"Welcome to the Occupation"
DS9, Dukat/Tora Naprem,
by Elisabeth Pinto

Comments much appreciated! Talk to Zee@goplay.com .

PART 3

PARAMETERS

It was another week before he sent for her, in the early evening of a cloudy day. She was taken to his house again where he was waiting for her. The curtains were closed, the study brightly lit, and he was wearing his uniform. He told her to sit down and waited for the door to be shut. He looked at her thoughtfully and smiled to himself a little Cardassian smile she couldn't read. Cardassians found amusing what could make others weep; the universe was a gigantic play whose uncontrollable workings, cruel and ironic, were to be thoroughly analysed and admired. They went along with the flow, carving their parts with meticulous attention and a dark sense of Fate to which they abandoned themselves religiously and with great weariness. Naprem could feel that everything had changed between them, that he had shut himself from her, that he wasn't here but in those gardens that night, and perhaps with his father. She was there, too, but she was thinking that she had almost let him kiss her and that she had to be mad; wondering, too, if he would try again and what she would do then. She wasn't sure.

"What will you play today?" he asked eventually.

She looked straight at him with an accusation. "Mala'no Topa's third concerto."

She was speaking and he could not quite let it go. "A recent piece. When was it written?"

"About thirty years ago."

"Second movement?"

"Third."

He nodded. "What is it about?"

"The beginning of the end." He studied her for a moment, weighing something in his mind. Then he invited her to start with a wave of his hand. She played with all her heart again, to show him she had not forgotten and never would. This is it, she said. Take it or leave it. She increased her pace, threw it in his face, note after note, relentlessly. When pushing his seat back wasn't enough, he got up and walked to the window to stare at the curtains, as if not seeing her would keep the music out of his mind. But he couldn't lie to her anymore.

She finished; he thanked her and showed her the door. She refused to be taken home and set off on her own, walking quickly to get home before the curfew. The breeze was cold and strong and flapped against her dress, and it was drizzling. It was going to be like this now: he would call her again, and perhaps another time, and perhaps a third, and then he wouldn't because there was nothing to be said between them anymore. They had reached the limits of the honesty he professed, and they hadn't gone very far. She was crying, and crying because she was crying. She couldn't stand any regret about him; she had believed him, hadn't she? She had believed all his lies, that he was different, that it didn't have to be like this, that it could make sense. She had screamed and put hands on her ears so she wouldn't hear him -- because he had been speaking the truth and she was trapped and hated it and wanted out. And she had never been a true living being to him, she had been a Bajoran, and when he had been made to look into the mirror that she was by Terom, he hadn't liked the reflection at all and was going to put her away. That was how it worked and they knew it. She tripped on a sob but didn't fall and pushed herself onwards faster until she was running, her instrument knocking painfully into her back.

He'd had to put an end to it. He had been stupid, blind. What did he expect? What was he thinking? The humiliation he had deserved: that was the price for forgetting who he was, who Naprem was. She was his father -- all the stupid things he had sworn he would never be or feel, what Terom would have his life for. He could have had any other woman quite easily but he had chosen Naprem because he couldn't have her, and he'd always had to have everything. He welcomed Terom's threat now -- to think, as if there wasn't enough -- to risk his career because of an infatuation, because that was what he had done, he realised -- he thought bitterly that it would be a fitting thing to do for the son of Palmor Dukat. He grabbed the first thing he found on his desk and threw it against the wall, against his father, where it shattered obediently.

His guard ran in. "Sir --"

"Everything's fine, soldier. Dismissed."

The guard pointed his rifle at the remains of a ceramic bowl. "Sir?"

"I dropped it. You're dismissed."

"Yes, sir."

There was a finely trained Cardassian soldier, Dukat. Learn something from him.

THE LINE IN THE SAND 

They had been relieved when the driver had stopped coming, and for her parents it was the end of the matter and the afternoon nightmares. But when she was alone in her bed late at night with the cold sipping in under the door she thought about him. She had never seen before how childlike his arrogance was, a danger only to himself, how much his head must have been stuffed with dreams and illusions to be shattered so easily in front of her. She had never even seen her own illusions before. Her own angry arrogance had been a self-righteous one, his was a wall of lies he told himself. Lies came from a need to protect yourself from the truth and she wanted to know what sort of truth Dukat was protecting himself from. She wanted to make the wall crumble on him and all of Cardassia that he was. And he wanted her, that was a weapon. She had dark imaginings of Dukat touching her, opening himself enough for her to get in and squeeze and rip his soul, to put blood on his hand, perhaps hers. To feel him close, his flesh and his warmth, wait for a peace and on one of his heartbeats to tell him of the hell that awaited him. Perhaps it awaited her, too, for letting his fingers linger on her neck a moment too long, his lips on hers when she had no reason to let him kiss her again.

Naprem saw him before he saw her, talking to his men next to his shuttle car. In some ways she was not surprised he had come; they had made certain that Dukat understood that this street party in front of the temple that they were closing the next day was a gesture of defiance. She wondered why he had allowed it, if her being there with Mano when the Vedek asked had anything to do with it. He moved and she looked away; she didn't need him to be real, or to catch her thoughts. It was a game, it had been from the beginning -- every gesture counted, every word, every thought. Thoughts especially, because they felt like concessions. They had not been on equal grounds until that evening in the gardens and now she wanted to win. Every gesture, every word, and every happiness. So she was going to be happy. People around her already seemed to be, in spite of the soldiers posted next to every stall. Some of these soldiers looked worried, fidgety, as if something was wrong and they couldn't quite put their finger on it. A few were more relaxed, leaning against walls, their rifles hanging on their waist, watchful but pleased.

