Title: Quark’s one good deed
Author: Shezan (August 2000)
Series: TOS/DS9 crossover
Pairing: Spock/Damar
Rating: NC-17
Feedback: Shezan1@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Viacom is Borg, right? Just call me Locutus. Your collective is safe with me, I will return it intact and having made no profit whatsoever after this.
Timeline: This takes place during Season 4 of DS-9, at the very end of the episode "Return to Grace", when Gul Dukat, now in command of Klingon Bird of Prey, leaves his half-caste daughter Ziyal on the station with Major Kira, before embarking on a Cardassian Maquisard’s career fighting the Klingons. Damar is his young second-in-command.
Note: This is my first slash story, my first Trek story, and in addition to all this, RL intervened big-time in recent weeks. Lost one job, found another, had to travel between 13 time zones in the meantime… so I am painfully aware this is *not* my finest effort. Any comments gratefully accepted, as that’s the only way to progress. (Yes, this is right on deadline, so I haven’t had the opportunity to get this beta-ed…)
Notes: Part of the "Spock Fuh-Q Fest", http://www.kardasi.com/fuh-q-fest-2/  
Archiving: The Spock Fuh-Q Fest and ASCEM; anything else, do ask, please! ;-)

Quark’s one good deed

I watched them making their goodbyes on the Promenade, my Gul and the half-caste girl, father and daughter. He was leaning towards her, so close that the metal ridges of his armour nearly touched Ziyal’s hair, under the Bajoran major’s watchful eye; talking quietly to her, reassuring her, or so I wanted to imagine. Comforting her that if he was leaving her again, so soon after rescuing her, it was only because he wanted the best for her. Her life should be more than spending months at a time imprisoned in a small rogue warship, chasing Klingons across the Badlands, with half a dozen Cardassian crew, having traded one jail for another. Here, on Federation-held Terok Nor, she would live freely, normally, or as normally as the only Cardassian/Bajoran in that community could. She would make friends, she would…

From where I stood, just at the entrance of the Ferengi’s bar, I couldn’t see the expression in the major’s eyes, but I didn’t need to – I knew this to be her work, and I could feel her satisfaction. We owed her the Bird of Prey. Ziyal owed her her new life – her life at all. I owed her—

My nails bit into my palms, and I made a conscious effort to unball my fists. I owed Kira Nerys my undying hatred, for snatching away the only consolation I’d ever found in my twenty-eight years.

In the months we had spent on the Groumall, I had come to know Ziyal as I never would have on a larger ship, or indeed on Cardassia. On the former, as my commanding officer’s daughter, she would have remained off-limits, unattainable. On the latter, her half-caste status would have set her aside more surely than any purdah – I would never have braved my fellow-Glinns’ snickers, or simply the looks of other citizens in the street, in a café, in a shop. But within the confines of our disgraced freighter, where hard work at least alleviated our resentment for having to share Dukat’s shameful demotion, Ziyal did her share with touching enthusiasm, and not a little energy – six years of backbreaking slave labour had given her the wiry musculature of a coalminer, and an instinctive feel for team effort. She did more than pull her weight, whether in the cargo bay or helping in engineering – was there a single Klingon control that didn’t require an amount of brute force to be engaged? If yes, we never found it, so that we went to sleep exhausted in the evenings, aching from muscles we never knew we had.

Sleep. Or not, as more and more often I lay awake in my hard Klingon bunk thinking of her. That she could still laugh, and laugh often, after what she had gone through, enchanted me. I was touched by the way she’d stare unblinking at her father for minutes on end, as if filling her eyes of his presence. I noticed the meticulous way in which she ate, never leaving the least scrap on her plate, cutting off bits of her meat that were precisely all the same size. Every detail came back to me at night, and I only went to sleep reluctantly, because that meant relinquishing my heightened awareness of her to the insubstantiality of my dreams. Sometimes I did see her in my dreams; but there I could not control her, and she would pass me by, not unfriendly, but never lingering. Awake, I could contemplate her luminous pearl-grey face for hours in my mind’s eye, every low-relief ridge on her brow; all five sharp, serrated, alien crests on the bridge of her nose; again and again.

She did speak to me during the day, more unself-consciously perhaps than if we’d met in other circumstances: she must have been aware that that none of us would have insulted her, or simply risked cold-shouldering her, on her father’s ship. And so, free of that fear, she was friendly enough with all of us.

