. "There's no need for that tone of voice. I suppose you'd better come inside and tell me about it, if you must."
***
What she remembered most about the time when Elim had left for good was that the house had seemed wiped clean, as though every small part of him buried there had been carefully extricated. She was never sure if it had been Elim's doing, or if Tain had simply wanted to remove his wayward son from living memory.
Once thing was certain: when Tain had left, the house had echoed with his leaving.
Ever since then, she'd taken to standing in the library, listening for the whispers of a familiar voice. It was pure self-indulgence, but the ritual was strangely soothing.
"Mila."
She turned; even now, even when she was thinking of him, Elim still had that frustrating ability to sneak up on her. He was standing in the hallway, and for a moment she remembered a much younger man, plotting and scheming and always, always keeping it from her. "You shouldn't be up here. If you're going to complain about the food-"
"The food's fine, Mila. Besides, the others are the ones who should stay in deep hiding; I'm rather less recognizable. May I?" He tilted his head, and she sighed and nodded, waving him into the library. "Thank you," he said. His hand darted out, as though of its own accord, slipping along the spines of the volumes of Cardassia's greatest literature, pausing here and there on a well-remembered title. She watched him quietly, trying to hide her impatience, trying to imagine what game he could possibly be playing that would involve harboring a traitor and a Bajoran.
"I'm sorry," he said, and she had to lean closer to hear him. "Perhaps we shouldn't have come."
"Nonsense," she sniffed, but she was trying to gauge his mood, trying to pick up on whatever signals she could. If this was part of something bigger – if he was in trouble and trying to get out of it – she would be ready to help.
He pulled down a volume of Preloc and opened, it, frowning. "Well, that's odd. This is a different edition. No signature. I distinctly remember that Tain was quite proud of this acquisition."
Mila took a deep breath, let it out as a sigh. Sometimes it was still difficult to remember that there were some secrets no longer worth keeping. "Tain replaced many of them when you left."
Elim glanced up, eyes wide. "I wouldn't have had him pegged as such a sentimentalist."
With a wry smile, Mila took the book from him and put it back on the shelf. "His son has his moments, too. I should know better than to presume you'll answer me honestly, but what are you doing here, Elim?"
She wasn't sure what she was expecting. A grand speech, perhaps, full of twists and turns, convincing on the surface, but false all the same. Instead, he just looked at her, and said, very softly, "I'm here for Cardassia."
On impulse, she took his hand, and, after a moment, he squeezed hers back. "There's something else going on. There must be. What have you managed to get yourself into this time?"
He glanced away. "Well," he said, a little too lightly, a little too self-deprecatingly, "it's entirely possible I've spent too much time around Starfleet officers. Perhaps their mindless heroism is beginning to rub off."
It was a weak attempt at deflection, and they both knew it. She released his hand, turned away. "You should go back downstairs," she said, and she waited until she heard him shift, until his quiet footsteps disappeared.
When he was gone, she moved to the window and stared out at the streets, quiet and calm and just the same as they'd always been. Now, though, she saw that silence for what it was: a front, an illusion, a blind. Something was always roiling beneath the surface on Cardassia; if nothing else, Elim had taught her that.
***
The rebellion was destroyed, as she'd always known it would be.
It only made sense, after all. No amount of planning and plotting would be more than a temporary inconvenience to such an inextricable foe as the Dominion. No, what surprised her about the whole affair was how Elim took the news, how all that frustrated anger just dissipated at once, leaving a quiet, dejected stranger in its wake. If she'd known that was all it took to get the fight out of him, she wouldn't have bothered getting her hopes up in the first place.
She continued her infrequent trips into the heart of the capital, if only to allay suspicions. She held no illusions as to the level of scrutiny she was under: she was fairly certain that Tain still had enemies convinced he was alive and well. Sometimes she even wondered, herself. Besides, keeping herself cooped up with Elim and his remarkably depressing friends hardly seemed like an appealing way to spend the rest of the war.
And so she was walking through a market the day after the rebel bases had been destroyed, picking over blotchy fruit, trying her best to find something remotely edible. The Dominion were excellent overseers, she had no doubt, but they knew very little about maintaining Cardassian offworld farming practices.
Footsteps in careful rhythm made her look up: a Jem'Hadar patrol was marching by, apparently on a mission to make themselves conspicuous. In a strange, mad moment, she made eye contact with the one in the lead, felt a ridiculous rush of excitement as he only nodded to her and continued past. Nothing. No glint of suspicion. She was invisible.
Strange, how appealing the game seemed, now that it was over.
When the Jem'Hadar were gone, she turned back to the fruit stand, and was surprised at the pallor of the man standing behind it: even his ridges had gone white. "I'll take five of these," she said. Then she added, "You can't possibly be frightened of them."
It took the promise of a paying customer to snap the man out of his shock, and he leaned forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially, as though that would somehow make him less obvious. "They came for my brother last night, pulled him away right in front of his daughter and wife. They never saw him again."
Mila pursed her lips, trying to look every bit the gossipy old woman. "My goodness," she said, making no effort to lower her voice. An innocent airing of complaints in public was infinitely less suspicious than whispered meetings. "And to think they call themselves our friends."
There had been many moments in her life when Mila had been sure of herself, when doubt had evaporated, leaving her only to count her enemies, to tally a lifetime's secret interactions in preparation for what would happen next. Now she felt as though the world around her were coming into focus for the first time: Cardassia needed change to survive. It was a moment of perfect clarity.
The man looked down, as though ashamed. "I wouldn't know about that." He handed her the fruit, and turned away.
She walked home with whispers buzzing in her ears, with fearful glances and murmured greetings at every turn. Some of the conversations she heard were about Damar, but they vilified him, made him out to be some sort of trouble-maker, a rebel who was making life more difficult for the Cardassians he'd purported to save.
Two boys were sitting on a wall, swinging their legs as she walked past. "Some rebellion," one of them said. "Couldn't even stop himself getting killed."
"What did he think was going to happen?" The other boy snorted. "It's stupid. We're Cardassians. We don't hide in the dark."
She had to pause at the end of the street, just as her own home was coming into view, and she had to look more closely at the other houses, resplendent in the deep red of sunset. They no longer seemed full of Cardassians plotting their little strikes and counter-strikes, engaged in their worlds of intrigue. Now she noted the closed-off windows and didn't see secrecy: she saw fear.
Cardassia Prime had been conquered, swiftly and mercilessly, and, above all, soundlessly.
By the time she stepped through the door, a lie was taking shape in her mind, a game with much higher stakes than any she'd attempted before. In the old days, she'd worked for Tain, subsumed her own ambitions and plots except where strictly necessary to keep herself alive. Now, she supposed a little initiative wouldn't be out of place.
"Actually," she said later, in the cellar, "they don't believe you're dead."
They all straightened, looking at her in surprise, and, hiding her smile, she watched hope and defiance take root. It would take time, and they'd probably all get themselves killed before they could see it, but Cardassia would rise again.
