Justifications

by Calicia

Darkness. That was the first thing he was aware of when he awoke - if he
was truly awake. He was enveloped in a never-ending darkness, a
cessation of light so complete that he would have thought that he was
blind were it not for the fact that none of his other senses were
registering anything, not even the floor beneath his feet - if there was
a floor. If he was standing. He couldn’t tell. It was like being
suspended in nothingness.

He searched through his memory for a reason why he was in this
disconcerting place. The last thing he remembered was staring morosely
at the empty kanaar bottles in front of him while he downed yet another
glass and Weyoun nattered on about some trivial matter. Now that he
thought about it, Weyoun had appeared to be watching him closely as he
drank that last bottle. And it had tasted strange. He remembered
threatening to kill the bartender if he was ever served substandard
kanaar again, but he drank it anyway. Kanaar was kanaar, and he couldn’t
be bothered getting another bottle. So, it seemed Weyoun had drugged him
for some obscure reason. But where had he been taken?

“Where am I?” he asked. No - that wouldn’t do. He sounded as though he
was pleading. He tried again.

“I am Legate Damar, and I demand to know where I am!” That was better.
He sounded in control. He felt a presence behind him and turned - at
least, he felt his body make the movements appropriate to turning. The
presence remained behind him, and then seemed to spread out and splinter
into a hundred thousand presence’s all around him.

“Where?” a light voice asked, seemingly coming from everywhere. “Where?
It has many names.”

Suddenly a fire appeared in front of him, the sudden bright light
hurting his eyes. As he raised his hand to shield them, two giant
Klingons stepped into the firelight. As one, they raised their
bat’leths. He recoiled, but they ignored him and struck at each other.
Beyond them came the sounds of hundreds of reveling Klingons.

“Sto-Vo-Kor.” the light voice announced. The fire flared angrily, and he
turned his face aside from the sudden heat to be confronted by two
imposing white gates. As an elderly human male in a white robe opened
one, he caught a glimpse of a place that looked remarkably similar to,
but was definitely not, Bajor. As he tried to work out how he knew it
was not Bajor, the light voice spoke again.

“Heaven.” Light from - somewhere - struck the gate, creating a bright
flash. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes he was standing in a
richly furnished room with walls of gold-pressed latinum. Gold-pressed
latinum statues and symbols of the Ferengi Alliance stood in niches, and
at the top of some stairs was a door and a sign in the Ferengi language.

“The Divine Treasury.” The room faded, and images began to flash in
front of his eyes. Images of places that seemed like giant oceans, like
fogs, like gardens, paraded past his eyes in a dizzying succession.

“All the places known as Paradise.” the light voice said. The images
vanished abruptly, and he found himself standing on a desolate plain
next to a wide fast-flowing river of what appeared to be blood. On the
other side of the river he could see Sto-Vo-Kor, but on this side of the
river a giant monster guarded the only way across.

“Gre’thor.” A deeper voice announced. The blood river sheeted skyward,
and as it fell back turned into flames. Flames began to lick at his
feet, and he looked around to find himself in a huge cavern filled with
lakes and pits of lava and sulfur. The temperature was uncomfortably
high even for him - a Cardassian, and on a distant rock ledge he saw a
cloaked humanoid figure with a tail and a pitchfork.

“Hell.” The scene changed again, this time to a large, semi-dark room.
Ferengi were everywhere, slaving away at various tasks. Occasionally one
would cry out with glee and flourish a strip of gold-pressed latinum,
which was instantly confiscated by a creature wearing the uniform of an
FCA Liquidator, who then made a notation on one of the myriad number of
PADDS it carried in one of it’s uncountable hands.

“The Vault of Eternal Destitution.”

Suddenly the meaning of these names sank in. “The AFTERLIFE!?” he asked,
incredulous. “That’s impossible. Cardassians don’t believe in an
afterlife.”

The Vault of Eternal Destitution disappeared, and he found himself once
again suspended in nothingness. The presence’s still surrounded him, but
now each one had a voice, and they all whispered together.

“Anymore.” the deep voice said.

“What?”

“You don’t believe in an afterlife *anymore*.”

“Your kind did believe once,” the light voice said wistfully. “Your
Paradise was the one I liked the most of all the ones that exist. It is
so beautiful - you had such imaginations. That’s what the afterlife is -
it’s what you expect it to be. The Klingons expect Sto-Vo-Kor or
Gre’thor, so that’s what they get. Humans expect Heaven or Hell, Ferengi
expect the Divine Treasury or the Vault of Eternal Destitution. And
that’s what they get - what everyone gets. What they expect. But less
and less of your kind kept their faith and went to their Paradise.
Instead they stayed in nothingness, because that is what they expected -
nothing. Now it’s rare for even one in three or four generations to go
to Paradise.” The voice sighed, and the other presence’s ceased their
whispering long enough to sigh with it.

“That’s why we’re speaking to you, Legate Damar.” the deep voice said.
“There was a chance for your kind to regain your faith and start coming
back to your Paradise, and you terminated it. We want to know why.” The
others whispered their assent.