She hadn't seen so much colour since the summer festival a few months ago. It was good to see the old fabrics draped on the windows, the pastel reds and the dark greens, some white, and a sharp blue. The dirty walls and the grey of coming winter faded in her eyes. At the end of the street people were dancing, their shapes drawing a dizzy line across the crowd. Their singing was sharpened by the dull sounds of conversations and haggling. There was laughter somewhere. She watched her father buy flowers.

Vedek Mano looked at Dukat. "What do you make of it?"

"He knows and he wants us to know it," she said.

"Then he is right where we want him to be." He offered her a piece of bread. "Will you play for us later?"

"I'm not sure. I think I'd rather dance."

"With anyone in particular?" he nudged her. "I think Terin quite likes you."

"Terin? Who's Terin?"

"He's the monk you've known for 2 years and who's staring at you right now."

"Oh," she said. "That one."

"Be kind, Naprem. A young man's heart is a fragile thing."

"What about an old man's heart?" she asked.

"How should I know? I'm not old."

She laughed. "I'll dance with him," she declared. "I'll dance with everybody and everything today."

"Go!" Mano pushed her gently. "Have some fun, please."

"Are you sure you don't need any help?"

"I need you to enjoy yourself. Go on, before people get tired of dancing."

Her father waved to let her know he was going home and disappeared. Naprem bowed with a smile and started to drift towards the music, trying to recognise any friend in the moving bodies she glimpsed over people's shoulders. She didn't see the Cardassian move, and the Cardassian didn't think she wanted to stop. She yelped when he grabbed her arm and pushed a padd against her chest.

"Control," he said.

She shook him off and pressed her thumb on the scan. The soldier checked the photograph and the record. Behind him, in the doorway of a shop, Dukat was watching her. The soldier said 'fine,' left her and went to someone else. She heard the music stop and ran to join in the next dance, glad to have Dukat's attention.

"What next?"

"The wedding dance!"

The line parted to let her in and she grabbed two hands. The drummer began the dance with a slow beat. The line became a circle around the musicians, clapping their heels gently. The strings played now: the pace was quickening. The dancers parted and slipped back, joined again, parted, began clapping to the drums. They went left first, and then right. Her arm locked under her neighbour's she felt the circle move faster. The music whirled around her, the drums beat in her head and the strings pulled at her flesh, and she was choking on laughter. She wasn't even sure where she ended and the other dancers started: she was pushed by someone's hips and dragged by someone else's legs; hers were flying and she couldn't feel them anymore. But someone was leading this dance and they slowed. They dropped to their knees; two got up and began to dance to their singing. The two dancers circled each other, hands behind their back, sliding past each other but not quite touching, eyes fixed on one another. People were watching them now, even the soldiers. The drumming stopped, the strings rose to a more dramatic pitch. The young man to Naprem's left gave her his name, pointing at the dancers. She gave hers and nodded.

Their turn came quickly. As she moved past her partner for the first time, her eyes met Dukat's. She thought she could see a contradiction between what she read in them and the slight curl of his lips. She gave him a bright smile and let herself be taken back to the man in front of her. Her shoulders were thrown back, her neck open. It didn't escape her partner and he lingered in front of her, to give her a choice. She liked the thick collar bone and the sharp line of his jaw. The darkened brown of his skin and the curls drawn lightly across his short hair. It was the strong life of him that she liked most.

Then after one moment she could only remember glimpses around them and the strange, slanted (somehow) noises of what she thought were firecrackers, the kind that sizzled for hours. They stumbled upon them very suddenly. Before Naprem could make sense of it, people began to run over each other. Dukat pushed her aside, shouting something to her she didn't hear. The Cardassians started to shove them against the walls or on the ground. Within a few seconds, the first soldier was dead, phaser burn on his chest and open eyes. She looked up, bewildered, to the low roofs and the Bajorans running along them, weapons in hand, firing behind them and on the soldiers waiting for them below. By the time she had registered their presence they were only a dozen or so houses from her, desperately trying to shake off their pursuers and break in another direction. People were screaming; she heard some Cardassian cries. There was only people or dust or smoke to see. She swallowed, unable to breathe, and wondered at the paralysis that allowed her to think.

She began to run, nowhere in particular, just away -- she was knocked to the ground by something or someone. A body fell in front of her; she saw something white in a mass of blackened stuff that she knew to be a bone. Phaser fire was getting close and she had never thought it could be so loud. Looking for shelter she saw across the street a Cardassian crouched up against a wall, pushing himself back as if to go through it. No sound was coming out of his open mouth but she heard his strangled cry clearly. His rifle was going everywhere, along the roof lines, down across windows. Shrapnels of clay and wood rained down. Naprem crawled through an open door and found others there. She was pulled in, found a place to hide, and turned away from the wave of sound and light that passed them. Curtains had been drawn here. The darkness covered her reassuringly. Hands on her ears, willing it all away like a child against monsters of its imaginations. Shutting everything down but that one thought -- *go away* -- and her breathing.