2.
The night was cold, by Cardassian standards, so Damar hunched his shoulders, drew up the hood of his cloak, and stepped out into the chill.
He kept his head down, weaving between passers-by, the words he'd spoken at the night's meeting burning like fire in his mind, tempering the frustration he felt at having to hide his face. Surely the word had spread by now, that the traitor had lived to plot another day. He didn't much like the idea of skulking around dark alleys as just another anonymous citizen, but he liked the idea of being murdered in cold blood even less.
A gust of wind caught him as he turned a corner, dry and bitter, and for a moment he found himself wishing for something to take the edge off, something that would go down smoothly enough to keep him from lingering on matters that hardly deserved his consideration. Memories kept sweeping up to the fore, displacing the inspiring speeches and noble intentions. He shrugged them aside: he'd lost the luxury of introspection when he'd decided to betray the Dominion. Now he was a hero, or nothing at all.
He took a roundabout route back to the house, counting two would-be pursuers in the process, both of whom he managed to evade with some creative navigation. Their intentions were probably good – he seemed to have amassed a considerable following of admirers among the young discontents of the capital, and most wanted to be involved in every coup, in every plan – but he was learning that intentions counted for very little. Kira had drilled it into their minds, back when they'd all thought she was merely going to be providing cursory advice for a well-equipped liberation front: everyone has their price, and everyone will betray you, given half a chance. Don't give them even that much. It was a grim way to look at the world, but Damar supposed he could see the logic in it.
Finally satisfied that he'd shaken off pursuit, he slipped into the Tain household as silently as he could, keeping a hand to his weapon on the off-chance something had gone terribly wrong. Mila was just coming up the stairs, a tray of well-picked-over food in her hands, and he relaxed. "Well, it's about time," she said. "We thought you'd be back hours ago."
Damar managed a faint smile, pulling back his hood. "Have I missed dinner?"
She looked at him sidelong for a moment, sizing him up, then held out the tray. "You're welcome to whatever's left."
His smile broadened. "You're too kind," he said, taking the tray from her, and she turned away with a little harrumph that didn't fool him for a minute.
He picked at the overcooked fish on his way down the stairs, and paused when he saw only Garak in the cellar, puttering with something that looked like it could be a pile of explosives, given sufficient time and patience. "Where's the colonel?"
Garak looked up, then sighed, leaning back. "I believe Kira decided to follow you. She seems to think there's a particularly pressing threat against your life that needs attending." Pressing his hands flat against his worktable, he stood, with a smile that came nowhere near his eyes. "I tried to explain, of course, that there are a good many people who wish you dead, most of whom are considerably closer to hand, but she insisted on going after you."
Damar didn't rise to the bait, instead sitting down on the stairs to finish his meal. "Your concern is touching. I didn't see her at all – are you sure she was following me?"
Garak made no move to sit down, or to mirror Damar's relaxed pose in any way. "It's been my experience that the colonel can remain quite undetectable. And if she escaped your notice, I have to wonder – purely out of concern for your well-being, of course – if anyone else may have followed you back here without your knowledge."
With a shrug, Damar tried to find a piece of fish that hadn't been overly blackened. His pulse was racing, and he thought he could smell phaser fire, hear Dukat- with an effort of will, he managed to keep his voice steady. "I don't think so. If you thought someone was after me, you'd be up there yourself." He paused, feeling reckless with the echoes of his own speeches pounding in his mind, and added, "I'm too valuable to this rebellion for you to lose me."
Garak bowed his head for a moment, but the smile never faded. "Of course," he said. "You're a legend. Cardassia is sorely in need of legends."
Damar made one last effort at nonchalance, but Garak's piercing, offensively bland stare was having its desired effect. He set aside the food, and got to his feet. "If you have something to say, Garak, I recommend you say it. In as few words as possible, if you can manage it."
"Ah yes," Garak said, stepping closer. "The colonel's edict: don't let bad blood fester. Air your grievances in the open; you never know when it might be your last chance. Quite un-Cardassian, but then, nothing about this rebellion seems Cardassian in the least."
"I'm waiting." Damar tried to find that earlier strength of purpose, that resolve, but all he could see in Garak's eyes was the reflection of the hopeless drunk he'd been, the murderer, the puppet.
Garak moved forward a step, and the smile faded, and much as Damar knew these were classic Order tactics, much as he knew he wouldn't be harmed, he felt his breath catch, come faster. "After this is over-"
A door slammed upstairs, jolting them out of the moment, and they both moved to crouch behind the stairs, weapons at the ready. Mila's scolding carried from the entryway, and they relaxed in unison when a familiar voice joined it, impatient and irritated. Garak strolled out first, phaser hidden away. "Colonel," he said, jovially. "I take it your expedition met with success?"
"Where the hell is Damar?" Kira said, by way of greeting, and Damar emerged from behind the stairs, still feeling off-balance. She rounded on him, throwing back the hood of her cloak. "You shouldn't have gone out tonight. You knew there was that rumor about an assassination squad."
Damar shrugged. "I heard about it – a handful of people trying to curry the Dominion's favor by bringing them my head on a platter. I thought it was more important that I show my people that I'm not afraid of idle threats."
"They're not idle threats, Damar, and they're more organized than we thought. I managed to follow a group of them for a while, and believe me, they knew exactly where you were planning on being tonight. They stormed into the hall right after you left. Next time they might not be so late."
"How complicated," Garak said, mildly. "Plots within plots. I have to admit that I agree with the colonel: a dead hero is no hero we can use."
Damar was silent for a moment, and then he met Kira's eyes. "Did they hurt anyone after I left?"
It took her a moment to reply: it obviously wasn't the question she was expecting. "No, I don't think so. Everyone left right at the end of the meeting. Which, by the way, is something you're going to have to work on. Having everyone disperse together – you might as well call up Weyoun and give him a detailed itinerary of your movements."
Damar let out a long, slow breath, and caught Garak's eye as he did so. There was still a hint of menace in him, a tightness about his ridges, but that was rapidly being supplanted by something deeper, something more desperate. Damar found himself wondering what it must have been like, after all those years of exile, to come back to this.
"We have to do something about these would-be assassins," he said, at last.
"Obviously," Garak said. "There's no sense opening you up to assassination attempts every time you step outside the door."
"I can't just hide down here, either." He raised a hand as Kira started to speak. "And before you say anything, Colonel, I'd rather not attack my own people. They're frightened – they're only trying to save themselves. If I could just speak to them-"
"Your powers of oratory must be astounding," Garak said.
Kira cut him off with a sharp look, and said, more gently, "Damar, the first thing you have to realize is that these are Dominion collaborators. You shouldn't try to get them on your side, because you know from the start that they're the kind of ally who'll sell you out today if it means a little extra comfort tomorrow."
"It must be very gratifying for you," Damar said, a little more harshly than he'd intended, "urging Cardassians to kill Cardassians."