She eventually became aware of my attraction for her; I did not hide it very well. I suppose the other Cardassians, the rest of the crew, commented on it in the small, low-ceilinged mess room in our absence: mine, Ziyal’s, above all Dukat’s. I didn’t think about this at the time. When Ziyal started sharing confidences about her father and her dead mother with me; telling me about her childhood on Terok Nor or the unhappy months she’d recently spent on Cardassia witnessing her father’s disgrace, I thought of nothing else but her, her closeness, her guileless charm.

Eventually we kissed; there was an inevitability to it, but it still was a shock and a thrill to me. It was certainly her first kiss: she had been thirteen when the Breen had enslaved the Ravenok’s survivors. It felt like my first too: nothing had prepared me for the surge of protectiveness I felt when she yielded her lips to me in the engine room, after the last of the ageing Groumall’s engines had been painfully coaxed into line again. She still had a stain of engine grease on her cheek, and raven stray hairs fell on her sweaty brow. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

We never took it much further than kisses, and long talks while the others slept. It was as if a second life had been suddenly given me, more vibrant and coloured and open-ended than the first. She, who had never talked of her captivity, did so, in halting sentences that made me smother her hands with kisses. I slowly opened up to her, dragging into the bright light of her ready compassion the hard cadet years, and before, the coldness of my parents’ house, my father’s barked orders, my mother’s indifference to all that wasn’t their joint ambition: they were partners in their social ascension, every move calculated, every child a pawn in the joint design of their aggrandisement. My sister Seyra had been married off to a Detapa Council member, forty years her senior; my brother Lenat worked in Gul Chakayan’s staff; my older sister Toket, who had only wanted to study at the Hebit-kor monastery, also married, to a worldly Secretary of State who often mocked her religious inclination in public. It felt as if I had never been able to say these things before, and in fact it was true, I hadn’t; but Ziyal listened and understood.

In turn I listened to her memories of Tora Naprem, of the couple she and Dukat formed; my love for Ziyal unlocked my acceptance of their cross-species romance as if nothing, anywhere, could ever have objected to it. If I’d been asked to recall my earlier prejudices, I would have found it difficult even to formulate them; they had melted away, insubstantial. Sometimes the Dukat she described bore little resemblance to our ship’s captain: then, both cohabited effortlessly in my mind, without a slip, each answering a separate and absolute necessity.

And now I could see both Dukats, Ziyal’s adored father and my Gul, two shadows merged into one, kissing Ziyal one last time, then walking down the metallic steps to the Promenade’s lower level, towards the docking stations. In a few hours the Bird of Prey would leave, chasing Klingons across this Guls-forsaken stretch of space. I did not want to be on it.

I walked toward them then, my beautiful Ziyal and Major Kira. Ziyal’s eyes lit up.

"I was hoping you’d come to say goodbye," she said, at the same time that Kira spat out my name. "Glinn Damar. Shouldn’t you hurry back on board?"

"Our departure slot is at 15:00. I wanted…"

"There are almost no Cardassians on DS9. People here aren’t much used to the peace yet, and they have long memories. I wouldn’t stroll just anywhere if I were you."

*Selective* would best have described Kira’s own memory, the ten days she’d just spent fighting on our side on the Groumall forgotten the minute she set foot on DS9 again. Now I would have told her exactly that, in fewer words even; but at the time, in the presence of Ziyal, I just found myself tongue-tied. If this was the atmosphere in which Ziyal was supposed to live—

"I wanted to see Ziyal," I stammered.

"I’m so glad you came," Ziyal said shyly, taking my hand. "You *will* take care of my father, won’t you?"

*Me*, take care of *Dukat*? I could not bring myself to tell her that this was the world in reverse; and over her shoulder I caught Kira’s wry expression: hostility had given way to a measure of amused understanding. But I knew what Ziyal meant: watch out for Dukat, guard his back; perhaps even take the phaser blast or battleth blade intended for him. It was there in her blue-grey eyes, quite plain to see. Perhaps it was only natural; perhaps tact did not enter into it yet: she was fond of me; but her father was a miracle restored to her. She hadn’t even stopped to think of how it would sound to me.

"Yes," I said.