“Give the Guardians your reasons,” the light voice added, “for why you
ended the existence of the half-girl.”

“Half-girl?”

“Half your kind, half Bajoran.” the voice specified.

“Do you mean TORA ZIYAL!? You brought me here to explain why I killed
HER!?”

“Yes. The half-girl could have been the catalyst that began the
restoration of your kind’s faith. Her pictures drew on aspects of both
your culture and Bajoran culture - which is mostly comprised of their
religion. The merging of the two had a high possibility of developing
into an artform which could have sparked the instinctive faith buried
inside your kind. You terminated her. Why?”

“She deserved to die. She was a traitor to her people.”

“Which people?” the light voice wanted to know. “She had two. How was
she a traitor?”

The other voices ceased whispering, leaving an oppressive silence as the
question seemed to hang in the air.

“Despite her…tainted…blood,” he replied coolly, “Tora Ziyal was raised
as a proper Cardassian girl, raised to know her duty to her people, and
she turned her back on them! Her father gave up everything for her, yet
she never appreciated that. The moment he didn’t give her her own way,
she abandoned him and sided with his enemies! She not only betrayed her
Cardassian heritage, she betrayed her own FATHER!” A he spoke, he became
more and more worked up, until finally he was yelling.

“Specify.” the deep voice said, equally as coolly as him when he had
started speaking.

“Her father risked his life by sneaking into a Breen prison camp to
rescue her with only a Bajoran who hated him to help him.” he began
passionately. “He then took her back to Cardassia with him, acknowledged
her and gave her a home, even though for him it meant being disowned,
divorced and demoted. And was she satisfied? No. She was unhappy because
no-one liked her because she was a half-breed, she didn’t like that
planet, she didn’t like the Groumall - she was arrogant and spoilt,
always acting like she was too good for the rest of the crew on the
Groumall even though she was only a half-breed.” His voice expressed the
deep contempt he held for her. The nothingness hardened under his feet
and a dim light began to grow as he paced back and forth as he
continued, waving his arms when he felt he needed to emphasize a point.

“Then, as soon as she got the chance to go and live with her Bajoran
friends, she left without a second thought, perfectly happy to only see
her father when he managed to dock at the station in between skirmishes
with the Klingons, after all he’d done for her! Then she took up with
her father’s worst enemy and flatly refused to disassociate herself from
him when her father told her to, and refused to leave the station to
return to Cardassia for her own safety! That was when it seemed that her
father had finally seen her true colors, and disowned her.” His voice
became louder and louder as he spoke, showing his anger towards such an
ungrateful girl, and quieted as he stated her father’s reaction,
mirroring the pleasure he must have felt at it. The dim light that had
begun to form began to glow brighter, and he could almost make out what
appeared to be figures. Some where humanoid, but not all. Some simply
stood there, others paced with him, but all of them seemed to be
whispering, murmuring. He tried to ignore them, and continue his
explanation.

“Her father concentrated on taking over the Alpha Quadrant with the
Dominion, but when we took the station he made the mistake of welcoming
her back into his life.” His voice left no doubt as to his opinion on
*that.*

“She was disruptive to our cause and she was selfish. She refused to
speak to her father unless she wanted something - usually something
unacceptable, such as the freeing of a saboteur, and when she didn’t get
it she insulted her father, stormed off, and sulked, not caring that
such behavior was perceived by the Dominion as weakness on our part.”
The passion which altered his volume every sentence had subsided now,
replaced by a cold, calm fury that he was trying to keep under control.
As he saw figures in the dim light, and heard their amused whispers, he
wanted to show that he *was* in control of this situation, and
expressing unbridled fury at a dead half-breed was not the way to do
that.

“She was obviously going to betray us. Her father just refused to see
it. She pleaded for the RELEASE of a sabatuer, and happily associated
with his suspected collaborators. I suggested that she be confined to
quarters when they were arrested, but I was overruled. She then
confirmed my suspicions by assaulting a Cardassian security guard,
killing two Jem’Hadar guards, and freeing her friends so that they could
further sabotage the station, which caused us to lose it to the
Federation. I heard her confess to her father, and that was when I
killed her so that she couldn’t betray her people again.” He vaguely
noticed that the figures were moving in closer to him as he neared the
end of his explanation.

“She was an ungrateful daughter and a traitor who should never have been
allowed to live.” he concluded. “Her father should have left her in that
Breen prison camp.”

*  *  *

Ziyal sat amongst the flowers, sketch pad in her lap, thinking about
what she’d heard Damar say about her. She felt, rather than saw, the
presence behind her.

“It wasn’t like that.” she said.

“I know.” the light voice replied.

“I knew Damar didn’t like me - hated me even. But I didn’t realize that
he blamed me for everything that had gone wrong for my father since he
found me. Maybe if, even though I knew it was wrong, I had sided with my
father…” she trailed off.

“I’ve seen billions upon billions of souls. Some of them seem to require
a scapegoat for everything, and use that as justification for treating
that scapegoat however they want - even to killing them. Damar is one of
them, and nothing you did would have changed his opinion or treatment of
you.”

END