Her hands balled into fists, but she relaxed after a moment, breathing hard. "I beat you to a pulp once, Damar. Keep that in mind the next time you question my motives." And with that, she turned and stalked over to Garak's workbench, picking up where he'd left off.
"I recommend you take her advice," Garak said. "And in the meantime, every time you leave the house, it will be with at least one of us following. If you insist on playing the invincible hero who never sullies his hands with the more distasteful aspects of revolution, you should have someone at your side who doesn't have such scruples."
And as Garak passed, he rested a hand on Damar's shoulder. It took an effort not to flinch away.
3.
"Come on, Damar," Kira whispered, and shifted position, wincing as a new ache crept up her side. He'd been in the house for nearly two hours, and while there hadn't been any sign of trouble, Garak had cautioned her that it would only be a matter of time before the counter-revolutionaries decided to make their move. Her vantage point, crouched low on the roof of an adjacent building, gave her the best possible view of every entrance. That, in itself, meant that they were dealing with amateurs; they never would have let her secure this position if they were serious about taking Damar down.
She tensed as a door opened below, then relaxed as two men walked out, conversing with a ridiculous degree of nonchalance. At least Damar had listened to her about having people leave in small groups, rather than all at once. Now all she needed to do was get him to teach them a little subtlety.
It was a warm night, and for the first time, she was grateful for the Cardassian heat – back in the Resistance, what she remembered most, besides the waiting, was the cold. It was still frustratingly difficult to concentrate, and sometimes she felt like her thoughts were running at the consistency of a particularly syrupy vintage of kanar, but lying outside at night for hours at a time had brought back enough memories of bone-deep cold that the heat was strangely comforting.
The door opened again; this time, it was a man who could only be Damar, deep in conversation with a smaller, slighter figure. Suppressing a wry smile, Kira rolled to her feet, ignoring the various pains the night's vigil had left her. Probably another of his fan club; as it turned out, young Cardassians were every bit as attracted to romantic stories of revolution as young people were on other planets all over the galaxy.
She tried to keep the pair in sight as she clambered down to street level, and managed it with less difficulty than she'd anticipated. It felt strange, to know a Cardassian city this well, to be aware of all the little idiosyncrasies in the architecture, to use those to her advantage. Most days, she managed to silence the part of her that made that familiarity seem traitorous.
Most days.
She landed lightly in an alley, phaser at the ready, and made sure her cloak was covering her face; they'd played with the idea of concealing her in the Breen suit again, but had deemed it too risky. Eventually, someone would want to know why a Breen soldier was skulking in dark alleys. A refrigeration suit was hardly subtle.
As she slipped into pursuit of Damar and his friend, she cast a glance to the other side of the street, and caught a flicker of deliberately reflected light up high: Garak was on the rooftops. That shouldn't have made her feel better, all things considered, but it did.
Damar, as expected, was taking a roundabout route home; he was obviously engrossed in his conversation, but they had decided from the start never to bring anyone else into Tain's house. He was also keeping to routes with enough hidden alcoves to keep both Kira and Garak easily concealed, which she took as a sign that he was still expecting trouble tonight. She double-checked the power setting on the Breen weapon – the one part of her disguise that hadn't seemed superfluous – and moved in a little closer.
The sound of footsteps stopped her in her tracks, and a moment later, Damar and his friend stopped as well. She turned, spotted a patrol of Jem'Hadar in the distance, heading closer, and swore under her breath, feeling her hands tighten around the Breen weapon.
Damar turned, eyes searching, and she moved out of the shadows and beckoned. If they remained concealed in the alleyway, Garak would be in an ideal position to pick the Jem'Hadar off if things got out of hand.
Damar dragged his associate with him into the alleyway and they crept up beside her. "-a friend," he was whispering, and in the darkness she could just make out the flash of a reassuring grin.
She made sure her hood concealed her face before she turned to his companion, who was, as expected, a young man with wide, star-struck eyes. "Stay behind me," she hissed. "Don't so much as breathe, understand?"
The boy nodded, moving further into the alley with Damar, and she turned away from them to watch the street, listening to the footfalls of the approaching Jem'Hadar. She squinted up at the roof, and only managed to spot Garak because she knew what she was looking for. He had his weapon poised and at the ready, and she breathed out, slowly, raising her own weapon as the footsteps grew nearer. The silence was eerie: back in the Resistance, any ambush on passing Cardassians would more often than not be masked by the sound of their own voices. The Jem'Hadar were focused, if nothing else.
Just as the first Jem'Hadar stepped into her field of view, there was a sharp intake of breath behind her. She turned as quickly as she could, and caught a glimpse of something that glinted in the darkness. Before she could even begin to swing her weapon around, Damar was stumbling back into her, and the boy was swinging the knife again and again, with a wild, frenzied rhythm.
Kira cursed under her breath. They should have guessed there'd be a plant on the inside, should have anticipated that possibility, should have had Garak go in with them.
She was moving even before the sound of weapons fire echoed behind her, trying to shove Damar out of the way so she could line up a clean shot. The alley lit up with a blast from a Jem'Hadar disruptor beam, passing inches from her head, and she ducked and barrelled into the boy, trying to wrest the knife out of his hand. She was vaguely aware that Damar was next to her, yelling something, and then the boy dropped the knife, twisted out of her grasp and ran, disappearing into the alley. She wanted to follow – she started to follow – but something stopped her, made her look down, and for a moment she wondered just how badly Damar had been hurt; there was blood everywhere. She tried to turn, to look at Damar, but everything seemed to be wheeling around too slowly, moving at half-speed.
Her arm hurt.
Time sped up again, and she fell back against the wall of the alley, breathing hard. Damar crouched in front of her, his expression unreadable in the faint half-light. "Let me see that arm," he said, and some part of her wanted to pull away, but she quashed it, and let him pluck at the torn folds of fabric, wincing as he caught the edges of the cut underneath. The would-be assassin must have managed a lucky slash in all his flailing. Just her luck.
It took her a moment to realize that Garak was beside them as well. "We should wrap it," he said, sounding distant and hurried. "Try to stop the bleeding."
Kira took a deep breath, then released it. "Garak, make sure nobody else heard the commotion." He nodded, slipping back into the shadows. She shrugged one arm out of her cloak, tried to pick at the red sleeve of the Starfleet turtleneck beneath, then gave up and extended her arm in Damar's direction. "Use this. It tears easily."
After a moment's hesitation, and with a grimace that was almost embarrassed, he tore a strip from her sleeve, then held it up, over her arm. "This is going to hurt," he said.
She shot him a glare that must have translated even in the darkness, because he bent to his task without another word. It did hurt, and things got a little blurry for a while. Then Garak was back with warnings of a second patrol, and Damar hoisted her up, and she had to lean on him for support, trying to keep track of all the twists and turns as they meandered their way cautiously back to the Tain house.
"What a sorry sight you three are," Mila said, as they stumbled through the door, but Kira thought she caught a trace of worry in the woman's voice.