Her eyes closed for an instant in silent thanks; then her smile illuminated her face. "I knew you would. I could never have left him if I hadn’t known you’d be there."

After that, of course, my half-formed dream of deserting the rogue Bird of Prey dissipated like a tachyon shadow. I would have braved Kira’s hostility without a second thought, and stayed on DS9 – but if it meant disappointing Ziyal, where was the point now? I left them shortly afterwards, kissing Ziyal’s cheek chastely, stilling the leaden weight of longing in my heart. There would be plenty of time for regrets on the Bird of Prey in the long weeks and months ahead, assuming a Klingon ship didn’t blow us out of space. I had close to six hours left before our departure, and I didn’t plan to show up until the very last minute – what could Dukat do to me? Our normal staterooms were even smaller than the ship’s minuscule brig. I decided to return to the Ferengi’s bar.

I was not yet drunk when, returning from Quark’s surprisingly palatial waste extraction facilities, I bumped into a strange personage, rather hard. I heard the "oomph" when my armour hit the pit of his stomach, and saw him teeter before righting himself by clutching the edge of one of Quark’s tables. I stared at him belligerently. He was standing between me and my Forvish whiskey. Perhaps I could pick a fight here. "Watch where you’re going, will ya?"

"You are being illogical. I was standing here, *you* were moving. Do you have, perhaps, an equilibrium problem?"

"Do you have an attitude problem—" I started to growl, but the Ferengi hurried between us. "No fights! You—Cardassian—what makes you think you can insult Federation Ambassador Spock? Do you think you still own this station? There’s plenty of people here willing to show you otherwise."

My stare went from the unpleasant-looking bartender to the Ambassador. A Vulcan. I’d never met one, but the ears were unmistakable. The reference to logic in his speech was, too. This one was more than middle-aged, tall and slender but slightly stooped, his dark hair lightly touched with white at the sides, the expression on his somewhat lined face sardonic but not unkind. The Ambassador was dressed with great understated elegance, in black with a short gold-piped jacket that bore a Federation pin – perhaps a commbadge – on the left of his straight collar. He was looking at me.

"Ah, a Cardassian officer. But not from a regular unit, surely?"

His uncanny clairvoyance defused my aggressivity far better than Quark’s admonitions. How could he have guessed Dukat’s so recent decision to turn pirate?

"Relations between Cardassia and the Federation haven’t reached a stage where military starships can travel to either world without prior authorisation. I would have known."

I felt stupid. "I, er, I am sorry", I said, and tried to pass him to get to my table, and to my still half-full glass.

"Perhaps you’d like to share a drink with me."

I stared, and blurted "Why?"

"A logical reason. I rarely get to meet Cardassians outside official exchanges. I expect to be party to further negotiations between our worlds. It would be of interest to me to chat with you."

"Expect no military secrets from me," I warned defensively.

"Of course not." His even voice was quite soothing. "When diplomats move centre-stage, the time for military secrets is usually past, anyway."

Well, Ambassador or no Ambassador, I could have told him *that* bit of logic would not serve him on Cardassia, but he didn’t ask, and I didn’t volunteer. "All right," I said rather ungraciously, and motioned to my drink.

"I have been given a better table. You might like to take your drink along."

Why not? It’s not as if I were an habitué of Quark’s. I went for my whiskey, and followed the Ambassador to a booth on the upper level, overlooking the Promenade. He was right, it was a much better table, to observe without being seen. The high-backed voleskin banquettes offered us quite a degree of privacy. Quark hovered for a moment, taking the Ambassador’s order for a bottle of Kanar, and a plate of nibbles. It was only when they were set in front of us that I realised Spock had ordered Cardassian food.

"You like Cardassian food?"

"It’s not unpleasant. I am getting used to it."

Belatedly, I put two and two together. "Your next mission will take you to Cardassia."

"Indeed. I can see you are capable of logical deductions."

"Don’t patronise me, Ambassador," I hissed in a low voice. "I may be the only Cardassian here, and I may no longer belong to a regular unit, but that doesn’t mean everybody gets to kick me like a football."

He raised his left eyebrow at that. "I fear you will prove as emotional as the Terrans. More complications ahead. And no, you are not the only Cardassian on this station, Mr…"

"Damar."