Then. It stops. She listens to people calling out to each other to make sure they're still alive. The phasers are only firecrackers again. A Cardassian kicks the door down with a shout. The light on his rifle blinds her and she falls back in surprise. The soldier shouts something else and then in bad Bajoran tells them, it's over, get out, hands visible.

This is where the dream stopped. The whole world then slid back into place, crawling into her arm, hurting now, stinging her cheek where she found a little blood.

Bodies, most of them very still. Some shivering and bloodied like a new-born baby. Crying, crying, and calling. The soldiers were moving fast between them, pressing something into people's arms. Cardassians first as usual, she noticed. Dukat, a light burn on his leg, was standing next to a woman lying on the floor, curled upon herself. She was rocking back and forth, sobbing, arms tight around her waist. There was a large pool of blood dripping from her, or perhaps the child she was holding somehow, whose hand was just visible. Dukat was looking at his men, pointing at one body or another, snapping in Cardassian. Something like *quick.*

A million things trampled through her mind, unrecognisable, things she had forgotten, a sudden and sharp pain of living, unimaginable fear and dismay.

Now she understood what had just happened because it gave itself a name, a reference point. Vedek Mano's face was burnt on one half, charred and flattened. So was his abdomen. But he was still alive, kicking the dust like a mad dog.

"Oh Prophets...Oh --" Naprem stopped, feeling sick. Even in her arms he was kicking. "Vedek, PLEASE."

His voice was a murmur. "who..."

"Naprem." She took blind hope in his question and shouted for help. Screamed.

"naprem..." His fingers were cold and without strength. "they're calling. i'm not afraid --"

He was dead.

"Naprem?" Dukat knelt in front of her, one hand on her shoulder. "Are you hurt?"

"He's dead."

"I'm sorry." He seemed to wait for something -- why, Naprem wondered, does he always seem to be waiting for something? For someone to say something? Why never say it first? Does he not dare? Does he think he knows? -- before removing Mano's earring and clasping it between his hands. "Go to the Prophets in peace and in light. You are our prayers." Then he handed it to Naprem.

"Don't insult him," she said fiercely. "The Prophets are nothing but superstition to you. Primitive nonsense --"

"I respected his beliefs --"

"Why did you close the temple?"

"Orders."

It was his sincerity, the obvious simplicity and duality of the thing that enraged her. Naprem released Mano's body gently. Before he even saw movement, she had punched him and was on top of him, trying to hit him again. He felt her fist on the side of his head but grabbed her wrists; two soldiers caught her shoulders, threw her backwards and aimed their rifles at her. Dukat got up and ordered the soldiers to stand back, lifted Naprem up with one sweep of his arm and dragged her into the shop she had been hiding in before, slamming the door behind him and letting her stumble onto the floor.

The first thing she did was to crawl away from him, dizzy with the shaking her body had just taken and the steel of his grip on her. With balance came instinctive fear -- was this it for her, was he going to --

Finally it was there, plain as day. She had not been sure before if she had placed hatred and threats on his face because she expected them, because she was not safe with any Cardassian. There was anger here but it was new. There was much more, too, that she had not believed in before, emotions and feelings old, carving him in front of her. He was trembling violently, teeth clenched, biting what shook him and that he could hardly control.

"Do you think I wanted those people to die?"

He was speaking in Bajoran, and it came out as something between a bark and a shout, hoarse, with none of the calculations she had heard before. This alien language was betraying him: he could not hide behind words that he did not belong to, he would not be able to reason through them. Perhaps this time he had no reason to give her, only his full self. Which Bajor knew to be beyond and without reason but which Cardassia professed to be within the realm of rationality. Or they tried to make it that way. Who could blame them for their search and worship of efficiency, the natural practice of reason? Glinn Dukat was suddenly and finely drawn in front of her, and she saw herself inside of him. And he had seen her there before she did. He *wanted* her there.

Dukat tipped over a small table. Picked up a chair and sent it flying against the door.

"Do you think I enjoy waking up everyday, knowing that every single person living on this planet *hates* me and wants me to *die*? Do you think I enjoy watching children starve? That was your people out there, killing you!"

"They wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for you! You're here to feed your children -- they were trying to free theirs!"

He crossed the room and grabbed her again, holding her up on her toes. Her fingers reached out for something steady to hold onto and found Dukat's sleeves. There was something fierce and wild in his eyes that could have scared her if she hadn't been looking at him in the same way. He had her very close to him. "You -- Do you know how MUCH I HATE YOU?"

She could feel tremors in his fingertips and in his legs, pressed tightly against her. Not from fear or anger, from -- too much of something else. She could not push him off so she let herself fall closer to him. "About...as much as I hate you?"

He almost swallowed her words with his kiss. He caught her open mouth, his lips bruising hers. And Naprem kissed him back, when he let go of her arms and she could grab his face. It was a greedy, possessive kiss, necessary and needed rather than pleasurable. Tongues hard against each other. Both trying to take the other away from themselves. To claim something.

The hand on the back of her neck pulled them apart eventually. His face moved against hers, caressing the ridges on her nose. And without a word he stepped back and turned away from her.

"Stay in here until they're all gone," he said when he had regained his breath. He slammed the door again as he left.