"The first-aid kit, please, Mila," Garak said, tersely, and Mila threw up her arms in exasperation, murmuring something about keeping poor company, but she returned shortly with a handful of medical supplies. "I'll be outside," Garak said. "I suspect we may have been followed."
Before Kira could ask what he intended to do about it, he was gone, and Mila was unwrapping the makeshift bandage around her arm, tutting, leading her to a chair. Damar hovered behind her, like he wasn't sure what to do with himself. The sheer ludicrousness of the situation sank in, then, and Kira found herself laughing. To think that she was being fussed over by Cardassians!
"Sorry," she said, realizing belatedly that Mila was staring at her like she'd gone mad. "Little giddy. Probably blood loss."
Mila obviously had some experience patching people together, because she didn't so much as flinch at the deep gash along Kira's arm. For her part, Kira stared at it with a detached fascination – it wasn't nearly as bad as she'd feared, after seeing all the blood, and further proved that the boy had been no professional killer. "I wonder why he did it."
Damar was still standing behind her, but she could hear the scowl in his words so clearly that she could almost picture it. "I should have seen it coming. He was too curious, too eager to find out about our cause. I'd never seen him at any of the previous meetings."
Kira winced as Mila put pressure on the wound and started rebandaging. What she wouldn't give right now for Julian's arsenal of Federation medical supplies. "You can't blame yourself, Damar. It was a stupid mistake, but we all made it."
Mila gave a sniff that could probably pass for laughter, and with a rueful grin, Damar pulled up a chair beside her. "Yes, and I'm sure that makes me feel much better."
Focusing for the first time on Damar, Kira realized there was a long slash across the front of his shirt. "Are you hurt?"
He looked down, fingering the tear in the fabric as though noticing it for the first time. "Only my wardrobe. It's a good thing we have such an accomplished tailor with us."
"There," Mila said, and patted the bandages. "Good as new."
Kira lifted her hand, flexed the fingers experimentally, and felt only a brief twinge of pain. "Thank you, Mila," she said, and glanced up, meeting the other woman's eyes for a long moment, looking for something she wasn't sure she could put a name to.
Mila turned away first, scooping up the medical supplies. "Just see that you don't get yourselves killed. It would feel like such a waste to have put you up for nothing."
Again, Kira felt the strange twitch of a smile at her lips. "At least we cleaned the cellar for you."
Mila paused, thoughtfully. "There is that." And with a faint smile, she left the room.
Kira flexed her hand again, wincing as she balled it into a fist, and sighed. After a moment, she looked up. Damar was watching her, silent. "What?"
He blinked, as though he hadn't been aware he was staring, and then he looked back down at the rip in his shirt and cleared his throat. "I suppose I owe you my life, Colonel. You were hurt trying to save me."
With a shrug, Kira stood up, slowly. "It wasn't intentional. I was trying to get the knife away from the boy, and the disruptor went off-" She paused as the room wobbled a little, and caught her balance, hanging on to the back of the chair.
"All the same," Damar said, "thank you."
She looked back, a quick retort on her lips, but there was something disarmingly honest in his eyes, something calm and self-possessed, almost serene, and in that moment, she thought that maybe, just maybe, Cardassia would make it through this, with a man like Damar to lead them.
"You're welcome," she said, and took his proffered arm, and they walked back down to the cellar, together.
4.
All our best people.
Garak watched the Cardassian sky.
Dark clouds hung low against the destruction, sometimes lashing the ground with a black, ashy rain, sometimes thinning just enough to give the false hope of a sun behind them. The Cardassians walking the streets of the capital all had the same shuttered look in their eyes, as though the clouds had managed to pollute their minds and bodies, as well as their homes. They walked, hunched and shivering, wrapped in dusty cloaks, stumbling on rubble and crumbled paving stones. He'd lost count of the number of names he'd heard called, again and again, always in vain. In his worse moments, he feared he might have called some himself, Mila's and Tain's and others, friends and enemies alike. All dead.
He offered help where he could, binding wounds and building walls, trying to lose himself in the small victories – the young girl reunited with her mother, the new recovery supplies, the first semi-permanent shelter erected in the rubble. He wrote to Dr. Bashir, sometimes. And with time, with effort, he managed to banish the faces of the dead to the night, to the darkness behind his eyelids.
Now he crouched before a small pillar, the grandest monument left to his people, and brushed fingers against the stone, flaking away the day's accumulation of ash and soot. A hero's memorial, he thought, and almost laughed; many people had forgotten Damar's name, too wrapped up in their own misery to remember even the briefest flicker of hope.
Some days, he fooled himself into thinking that, if only Damar were here, Cardassia would be saved. Damar would make some emphatic speech, drawing on the shared experiences of the whole planet, I am like you, we stand together, for Cardassia!, and just like that, the cities would spring to life, the political machine would rumble back into motion, and Cardassians would be back to plotting and spying and thriving. A new civilization would shrug off the ashes of the old, a second chance.
Some days, he almost believed it.
He'd lost track of the political powermongering, the maneuvering behind the scenes; like most of his people, he simply didn't care. What good were treaties and trade agreements and post-war ratifications to a people still mourning its dead?
He finished cleaning Damar's paltry memorial, rested a hand against it, and for a moment it seemed like the only tangible thing left on the planet, cool and solid against his fingertips. The rain was falling again, heavy and stifling, depositing a new patina of grime. He knew, with a cold, distant certainty, that he would be back here tomorrow, cleaning the monument again in the ridiculous hope that this time, it might stay untarnished. It was, after all, the very least he could do.
He stood, slowly, leaning against the stone for support, and turned his head toward the sky, squinting past the stinging waves of rain. At some point, he knew, he'd have to leave here, have to face the devastation farther from home. Like it or not, he'd become a public figure, and while some part of him wanted to stay here, wanted to lose himself in this devastation, a much greater part was itching to keep moving, to stay alive. His people always did have a knack for survival.
And so Garak watched the Cardassian sky, and somewhere, amidst the ruins of a civilisation, against all odds, against the merciless logic of the universe itself, a single Edosian orchid bloomed.
dress_fic, whose request was awesome and sparked a lot of fun ideas. Beta-wise, many thanks to velvetmouse, who gave several rounds of fantabulous feedback and much-needed corrections - in spite of technical difficulties, no less. ♥You can read this fic at AO3 as well.
Title: And When the Night Is New
Word Count: 6,076
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Mila, Damar, Kira Nerys, Elim Garak
Summary: Four people and the Cardassian revolution.
1.
Mila had witnessed many strange things in her life, most of which, if asked, she would deny having seen in the first place.
It was the creative, careful ignorance that came from listening at the right doors, from lingering in rooms where the right people weren't likely to spot her, from maintaining the most detailed and thoroughly damning collection of records Cardassia had ever seen – mentally, of course. Some of these things she used to report to Tain, when he was still alive to hear them. Most she kept to herself, shoring up her own defenses, meticulously plotting counterattacks on the off-chance they'd someday be needed. It was a silly, childish game, but it kept her alive all those years.