"Damar. I, as you may have heard, am Ambassador Spock."

"You said there was another Cardassian on this station, Ambassador. Why not ask him questions instead?"

I had intended my ungraciousness, but wasn’t prepared for the look of sheer lassitude that crossed the Ambassador’s thin, aristocratic face. "I have. It was not very effective."

"He wouldn’t talk?"

"On the contrary, he never stopped. With most people, even lies are instructive, because they point at what’s being dissimulated. With him…"

Had he been asking questions of Gul Dukat? But Dukat’s lies were usually quite brazenly transparent.

"Never mind. Tell me, Mr Damar, is lying part of the normal Cardassian conversational give and take?"

I felt patronised again. I may only have attended a military gymnasium in preparation for the Academy, but they did teach us the rudiments of syllogism there. "As a matter of fact, it often is, but you can’t accept that answer, can you? If I what I say is the truth, then we Cardassians do lie; so as a Cardassian I must be lying to you. Therefore we are not liars, and I was telling the truth. And so forth…"

Spock closed his eyes briefly, waving a tired hand as if to ward me off. "You too. I foresee an exhausting mission." He turned to the Kanar bottle and the two clean glasses the Ferengi had brought. "May I?"

"Thank you, yes."

It was the real stuff, not replicated; I drained my glass thankfully. The taste bought back Cardassia Prime, the Sessara gardens where I would have loved to take Ziyal—

Stop it.

"Your rogue operation, is it directed against the Klingons? The Dominion? Or us?"

"For someone who wasn’t going to ask about military secrets, you’re pretty forthright."

"Mr Damar, if you’re here on DS9 in uniform, it’s logical station authorities should know about you."

He had a point there. Kira knew all there was to know; she had practically set our crusade in motion.

"Klingons."

"Your idea?"

"Guls, no. My commander’s. Gul Dukat."

"Dukat. Ah, yes, the former prefect."

I nodded sullenly and poured myself another glass. "Ambassador, I apologise, but I’m not going to chat much longer with you. Nothing personal, but I didn’t come to this bar for companionship, I came to get drunk."

"Drunk? Is there a reason?"

"I’m sure you’ll say it’s ‘illogical’, but I plan to get drunk because I love someone, and she’s going away." Well, not quite technically accurate; I was the one going away in the Bird of Prey. But the feeling, at least, was true. I figured it would be enough for this supercilious diplomat to dismiss me as his second Cardassian without any useful conversation.

But curiously, instead of the cold comment I expected, the Ambassador stayed silent. Raising my eyes from my glass, I caught a flicker of – emotion? in his dark eyes. *I must be drunker than I think. Vulcans don’t emote.*

"Love…" he only said, but there was a wealth of expression in that single word. I stared at him. He allowed himself a half-smile of— yes, understanding.

"You’ve been in love, Ambassador?" I blurted. I might not have dared sober, but I had three Forvish whiskeys and two Kanars in me.

"I have," he said in a low voice.

I was so fascinated by the admission that it all came tumbling out: Ziyal, her father, the Breen, my parents, the engine-room, Kira. Spock listened on silently, but not unkindly; and as I poured my heart out, he took my hand in his. "Poor boy," he finally said.

"I—"

"Do not think I am belittling you in any way. It’s the greatest suffering; even more when you can’t tell anyone. But in a way, you are blessed: you won’t have to work day after day, side by side, with the loved one."

"It was wonderful having Ziyal with us on the Groumall—" I protested, but he wasn’t listening.

"To maintain the fiction of command, to act neutrally at all times; to keep your secret from all, even him…"

By then, of course, I’d realised he wasn’t talking about me and Ziyal, and I stopped objecting, pouring instead more Kanar in our glasses. He talked on for some time, softly, very gently, a different man from the Ambassador I had jostled earlier and tried to pick a fight with. I don’t know when his hand moved from mine to the nap of my neck, but by then I was holding his other hand against me, and I had slipped next to him on his banquette. He pulled me to him and kissed me, and I did not resist, even though the last kiss I’d shared was very different from this one. His lips were cool, but commanding; his tongue knowledgeable and forceful. He might not have consummated his love with his fellow-officer, but Ambassador Spock was experienced enough.

"The Ferengi—"

"We won’t be disturbed here."