She couldn't think of anything else to say, either.

HALL OF MIRRORS

The room was witness to dusk. There was a bluish light on the ceiling, and the shadow of rain trickled down to her desk. Naprem had lost track of time staring at it. She stretched and faced the window. She ran two fingers on the bruises on her face and arms, to trace the pattern his hands had left on her. She thought that if she didn't join the Resistance soon, she would be damned. She would go to Dukat to finish whatever was going on between them and she wasn't sure what that would mean. Defiance -- well, here I am, and you want me and you can go to hell -- submission -- well, here I am and I want you, too...

She had let him in when she had started to believe him. She had known that much when he had rejected her, after they had met Gul Terom. She believed him when he said he wasn't happy about the things he saw. He had told her a lot about himself and from what she gathered he was from an old and respected family in the high ranks of Cardassian society. He had a happy childhood. He loved the arts and philosophy (she was inclined to believe all Cardassians loved to talk of infinite things at length and that Dukat talked more than others because he was good at it. And he was). He had high ideals of beauty and glory. A man trained to devote himself to Cardassia and Cardassian ideas and who had no reason not to. Determined not to make his father's mistake, a humiliating experience for him. That was obvious from his complete silence on the subject. Too proud.

He could have raped her. He could have threatened her parents' safety in return for sexual favours. He didn't have to give those rations to Bajorans. He didn't have to ask her opinion, to be interested in who she was, and he didn't have to care about a 'native.' Did that mean anything? She would know when she saw him but she was frightened of knowing. She wanted to be outside of his circle, swallowed whole by the Prophets, with fire as her weapon to destroy them all, to make it all go away and go home. To be free. To forget, to put all the noise of everything out of mind. Stay in this bed forever, she thought with a smile.

There was always a lot of movements after curfew, when Cardassian troops were moved or escorted transports. Sometimes they were just patrols and Naprem had become good at judging how many soldiers they involved from the echo of their boots. A dozen, she counted this time, passing her and marking a beat with their feet. The sound that followed was a shuttle car of some sort -- it gave a low whistle along the curb. She sat up when she realised it had stopped. It was a Cardassian shuttle, and she watched someone get out quickly and walk into the hall of their housing block. A few seconds later, she heard a knock on their door. Her father answered. It was a Cardassian; he asked to see Naprem. He was not wearing a uniform. The few Cardassian civilians on Bajor were usually visiting politicians, although they had a few civil servants -- for what purpose, she didn't know. She thought Cardassian soldiers looked down on civilians and liked to keep their affairs to themselves, including their own administration.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Glinn Dukat would like to see you," he said. He was rubbing his hands together, visibly cold.

"Now?"

"If that's not inconvenient."

"Why didn't he come himself?"

The Cardassian stared at her. Thinking, she guessed, that she was one little presumptuous Bajoran. "That was not possible. He sends his apologies."

"I'm sure he does."

"Why does he want to see Naprem?" her father asked. Her mother had not moved or breathed since the Cardassian had walked in. When Naprem had returned home after the attack, her mother had shouted at her for hitting the Glinn and risking her life so stupidly. That was after Naprem had reassured her that she was unarmed, that she had only received a warning. Neighbours had been there, too and had told her mother what happened.

"That does not concern me and he didn't say. I believe it is a confidential matter. He did want me to make it clear that she was not obliged to anything, of course. I would not be asking you otherwise, would I?"

No, you'd be dragging me there. "Fine, I'll come. Give me a few minutes."

She went into her room to pick up a woollen top and a coat to keep off the rain.

"Naprem. Are you sure?"

"I'll be fine, Father. I'm not being arrested."

He took her hand. She was shocked to find his clammy and white with fear. "I can't protect you, can I? I never could, not against them."

She hugged him. "I'm still here and I'm twenty-five. You must have done something right." When he let go of her, she added, "The Prophets will protect me." She said it forcefully, to tell him that at least she wanted to believe it.

"I love you."

"Me, too."

"Be careful."

"I will." She kissed her mother good-bye and followed the Cardassian. He didn't speak to her for the whole length of their journey, but she recognised her destination: Glinn Dukat's private residence.

Dukat was waiting in his office, in civilian dress as well. He closed the door behind her and took her coat. He indicated a chair but she didn't move.

"Would you like anything to drink or eat?" he asked.

"No."

Something clearly amused him because he smiled. She crossed her arms and looked him straight in the eye, unwilling to play his mind games, to stand on his Cardassian ground. His expression grew neutral again.

"Why did you want to see me?"

"I wanted to apologise for the other day."

"Apologise? For what?"

He looked at her, silent for a moment. He was not coming onto her ground, either, that of violent confrontation. "For the brutal way I treated you. I was upset, I'm sorry." He opened a drawer of his desk and presented a dermal regenerator to her. She said nothing so he applied it to the bruise on her face. When he was done, he carefully raised her sleeve until he found the bruises there and began to treat them.

She had to try, again. "Upset? Why?"

"You had just hit me. You're very strong, you know. My jaw ached for quite a while." He moved to the other arm.

"You deserved it."

"Perhaps." He turned off the regenerator and inspected his work. "Better?" She nodded, a little curtly. He still had her arm between his fingers; his thumb caressed it gently. "Good." Then he pulled the sleeve down again and dropped the instrument on the desk. "I wanted to apologise for kissing you, too. But then I remembered you kissed me back."