Now, seeing Elim Garak for the first time in longer than she'd care to remember, all she could think was that even Tain could scarcely have predicted this.
"Hello, Mila," said Elim, just like that. Like he had every right to stroll up to the door after betrayal, after exile, after war.
She was quiet for a long moment, taking in the clothes he wore, the tell-tale catch in his breath, and the strange, glittering coldness in his eyes that telegraphed frustrated determination. He was open, far more open than she'd ever seen him. The mask was slipping.
Strange how, until that moment, it hadn't even occurred to her how bad the situation with the Dominion must be getting. Had Cardassia truly lost what little power it had managed to retain? That he was here at all meant something had changed. "Elim."
He cleared his throat, then made a show of glancing up and down the street. "Much as I'd enjoy having this conversation out where everyone can use it to form unnecessarily convoluted plots against us later-"
She gave an elaborate sigh. "There's no need for that tone of voice. I suppose you'd better come inside and tell me about it, if you must."
***
What she remembered most about the time when Elim had left for good was that the house had seemed wiped clean, as though every small part of him buried there had been carefully extricated. She was never sure if it had been Elim's doing, or if Tain had simply wanted to remove his wayward son from living memory.
Once thing was certain: when Tain had left, the house had echoed with his leaving.
Ever since then, she'd taken to standing in the library, listening for the whispers of a familiar voice. It was pure self-indulgence, but the ritual was strangely soothing.
"Mila."
She turned; even now, even when she was thinking of him, Elim still had that frustrating ability to sneak up on her. He was standing in the hallway, and for a moment she remembered a much younger man, plotting and scheming and always, always keeping it from her. "You shouldn't be up here. If you're going to complain about the food-"
"The food's fine, Mila. Besides, the others are the ones who should stay in deep hiding; I'm rather less recognizable. May I?" He tilted his head, and she sighed and nodded, waving him into the library. "Thank you," he said. His hand darted out, as though of its own accord, slipping along the spines of the volumes of Cardassia's greatest literature, pausing here and there on a well-remembered title. She watched him quietly, trying to hide her impatience, trying to imagine what game he could possibly be playing that would involve harboring a traitor and a Bajoran.
"I'm sorry," he said, and she had to lean closer to hear him. "Perhaps we shouldn't have come."
"Nonsense," she sniffed, but she was trying to gauge his mood, trying to pick up on whatever signals she could. If this was part of something bigger – if he was in trouble and trying to get out of it – she would be ready to help.
He pulled down a volume of Preloc and opened, it, frowning. "Well, that's odd. This is a different edition. No signature. I distinctly remember that Tain was quite proud of this acquisition."
Mila took a deep breath, let it out as a sigh. Sometimes it was still difficult to remember that there were some secrets no longer worth keeping. "Tain replaced many of them when you left."
Elim glanced up, eyes wide. "I wouldn't have had him pegged as such a sentimentalist."
With a wry smile, Mila took the book from him and put it back on the shelf. "His son has his moments, too. I should know better than to presume you'll answer me honestly, but what are you doing here, Elim?"
She wasn't sure what she was expecting. A grand speech, perhaps, full of twists and turns, convincing on the surface, but false all the same. Instead, he just looked at her, and said, very softly, "I'm here for Cardassia."
On impulse, she took his hand, and, after a moment, he squeezed hers back. "There's something else going on. There must be. What have you managed to get yourself into this time?"
He glanced away. "Well," he said, a little too lightly, a little too self-deprecatingly, "it's entirely possible I've spent too much time around Starfleet officers. Perhaps their mindless heroism is beginning to rub off."
It was a weak attempt at deflection, and they both knew it. She released his hand, turned away. "You should go back downstairs," she said, and she waited until she heard him shift, until his quiet footsteps disappeared.
When he was gone, she moved to the window and stared out at the streets, quiet and calm and just the same as they'd always been. Now, though, she saw that silence for what it was: a front, an illusion, a blind. Something was always roiling beneath the surface on Cardassia; if nothing else, Elim had taught her that.
***
The rebellion was destroyed, as she'd always known it would be.
It only made sense, after all. No amount of planning and plotting would be more than a temporary inconvenience to such an inextricable foe as the Dominion. No, what surprised her about the whole affair was how Elim took the news, how all that frustrated anger just dissipated at once, leaving a quiet, dejected stranger in its wake. If she'd known that was all it took to get the fight out of him, she wouldn't have bothered getting her hopes up in the first place.
She continued her infrequent trips into the heart of the capital, if only to allay suspicions. She held no illusions as to the level of scrutiny she was under: she was fairly certain that Tain still had enemies convinced he was alive and well. Sometimes she even wondered, herself. Besides, keeping herself cooped up with Elim and his remarkably depressing friends hardly seemed like an appealing way to spend the rest of the war.
And so she was walking through a market the day after the rebel bases had been destroyed, picking over blotchy fruit, trying her best to find something remotely edible. The Dominion were excellent overseers, she had no doubt, but they knew very little about maintaining Cardassian offworld farming practices.
Footsteps in careful rhythm made her look up: a Jem'Hadar patrol was marching by, apparently on a mission to make themselves conspicuous. In a strange, mad moment, she made eye contact with the one in the lead, felt a ridiculous rush of excitement as he only nodded to her and continued past. Nothing. No glint of suspicion. She was invisible.
Strange, how appealing the game seemed, now that it was over.
When the Jem'Hadar were gone, she turned back to the fruit stand, and was surprised at the pallor of the man standing behind it: even his ridges had gone white. "I'll take five of these," she said. Then she added, "You can't possibly be frightened of them."
It took the promise of a paying customer to snap the man out of his shock, and he leaned forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially, as though that would somehow make him less obvious. "They came for my brother last night, pulled him away right in front of his daughter and wife. They never saw him again."
Mila pursed her lips, trying to look every bit the gossipy old woman. "My goodness," she said, making no effort to lower her voice. An innocent airing of complaints in public was infinitely less suspicious than whispered meetings. "And to think they call themselves our friends."
There had been many moments in her life when Mila had been sure of herself, when doubt had evaporated, leaving her only to count her enemies, to tally a lifetime's secret interactions in preparation for what would happen next. Now she felt as though the world around her were coming into focus for the first time: Cardassia needed change to survive. It was a moment of perfect clarity.
The man looked down, as though ashamed. "I wouldn't know about that." He handed her the fruit, and turned away.
She walked home with whispers buzzing in her ears, with fearful glances and murmured greetings at every turn. Some of the conversations she heard were about Damar, but they vilified him, made him out to be some sort of trouble-maker, a rebel who was making life more difficult for the Cardassians he'd purported to save.
Two boys were sitting on a wall, swinging their legs as she walked past. "Some rebellion," one of them said. "Couldn't even stop himself getting killed."
"What did he think was going to happen?" The other boy snorted. "It's stupid. We're Cardassians. We don't hide in the dark."