He seemed assured of that; it was only 10:30, after all. His hand snaked behind my collar, stroking the top of my neck-ridges, and I became acutely aware of my armoured uniform. The next instant, he had snapped the safety clasps with a dexterity I’d rarely encountered after I’d left the cadet barracks years ago. I was stunned.

"You have—made love with a Cardassian before!"

"Does it matter?"

I shook my head as much as his embrace let me. It was only later that I realised his opening gambit – needing to know ordinary Cardassians better – had to have been a complete lie.

Oh yes, he knew what he was about. His hands were everywhere, and then his mouth, when he managed to prise open my uniform shirt. His fingers ran on my scales with a sure, light touch; pinching this ridge, teasing that one. I moaned, and his mouth silenced me. I was still fumbling with the cropped black jacket and the strict Ambassador’s uniform, that he had easy access to all the parts of my body he was interested in. His hand played with the darker scales of my lower belly, with rare sureness of touch, and I gasped when he took my erection in his fist, motionless, but with exquisite pressure.

He became aware of my clumsiness: his other hand left whatever it was doing that was threatening my sanity, and undid his uniform fastenings in a few deft moves, revealing most of his torso and groin. Then it found the nape of my neck again, and pulled me forward on his lap, not so gently, so that I found myself suddenly faced with his own impressive erection, the not unpleasant smell of his arousal very close to my nose. His hand pressed again, and I obeyed, taking him in my mouth and feeling with my tongue the soft skin on his hard prick. He barely sighed; but his hand started pumping at me with slow deliberation. I knew what he wanted; I gave it to him; it was not, after all – had he known that? – the first time.

"Aaah," he growled when I brought him to release, swallowing his salty come. When I came up for air, he was smiling very slightly, his hand still around my achingly hard cock. "Such talent."

I was breathless. He leaned over me and kissed me lightly. "And now your turn." With a feeling of unreality, I saw the Ambassador’s elegant head lower itself on me, take me in his own mouth—Guls!

His tongue was everywhere, swirling, licking; sucking and nibbling, he knew how to alternate pressure on the top and bottom ridges, firmer above, insistently softer under. Nobody had ever—

I would have cried out, but quick as fire, he slammed his palm against my mouth, almost like a slap. I was as in shock; I’d never experienced anything like this whirlwind of sensation, neither at the Academy, with some other cadet after lights out, hidden in the sports room or the training-field barracks; nor afterwards, with any the girls I’d dated during my leaves. This was unsentimental, sure, overwhelming. Already he was restoring order to his attire, as skilfully as he’d half undressed me. The gold-piped jacket as neat as if he’d just had it pressed, not a hair out of place, the picture of a Federation elder diplomat again, he looked at the mess I was in, sighed, and started refastening my breeches, my uniform tunic, my armour.

"You *are* very young," he only said.

I was unable to utter a word, a sound. The whole experience was already taking an unreal quality. He emptied the remains of the bottle of Kanar into our glasses, and sipped at his pensively. "An enlightening chat. I’m sure some solution can be worked out with Cardassia."

I stared at him as he got up, nodded a salute with the precise inclination of a superior officer to a subaltern — Guls, *that* was a Cardassian gesture, perfectly executed — and sauntered down the metallic steps to the bar’s main room. He had already disappeared when I realised his stoop was gone.

My chronograph showed 13:30. I was hungry, but I didn’t want to stay at Quark’s. I walked down the stairs and went to the bar to settle my bill. The place was quite busy now, and I waited for a moment, still feeling detached from the noise and the drinkers around me. The small Ferengi juggled glasses and pitchers like a Tavolian puppet show, punching someone else’s bar bill on the register.

"You don’t have to pay, Cardassian. None of the Ambassador’s guests do. Call it my one good deed. Ah, but I’m too sentimental!"

The Ambassador’s… guests?

"Yes? If you want lunch, though, that’s not on the house. We have very good hasperat—"

I shook my head and walked away, bemused. Try as I would, I could not imagine telling Ziyal of this. I shook myself and tried to conjure up her image in my mind, the unaccented ridges, the clear blue eyes, the mother-of-pearl skin; but it remained a little blurred, as if seen behind the armoured glass of a deep-space ship porthole. I imagined that she smiled, but a little sadly, as if she knew that there was a secret between us.

END