"Then I'll apologise, too," she said. "To my parents, for betraying them."

"Naprem..."

"Don't. You understand nothing."

"I understand betrayal." Hollowed words, even though she knew he was referring to his father. Because he was referring to his father, probably. "We teach the concept of betrayal to our children when they're very young, so they know exactly where they stand."

"So they do exactly what you want." It revolted her, the thought of teaching children to hate, because hate was what was reserved for traitors. People like Palmor Dukat. Did he hate his father? She tried to imagine what he must have been like as a child. Sitting, learning, and not forgetting a thing.

He shrugged. "We work more along unspoken laws than written ones. Society can't function without obligations. Our children have free will but we leave no room for mistake or ambiguity as to one's responsibility. It works well. It brings order."

Something infinitely loud and quiet was pounding in her skull. It drowned the sound of time, from the old clock in the corner of the study, and drowned him altogether. It stopped very suddenly, when she started to breathe again. Everything looked different and the same, shifted by a crumbling of thought and a realisation she could not explain to herself.

"What's the matter with you?" she said. "What do you want with me?"

He was surprised at her outburst. Why shouldn't he? She couldn't recognise her own voice either. "Nothing --"

"You want to slowly destroy me, is that it? Everyday I've come here and waited for you to lean over and take me. Everyday you let me go while others around me are hungry, getting arrested, or raped. What am I supposed to think?" He tried to speak but she didn't let him. "I vowed not to say a word to you, ever. I broke that vow. Did you see one defiant Bajoran woman and thought 'I'll break her like I'm breaking Bajor'?"

Dukat reached for her but she refused him with one movement of her shoulders. "No, Naprem. I never meant it to be so hard on you."

"I wanted -- to resist for Bajor."

"I didn't want this to be a battle," he said. He was shifting, too, inside. She could see. "I didn't want it to be about losing or winning. I wanted it to be you and me, just talking." She made a sound of disdain and denial. "I wanted you. You're proud and wild, cultivated and spontaneous. And so beautiful. You are everything Cardassia has lost, everything I've always hoped it would be like. To you I can talk of such things. On Cardassia, all feelings are a weakness."

She was drifting in his direction. Could not help herself. It almost didn't matter what they said to each other. When he asked her to come and she said yes, they had said everything they needed to say to each other. And everywhere she had heard of, those words only led to one thing. "Everything is so simple to you, isn't it?" she said.

"Some things are. At least some of the time." He took her hand but she didn't notice. She couldn't escape the intentions of his eyes. "I could lose everything for what I've just told you. It's a strange thing, that thinking of adultery could cost me as much as the actual act. It's a dishonourable thing indeed, although often tolerated. With you --" He paused. "It would be betrayal."

"You can't expect me --"

"This is about *you and me.*"

"You can't expect me to ignore the occupation! The torture, the camps, the starvation!"

He stared at her with the kind of desperation that came from defeat. "No, I --" Glinn Dukat, without a word. Perhaps it wasn't as bad as she thought it was. Would she ever know? "No, I don't."

Standing close, not looking at her. Face down, almost touching hers. When she understood what she expected now and what she was hoping for, she had a feeling like winter, white and silent, of going underground until some light broke the sky again.

"So I've lost," she said, to herself.

"No," he said. Certain, all of a sudden. "You've won."

That kiss was not like the first. It was a kiss of lovers, slow and testing, shivers along the lips and down their backs. Soft and long, tongues gentle when they met. They held each other, lightly, his hands in the curve of her spine, hers on his chest. When they parted, he kissed the top of her nose, then her temple. Traced her jawbone, kissing her neck.

"Dukat..." He stopped with the slight pressure on his chest. They looked at each other.

"Come with me," he said.

She didn't have to ask where. "I can't."

"And I shouldn't."

They kissed again and felt the other's blood in their own ears, against the skin, because this time she had her arms around his neck, fingertips touching his hair and the beginning of a back, and he had slipped his under her top and had found uncovered flesh. She followed him a few minutes later and they climbed the stairs in silence, Dukat ahead of her. She heard him dismiss his guard and found him holding the door open for her. Once in his room, they weren't sure anymore where to start.

"What's your first name?" she asked suddenly.

They were circling each other. "Elmo."

"Elmo?" Her body was as taut as a string, tight and warm inside, where she wanted him. "That's a nice name."

"My mother thought so."

Then he removed his shirt and it began. She took off her top and they kissed. When she felt his arousal, hard against her belly, the knot there undid itself, jolting her with its own electricity. They finished undressing and she was the one who took his hands and led him to bed. He was fascinated by her naked neck and breasts, putting his tongue where scales ought to be; she caressed those he had on his neck and those which dipped down between his nipples and finished just above his navel. They touched each other with lips and fingers, and tongues and breath, until she opened her legs for him. He sighed at the wonder of being inside her and smiled at the sound of his name, murmured against his ear. Their mouths came together again and they forgot everything except each other after that, moving faster all the time, pleasure groaning from their throats, until they came together violently. When they moved from their centre, she stayed in his arms.

"Stay for the night," he said.

"Yes."