She had to pause at the end of the street, just as her own home was coming into view, and she had to look more closely at the other houses, resplendent in the deep red of sunset. They no longer seemed full of Cardassians plotting their little strikes and counter-strikes, engaged in their worlds of intrigue. Now she noted the closed-off windows and didn't see secrecy: she saw fear.
Cardassia Prime had been conquered, swiftly and mercilessly, and, above all, soundlessly.
By the time she stepped through the door, a lie was taking shape in her mind, a game with much higher stakes than any she'd attempted before. In the old days, she'd worked for Tain, subsumed her own ambitions and plots except where strictly necessary to keep herself alive. Now, she supposed a little initiative wouldn't be out of place.
"Actually," she said later, in the cellar, "they don't believe you're dead."
They all straightened, looking at her in surprise, and, hiding her smile, she watched hope and defiance take root. It would take time, and they'd probably all get themselves killed before they could see it, but Cardassia would rise again.
2.
The night was cold, by Cardassian standards, so Damar hunched his shoulders, drew up the hood of his cloak, and stepped out into the chill.
He kept his head down, weaving between passers-by, the words he'd spoken at the night's meeting burning like fire in his mind, tempering the frustration he felt at having to hide his face. Surely the word had spread by now, that the traitor had lived to plot another day. He didn't much like the idea of skulking around dark alleys as just another anonymous citizen, but he liked the idea of being murdered in cold blood even less.
A gust of wind caught him as he turned a corner, dry and bitter, and for a moment he found himself wishing for something to take the edge off, something that would go down smoothly enough to keep him from lingering on matters that hardly deserved his consideration. Memories kept sweeping up to the fore, displacing the inspiring speeches and noble intentions. He shrugged them aside: he'd lost the luxury of introspection when he'd decided to betray the Dominion. Now he was a hero, or nothing at all.
He took a roundabout route back to the house, counting two would-be pursuers in the process, both of whom he managed to evade with some creative navigation. Their intentions were probably good – he seemed to have amassed a considerable following of admirers among the young discontents of the capital, and most wanted to be involved in every coup, in every plan – but he was learning that intentions counted for very little. Kira had drilled it into their minds, back when they'd all thought she was merely going to be providing cursory advice for a well-equipped liberation front: everyone has their price, and everyone will betray you, given half a chance. Don't give them even that much. It was a grim way to look at the world, but Damar supposed he could see the logic in it.
Finally satisfied that he'd shaken off pursuit, he slipped into the Tain household as silently as he could, keeping a hand to his weapon on the off-chance something had gone terribly wrong. Mila was just coming up the stairs, a tray of well-picked-over food in her hands, and he relaxed. "Well, it's about time," she said. "We thought you'd be back hours ago."
Damar managed a faint smile, pulling back his hood. "Have I missed dinner?"
She looked at him sidelong for a moment, sizing him up, then held out the tray. "You're welcome to whatever's left."
His smile broadened. "You're too kind," he said, taking the tray from her, and she turned away with a little harrumph that didn't fool him for a minute.
He picked at the overcooked fish on his way down the stairs, and paused when he saw only Garak in the cellar, puttering with something that looked like it could be a pile of explosives, given sufficient time and patience. "Where's the colonel?"
Garak looked up, then sighed, leaning back. "I believe Kira decided to follow you. She seems to think there's a particularly pressing threat against your life that needs attending." Pressing his hands flat against his worktable, he stood, with a smile that came nowhere near his eyes. "I tried to explain, of course, that there are a good many people who wish you dead, most of whom are considerably closer to hand, but she insisted on going after you."
Damar didn't rise to the bait, instead sitting down on the stairs to finish his meal. "Your concern is touching. I didn't see her at all – are you sure she was following me?"
Garak made no move to sit down, or to mirror Damar's relaxed pose in any way. "It's been my experience that the colonel can remain quite undetectable. And if she escaped your notice, I have to wonder – purely out of concern for your well-being, of course – if anyone else may have followed you back here without your knowledge."
With a shrug, Damar tried to find a piece of fish that hadn't been overly blackened. His pulse was racing, and he thought he could smell phaser fire, hear Dukat- with an effort of will, he managed to keep his voice steady. "I don't think so. If you thought someone was after me, you'd be up there yourself." He paused, feeling reckless with the echoes of his own speeches pounding in his mind, and added, "I'm too valuable to this rebellion for you to lose me."
Garak bowed his head for a moment, but the smile never faded. "Of course," he said. "You're a legend. Cardassia is sorely in need of legends."
Damar made one last effort at nonchalance, but Garak's piercing, offensively bland stare was having its desired effect. He set aside the food, and got to his feet. "If you have something to say, Garak, I recommend you say it. In as few words as possible, if you can manage it."
"Ah yes," Garak said, stepping closer. "The colonel's edict: don't let bad blood fester. Air your grievances in the open; you never know when it might be your last chance. Quite un-Cardassian, but then, nothing about this rebellion seems Cardassian in the least."
"I'm waiting." Damar tried to find that earlier strength of purpose, that resolve, but all he could see in Garak's eyes was the reflection of the hopeless drunk he'd been, the murderer, the puppet.
Garak moved forward a step, and the smile faded, and much as Damar knew these were classic Order tactics, much as he knew he wouldn't be harmed, he felt his breath catch, come faster. "After this is over-"
A door slammed upstairs, jolting them out of the moment, and they both moved to crouch behind the stairs, weapons at the ready. Mila's scolding carried from the entryway, and they relaxed in unison when a familiar voice joined it, impatient and irritated. Garak strolled out first, phaser hidden away. "Colonel," he said, jovially. "I take it your expedition met with success?"
"Where the hell is Damar?" Kira said, by way of greeting, and Damar emerged from behind the stairs, still feeling off-balance. She rounded on him, throwing back the hood of her cloak. "You shouldn't have gone out tonight. You knew there was that rumor about an assassination squad."
Damar shrugged. "I heard about it – a handful of people trying to curry the Dominion's favor by bringing them my head on a platter. I thought it was more important that I show my people that I'm not afraid of idle threats."
"They're not idle threats, Damar, and they're more organized than we thought. I managed to follow a group of them for a while, and believe me, they knew exactly where you were planning on being tonight. They stormed into the hall right after you left. Next time they might not be so late."
"How complicated," Garak said, mildly. "Plots within plots. I have to admit that I agree with the colonel: a dead hero is no hero we can use."
Damar was silent for a moment, and then he met Kira's eyes. "Did they hurt anyone after I left?"
It took her a moment to reply: it obviously wasn't the question she was expecting. "No, I don't think so. Everyone left right at the end of the meeting. Which, by the way, is something you're going to have to work on. Having everyone disperse together – you might as well call up Weyoun and give him a detailed itinerary of your movements."
Damar let out a long, slow breath, and caught Garak's eye as he did so. There was still a hint of menace in him, a tightness about his ridges, but that was rapidly being supplanted by something deeper, something more desperate. Damar found himself wondering what it must have been like, after all those years of exile, to come back to this.
"We have to do something about these would-be assassins," he said, at last.
"Obviously," Garak said. "There's no sense opening you up to assassination attempts every time you step outside the door."
"I can't just hide down here, either." He raised a hand as Kira started to speak. "And before you say anything, Colonel, I'd rather not attack my own people. They're frightened – they're only trying to save themselves. If I could just speak to them-"
"Your powers of oratory must be astounding," Garak said.
Kira cut him off with a sharp look, and said, more gently, "Damar, the first thing you have to realize is that these are Dominion collaborators. You shouldn't try to get them on your side, because you know from the start that they're the kind of ally who'll sell you out today if it means a little extra comfort tomorrow."
"It must be very gratifying for you," Damar said, a little more harshly than he'd intended, "urging Cardassians to kill Cardassians."
Her hands balled into fists, but she relaxed after a moment, breathing hard. "I beat you to a pulp once, Damar. Keep that in mind the next time you question my motives." And with that, she turned and stalked over to Garak's workbench, picking up where he'd left off.
"I recommend you take her advice," Garak said. "And in the meantime, every time you leave the house, it will be with at least one of us following. If you insist on playing the invincible hero who never sullies his hands with the more distasteful aspects of revolution, you should have someone at your side who doesn't have such scruples."
And as Garak passed, he rested a hand on Damar's shoulder. It took an effort not to flinch away.
3.
"Come on, Damar," Kira whispered, and shifted position, wincing as a new ache crept up her side. He'd been in the house for nearly two hours, and while there hadn't been any sign of trouble, Garak had cautioned her that it would only be a matter of time before the counter-revolutionaries decided to make their move. Her vantage point, crouched low on the roof of an adjacent building, gave her the best possible view of every entrance. That, in itself, meant that they were dealing with amateurs; they never would have let her secure this position if they were serious about taking Damar down.
She tensed as a door opened below, then relaxed as two men walked out, conversing with a ridiculous degree of nonchalance. At least Damar had listened to her about having people leave in small groups, rather than all at once. Now all she needed to do was get him to teach them a little subtlety.
It was a warm night, and for the first time, she was grateful for the Cardassian heat – back in the Resistance, what she remembered most, besides the waiting, was the cold. It was still frustratingly difficult to concentrate, and sometimes she felt like her thoughts were running at the consistency of a particularly syrupy vintage of kanar, but lying outside at night for hours at a time had brought back enough memories of bone-deep cold that the heat was strangely comforting.
The door opened again; this time, it was a man who could only be Damar, deep in conversation with a smaller, slighter figure. Suppressing a wry smile, Kira rolled to her feet, ignoring the various pains the night's vigil had left her. Probably another of his fan club; as it turned out, young Cardassians were every bit as attracted to romantic stories of revolution as young people were on other planets all over the galaxy.
She tried to keep the pair in sight as she clambered down to street level, and managed it with less difficulty than she'd anticipated. It felt strange, to know a Cardassian city this well, to be aware of all the little idiosyncrasies in the architecture, to use those to her advantage. Most days, she managed to silence the part of her that made that familiarity seem traitorous.
Most days.
She landed lightly in an alley, phaser at the ready, and made sure her cloak was covering her face; they'd played with the idea of concealing her in the Breen suit again, but had deemed it too risky. Eventually, someone would want to know why a Breen soldier was skulking in dark alleys. A refrigeration suit was hardly subtle.
As she slipped into pursuit of Damar and his friend, she cast a glance to the other side of the street, and caught a flicker of deliberately reflected light up high: Garak was on the rooftops. That shouldn't have made her feel better, all things considered, but it did.
Damar, as expected, was taking a roundabout route home; he was obviously engrossed in his conversation, but they had decided from the start never to bring anyone else into Tain's house. He was also keeping to routes with enough hidden alcoves to keep both Kira and Garak easily concealed, which she took as a sign that he was still expecting trouble tonight. She double-checked the power setting on the Breen weapon – the one part of her disguise that hadn't seemed superfluous – and moved in a little closer.
The sound of footsteps stopped her in her tracks, and a moment later, Damar and his friend stopped as well. She turned, spotted a patrol of Jem'Hadar in the distance, heading closer, and swore under her breath, feeling her hands tighten around the Breen weapon.
Damar turned, eyes searching, and she moved out of the shadows and beckoned. If they remained concealed in the alleyway, Garak would be in an ideal position to pick the Jem'Hadar off if things got out of hand.
Damar dragged his associate with him into the alleyway and they crept up beside her. "-a friend," he was whispering, and in the darkness she could just make out the flash of a reassuring grin.
She made sure her hood concealed her face before she turned to his companion, who was, as expected, a young man with wide, star-struck eyes. "Stay behind me," she hissed. "Don't so much as breathe, understand?"
The boy nodded, moving further into the alley with Damar, and she turned away from them to watch the street, listening to the footfalls of the approaching Jem'Hadar. She squinted up at the roof, and only managed to spot Garak because she knew what she was looking for. He had his weapon poised and at the ready, and she breathed out, slowly, raising her own weapon as the footsteps grew nearer. The silence was eerie: back in the Resistance, any ambush on passing Cardassians would more often than not be masked by the sound of their own voices. The Jem'Hadar were focused, if nothing else.
Just as the first Jem'Hadar stepped into her field of view, there was a sharp intake of breath behind her. She turned as quickly as she could, and caught a glimpse of something that glinted in the darkness. Before she could even begin to swing her weapon around, Damar was stumbling back into her, and the boy was swinging the knife again and again, with a wild, frenzied rhythm.
Kira cursed under her breath. They should have guessed there'd be a plant on the inside, should have anticipated that possibility, should have had Garak go in with them.
She was moving even before the sound of weapons fire echoed behind her, trying to shove Damar out of the way so she could line up a clean shot. The alley lit up with a blast from a Jem'Hadar disruptor beam, passing inches from her head, and she ducked and barrelled into the boy, trying to wrest the knife out of his hand. She was vaguely aware that Damar was next to her, yelling something, and then the boy dropped the knife, twisted out of her grasp and ran, disappearing into the alley. She wanted to follow – she started to follow – but something stopped her, made her look down, and for a moment she wondered just how badly Damar had been hurt; there was blood everywhere. She tried to turn, to look at Damar, but everything seemed to be wheeling around too slowly, moving at half-speed.
Her arm hurt.
Time sped up again, and she fell back against the wall of the alley, breathing hard. Damar crouched in front of her, his expression unreadable in the faint half-light. "Let me see that arm," he said, and some part of her wanted to pull away, but she quashed it, and let him pluck at the torn folds of fabric, wincing as he caught the edges of the cut underneath. The would-be assassin must have managed a lucky slash in all his flailing. Just her luck.
It took her a moment to realize that Garak was beside them as well. "We should wrap it," he said, sounding distant and hurried. "Try to stop the bleeding."