He brought the sheet to cover them, and switched the light off. Naprem fell in and out of sleep, consciousness drifting over her, getting lost sometimes where they touched, unable to recognise itself. Elmo shifted next to her once or twice then was very still. She thought, half in a dream, that he had fallen asleep, but when she woke up and stretched, he was staring at her, the white of his eyes barely visible in the darkness. She blinked, waiting for hers to adjust. There was darkness in him, too, in places so deep inside that no one could see, even himself. Places he could cover with words but which spoke of their presence in the silence.

"Have you been asleep?"

He shook his head. "I was waiting for you to wake up."

He leaned forward and opened her mouth with his tongue. They made love again, more urgently than before, crying out together at their climax, against tomorrow. This time both of them slept until morning. When she opened her eyes, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting his boots on. She sat up and reached for his shoulders. He smiled; she kissed him.

"How did you sleep?" he asked.

"Fine. What time is it?"

"About six-thirty. Would you like some breakfast?"

"Sure."

He left and came back with eggs and ginger tea. She ate while he finished putting his uniform on. When she was finished, he watched her dress. She had to look for her earring under the bed, wondering how it had got there.

"Here, let me," he said, and he fastened it to her ear.

"I should go," she said.

He nodded. "I would drive you home --"

"But I'd better be seen on my own."

"Good-bye, Naprem."

"Good-bye, Elmo."

Dukat didn't think he would ever see her again. But he had interrupted this visit to watch the Bajoran women in the garden, hard at work, who swept the thick bed of white powder from the earth with large shovels while more snow fell on their backs. A glimpse of long brown hair made him stop everywhere he was, whatever he was doing. He didn't fool himself -- he wanted to see her among those women, even if she had no reason to be there. This place was a refuge for women and their children, women with no families, who grew their own vegetables, even had some poultry, from the smell of the air, or at least tried to. They were paying no attention to him, too busy laying a cover to keep the ground warm in this very cold winter.

It had been three months since she had left him and for once he welcomed the cold that had settled on his district. It numbed the flowing of feelings, it concentrated the mind on matters of breathing and eating and heartbeats. At times he thought he would do anything to be with her again, absolutely anything, and then dismissed these promises as feeble-minded. They disgusted him enough to leave a taste of sickness in his mouth. Sentimental -- the old accusation from his days at the Military Academy, for expressing admiration at an ancient general who had died more gallantly than usefully, who had led a costly failure for Cardassia. It still carried the voice of his teacher, too, charged with disdain and judgement. He couldn't stand it, not then, not now. The laughter of his classmates was that of the rest of his world and he couldn't stand Cardassia laughing at him. His family was too famous, its heroes too numerous. He had to carve himself a place there, so he wouldn't have to carry them anymore.

Now he still lingered, next to a grey-white column that marked a corner of the quadrangle. Through his breath he saw again the hair that had caught his attention. The woman had her back to him and rose from her crouched position, her work done. She was wearing thick trousers and a wide woollen shawl around her shoulders. She spoke to another woman, who, with a jerk of her chin, told her about the Cardassians standing behind her. When she turned to have a look, he had to strangle a cry. It was Naprem. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating. But she recognised him and looked away. She picked up her shovel and disappeared.

"Wait for me here," Dukat said to the men with him. "I need to check something."

He trotted around the garden, trying not to run, and through a set of double- doors. He listened for steps, either going up the stairs or down the corridor. She was climbing the stairs. He did run this time, up the three floors and caught up with her when she was opening her door.

"Naprem?"

She didn't look at him. "Somehow I didn't think you'd stay put. Come on, before someone sees you."

Her room was small. There was a window, a bed and a sink. The walls were bare except for the print of a landscape above the bed and a picture of Kai Opaka. What was she doing here?

"How have you been?" he asked.

"Good," she said.

He didn't believe her. "Has something happened? What are you doing here?"

Naprem looked down with a tired sigh, then slipped off her shawl. Snow flakes trailed behind it and melted into the floor. Her trousers underlined a thickening belly, rounded like a spoon. She brought her hands on it protectively. As if he couldn't believe it, he put a hand there, too.

"It's yours," she said, with the trace of a smile at his shock.

"How --"

"I'm hurt you don't remember."

"I meant --" He looked at her. "It doesn't matter. Why didn't you tell me?"

She sat on her bed. "I know all about Cardassian cardinal sins, Elmo. A married man and an officer. Worse than a bastard: a half-Bajoran bastard. You would have had it terminated. You still could."

Of course he should. "Why didn't you?" he said instead.

"I won't be ashamed of it." She bit her lip. "When I saw my parents' reaction when I told them...and I've seen how half-castes are treated. This child is innocent, it has done nothing wrong. I used to wonder what I was supposed to do with my life, controlled as it is. I was going to join the resistance because I couldn't stand doing nothing. Now I'm going to be a mother to this child."

"Did your parents tell you to leave?"

"I wouldn't have stayed if they had wanted me to. Can you imagine what their life would be like, with a daughter who was a 'whore of the Cardassians?'"

"Don't speak like that," he said sharply.

"That's what people will call me. The people who took me in here don't know the baby's half-Cardassian. I'm going to have to leave soon."

"You could say you were raped."

She glared at him fiercely. "Never, you hear. I won't lie, not to my child. And it will ask me one day." He had started to pace between the bed and the door. "What are you going to do?"