Kira took a deep breath, then released it. "Garak, make sure nobody else heard the commotion." He nodded, slipping back into the shadows. She shrugged one arm out of her cloak, tried to pick at the red sleeve of the Starfleet turtleneck beneath, then gave up and extended her arm in Damar's direction. "Use this. It tears easily."
After a moment's hesitation, and with a grimace that was almost embarrassed, he tore a strip from her sleeve, then held it up, over her arm. "This is going to hurt," he said.
She shot him a glare that must have translated even in the darkness, because he bent to his task without another word. It did hurt, and things got a little blurry for a while. Then Garak was back with warnings of a second patrol, and Damar hoisted her up, and she had to lean on him for support, trying to keep track of all the twists and turns as they meandered their way cautiously back to the Tain house.
"What a sorry sight you three are," Mila said, as they stumbled through the door, but Kira thought she caught a trace of worry in the woman's voice.
"The first-aid kit, please, Mila," Garak said, tersely, and Mila threw up her arms in exasperation, murmuring something about keeping poor company, but she returned shortly with a handful of medical supplies. "I'll be outside," Garak said. "I suspect we may have been followed."
Before Kira could ask what he intended to do about it, he was gone, and Mila was unwrapping the makeshift bandage around her arm, tutting, leading her to a chair. Damar hovered behind her, like he wasn't sure what to do with himself. The sheer ludicrousness of the situation sank in, then, and Kira found herself laughing. To think that she was being fussed over by Cardassians!
"Sorry," she said, realizing belatedly that Mila was staring at her like she'd gone mad. "Little giddy. Probably blood loss."
Mila obviously had some experience patching people together, because she didn't so much as flinch at the deep gash along Kira's arm. For her part, Kira stared at it with a detached fascination – it wasn't nearly as bad as she'd feared, after seeing all the blood, and further proved that the boy had been no professional killer. "I wonder why he did it."
Damar was still standing behind her, but she could hear the scowl in his words so clearly that she could almost picture it. "I should have seen it coming. He was too curious, too eager to find out about our cause. I'd never seen him at any of the previous meetings."
Kira winced as Mila put pressure on the wound and started rebandaging. What she wouldn't give right now for Julian's arsenal of Federation medical supplies. "You can't blame yourself, Damar. It was a stupid mistake, but we all made it."
Mila gave a sniff that could probably pass for laughter, and with a rueful grin, Damar pulled up a chair beside her. "Yes, and I'm sure that makes me feel much better."
Focusing for the first time on Damar, Kira realized there was a long slash across the front of his shirt. "Are you hurt?"
He looked down, fingering the tear in the fabric as though noticing it for the first time. "Only my wardrobe. It's a good thing we have such an accomplished tailor with us."
"There," Mila said, and patted the bandages. "Good as new."
Kira lifted her hand, flexed the fingers experimentally, and felt only a brief twinge of pain. "Thank you, Mila," she said, and glanced up, meeting the other woman's eyes for a long moment, looking for something she wasn't sure she could put a name to.
Mila turned away first, scooping up the medical supplies. "Just see that you don't get yourselves killed. It would feel like such a waste to have put you up for nothing."
Again, Kira felt the strange twitch of a smile at her lips. "At least we cleaned the cellar for you."
Mila paused, thoughtfully. "There is that." And with a faint smile, she left the room.
Kira flexed her hand again, wincing as she balled it into a fist, and sighed. After a moment, she looked up. Damar was watching her, silent. "What?"
He blinked, as though he hadn't been aware he was staring, and then he looked back down at the rip in his shirt and cleared his throat. "I suppose I owe you my life, Colonel. You were hurt trying to save me."
With a shrug, Kira stood up, slowly. "It wasn't intentional. I was trying to get the knife away from the boy, and the disruptor went off-" She paused as the room wobbled a little, and caught her balance, hanging on to the back of the chair.
"All the same," Damar said, "thank you."
She looked back, a quick retort on her lips, but there was something disarmingly honest in his eyes, something calm and self-possessed, almost serene, and in that moment, she thought that maybe, just maybe, Cardassia would make it through this, with a man like Damar to lead them.
"You're welcome," she said, and took his proffered arm, and they walked back down to the cellar, together.
4.
All our best people.
Garak watched the Cardassian sky.
Dark clouds hung low against the destruction, sometimes lashing the ground with a black, ashy rain, sometimes thinning just enough to give the false hope of a sun behind them. The Cardassians walking the streets of the capital all had the same shuttered look in their eyes, as though the clouds had managed to pollute their minds and bodies, as well as their homes. They walked, hunched and shivering, wrapped in dusty cloaks, stumbling on rubble and crumbled paving stones. He'd lost count of the number of names he'd heard called, again and again, always in vain. In his worse moments, he feared he might have called some himself, Mila's and Tain's and others, friends and enemies alike. All dead.
He offered help where he could, binding wounds and building walls, trying to lose himself in the small victories – the young girl reunited with her mother, the new recovery supplies, the first semi-permanent shelter erected in the rubble. He wrote to Dr. Bashir, sometimes. And with time, with effort, he managed to banish the faces of the dead to the night, to the darkness behind his eyelids.
Now he crouched before a small pillar, the grandest monument left to his people, and brushed fingers against the stone, flaking away the day's accumulation of ash and soot. A hero's memorial, he thought, and almost laughed; many people had forgotten Damar's name, too wrapped up in their own misery to remember even the briefest flicker of hope.
Some days, he fooled himself into thinking that, if only Damar were here, Cardassia would be saved. Damar would make some emphatic speech, drawing on the shared experiences of the whole planet, I am like you, we stand together, for Cardassia!, and just like that, the cities would spring to life, the political machine would rumble back into motion, and Cardassians would be back to plotting and spying and thriving. A new civilization would shrug off the ashes of the old, a second chance.
Some days, he almost believed it.
He'd lost track of the political powermongering, the maneuvering behind the scenes; like most of his people, he simply didn't care. What good were treaties and trade agreements and post-war ratifications to a people still mourning its dead?
He finished cleaning Damar's paltry memorial, rested a hand against it, and for a moment it seemed like the only tangible thing left on the planet, cool and solid against his fingertips. The rain was falling again, heavy and stifling, depositing a new patina of grime. He knew, with a cold, distant certainty, that he would be back here tomorrow, cleaning the monument again in the ridiculous hope that this time, it might stay untarnished. It was, after all, the very least he could do.
He stood, slowly, leaning against the stone for support, and turned his head toward the sky, squinting past the stinging waves of rain. At some point, he knew, he'd have to leave here, have to face the devastation farther from home. Like it or not, he'd become a public figure, and while some part of him wanted to stay here, wanted to lose himself in this devastation, a much greater part was itching to keep moving, to stay alive. His people always did have a knack for survival.
And so Garak watched the Cardassian sky, and somewhere, amidst the ruins of a civilisation, against all odds, against the merciless logic of the universe itself, a single Edosian orchid bloomed.