"You should know I would never harm you - or anything that was yours."

"How?" she asked. "How am I supposed to be sure?"

He kneeled in front of her and took her hands in his. "I'm going to take care of you. And the baby."

"I can't let you keep me."

"Please. Let me get you out of here first. We can discuss it later."

"When will I be comfortable enough for your liking, Elmo?"

"I would never stand in your way, Naprem." Dukat got up, angry and not wanting to be. "Until the baby is born. I want to make sure you'll both be safe until the baby's born. Isn't that acceptable?"

She agreed. He wanted to say the words so she would understand but couldn't. He tried again as he was leaving, but they didn't fit his voice or anything he had said before. And then -- if she didn't love him, his world would be chaos. No love from her would feel like hate. But he had got what he wanted after all: he would be with her as long as the child lived. The initial surprise and fears had gone. He felt ready to kill with his bare hands for this baby. Perhaps that feeling would wither as well, he didn't know. Perhaps he would come to regret it one day. And what had happened those past three months for her? While he dreamed of their one night together and she realised she was pregnant? Strange, how everything could be separate and meaningless and then come together so quickly.

The snow under his feet crunched, over and over. Everything was going to be fine. He would make certain of that. Naprem had given meaning to Bajor, to what he had been looking for there. She would be in his every action. Now he was tied forever to Palmor Dukat's dream, and he had never faced such uncertainty.

QUESTION MARK

How to organise all the memories when coherent thought was the one thing Naprem lacked the most?

*Or not for long...I'm bleeding too much, too fast...Would it help, to have more time? It might help Ziyal --*

She was dying and trying to live again, desperate to put some order in the jumble of still images in front of her, so she knew what to say to the Prophets when They would judge her. She had to explain at last, to Them and to herself, why she had been involved with a Cardassian for thirteen years. Not any Cardassian but the man who became Prefect of Bajor when the old one was assassinated. Her mind was undoing itself in front of her and letting go of everything that it carried.

...the old questions returned. Should she have stayed with him? He had found a little house for her, in another district where there was less of a Cardassian presence due to the poverty of the land in minerals. It was on the edge of a village, up a little hill; there was a small brook nearby and a lot of dark and thick trees. He visited her often, giving her his credits for food. He took good care of her, doing everything while he was there. She had known something would happen as soon as she had seen him in that refuge. They were drawn to each other, could never refuse one another (she would not have fallen pregnant otherwise). And it had been so good to be with him again, as awkward as it felt with her belly in the way. To hold him and be held by him afterwards. In that moment she was glad, whatever may come of it, to carry his child. She could tell he was glad, too, in the way he caressed her belly and spoke to the baby inside, making her laugh. In the way he had whispered that he loved her, when he thought she was asleep...

...had she ever truly seen him happier than when Ziyal was born? Perhaps at their daughter's birthdays, when he was there. She shared his relief, that their little girl had lived another year. There were times when they weren't sure.

...another memory, one of fear, of a man she had seen asking questions about her and her daughter. Telling Elmo, then never seeing the man again. No one ever did in the village, and she never dared to ask Elmo what he had done.

She felt Ziyal's hand on her face and her voice in her ears. She was scared and Naprem couldn't reassure her. Her wound was wide and the blood visibly dripping through her fingers, in spite of the darkness. Someone else was crying in pain and there was a mad rush of Cardassian and Bajoran voices. Who had attacked them and where had they landed? It didn't matter to Naprem but what of her child? Oh poor Ziyal -- what a childhood she'd had. Lonely and covered with murmurs of things she couldn't say. Bajoran children played with her sometimes because their parents didn't know she was born out of love for a Cardassian and had always assumed Naprem had been raped. Sometimes she found her thirteen-year-old daughter wiser than herself. What had she seen of the occupation in her mother's womb? She had never questioned Naprem about her relationship with her father, and she knew what Cardassians meant. She witnessed their crimes as Naprem did. Her mother had never dared to ask her how she hovered between the two worlds, half a criminal and half a victim, where she placed herself. Beyond that, Naprem hoped.

....was Elmo Dukat a criminal? A monster? He couldn't have been, because she loved him. She could not have loved a monster. Their moments together could never be free of the occupation and they shouldn't have been. She remembered their argument when he had been promoted to Gul and offered the seat of Prefect. The things they had said to each other. And he had assured, promised her, that it was an opportunity to make things better for Bajor...

...he liked to kiss her wrist, where the pledge bracelet he had offered her jostled against her skin...

...was it so wrong to understand him in one glance, to want him close, to need each other?

...and also, the day he had come as a surprise and found her feeding a family that had escaped from a convoy to the mines. In their rags and the dirt in their faces it was obvious who they were. He had taken Ziyal, then six years-old, for a long walk, to let them finish their meal. When he came back he told her he would not come unannounced again. But he had let them go.

So, she would tell the Prophets. It would have been far worse if it hadn't been him. One moment she could say without lying that she was glad it was him in that position. He did try to improve the situation. The next she knew that there was too much horror to be able to do more good than harm, and that he was joining himself with forces that had a momentum of their own, stronger than any man's intention. And just as she feared, he was eventually swallowed by them. She could tell in the weight of his silence, how often he would turn to her during the night, when he visited every third week or so. He stopped talking things over with her and asking her what she thought. She wondered how he took it all in, where he put it, when in every Bajoran he must have seen her.

...how furious he had been, when all that he did to help Bajor only resulted in greater terrorist activity. She had told him the truth of her thoughts, then, in no subtle words. Another argument in their long line of arguments. He had relented. Or given up, she wasn't sure which. He had cried that night, but had refused to speak of it the next day. With Ziyal he was always constant, in his love and his patience; father and daughter worshipped each other. He was always good at being pleasant when he worried or raged inside. Recently she had begun to wonder if she still knew him at all, if she could tell the difference between him and the masks he wore...

"Ziyal?" She touched her daughter's hair gently. Pain was separating Naprem from her. She felt nothing but cold everywhere, even as she saw the sweat on Ziyal's face.

"They said you shouldn't move at all, or speak," she said.

"You must have faith, Ziyal," Naprem said. "You have to be very strong, my love."

"I'm going to pray for you, Mother. Don't you worry."

She didn't want her daughter to pray for her, didn't want her to carry responsibility for her mother anymore, but she was feeling without words, half-unconscious already. She wanted to cry, as if it were her daughter dying and not her. When it would be Ziyal's turn -- and perhaps it would be soon -- would she have someone to hold her as she was holding her mother, and keep her warm, and send her to the Prophets unafraid?

"Your father will come for you," she told her daughter. "As soon as he knows where you are, he'll come for you." And then what? Naprem didn't know but she was certain he would never hurt Ziyal. If he did, Naprem would seek a place of everlasting suffering for herself...

...but he was not a good son of Cardassia, even if trapped in its universe, whose rules she could not understand. He saw everything between himself and anything as a straight line, the quickest route, if not always the best. But she wavered and moved from one point to another, between the choices and the decisions, and looked back from time to time to the lines she had crossed. It was all one way with him, his way, arrogance of certainty -- or it was nothing but darkness, failure and damnation; Naprem, on the other hand, had long forgotten where and when it had all started and her eyes saw different colours than his. It took power and will to cut through planets and stars and people as his people did, it was a violent process, it left strange things in its wake. She picked them up after him, and it was him she found, time after time. How could she not love him? He was the knowledge she had of him, and she the knowledge he had of her: they carried each other that way, and that was love. That was *their* love.

...had all this been seen to a long time ago? There was no point in questions in a time of answers. Someone might wonder about her someday, how she lived as she did. Perhaps they would know better than she did herself.

...words from years back finally made sense to Naprem. She was shaking in Ziyal's arms.

"they're calling. i'm not afraid."

A little more time after all, just enough to feel the fall into a space like dawn, and stars and matters as she had only seen in dreams, between quiet minutes and centuries, to be memory, somewhere below and above everything, everseen, everheard.

EPILOGUE

It was the perfect end of a perfect Cardassian play, he thought. Irony everywhere: the man of duty almost getting away with his sins but punished at the last minute where it hurt the most, in the heart he had let himself grow in the wrong place. Innocents always suffer, that is in their nature, said another play he had once seen; better to be guilty --

Irony in front of him, too, in the mirror where tears streamed down his cheeks; Gul Dukat, Prefect of Bajor, crying so much for the loss of two in millions that he couldn't see properly. He rinsed his face again, with water cold enough to numb his hands. He dried himself and moved back to the living room, to staring at the planet below Terok Nor. He caught the name of the Prophets in his mouth, choked on it. His throat hurt with the feelings he would not say. His beloved was dead, gone forever from his eyes, no longer visible in the stars around him as she had been when she left. He couldn't tell himself anymore that she was on the tip of his finger when he pressed it on the window against a point of light.

And their child, the best parts of Elmo Dukat and Tora Naprem, was gone as well, before she had even been. What purpose was there in such an existence? He suddenly wished he had never met Naprem, never loved her, never seen Ziyal born, never lived those thirteen years. Naprem and Ziyal, gone from Bajor, never allowed near his own sun, dead and powder to the wind. What were those memories supposed to mean now? When he would return to Cardassia, which did not care about Bajor, saw it as dried seed and was in a hurry to look somewhere else? His home world was already erasing those years for him, crushing them together in the effort not to look and not to know.

Naprem had told him once that in sabotaging that transport his father had perhaps saved her life -- she could not see that as a bad thing. It was so -- the present wrote the only history to know (where Naprem was buried). The reason was in the action, things could never be a different way. All that mattered was the greater good. To him, it was that of Cardassia. To someone else, someplace else. Conflict was the only constant. Judgement would be made much later, when it had ceased to matter. On Bajor, he walked its edges everyday, the abyss calling in silent voices and fevered dreams, tempting and threatening, its enclosed darkness a mystery that refused to reveal itself.

He looked aside for only one moment and it all blurred and broke inside.

Dukat's weight slipped forward despite himself, into the cool glass that sheltered him from the vacuum of space, making fists with his hands. From there he felt his body drop below, suspended, half the way out, half the way in. A remembering was taking place in his mind but there was too much to remember at once, and things that didn't fit together but insisted upon each other were tearing painfully from his skull down his back until his feet tingled and gave way.

He would rise later, he would be better, he would have cleaned it all up and made sense of it. For now -- he buckled under the madness.

THE END