> back
> home

Willing

By Cardie-ologist

It was a dream Dukat had experienced regularly for decades, first during all those years after he had thoughtlessly cast her away, only to find himself haunted by her memory, never more so than when he held other women in his arms. Even when he had found her again, he sometimes dreamed it. And after she was taken from him forever it returned frequently to mock him. Now, in the midst of so many nightmares in the wake of his loss of Terok Nor, and the death of their daughter, and his imprisonment by the Federation, he dreamed it again. The same as ever, the chronicle of their first time together, yet not the same. He both experienced the dream's sensations and stood outside them, a voyeur to his own actions. . . .

It always started with her simply there, in his bed chamber. The guard who had brought her never appeared. Although she had been quite beautiful, her dream self was essentially featureless. Only her large, brown eyes registered as they had in life. Her most striking characteristic, however, was her unnerving calm. Bajoran women summoned to Cardassian officers' rooms knew what they were there for. Some arrived angry, some desperate, some terrified, some resigned. Dukat had never, however, seen one like this, neither accepting her fate nor resisting it, simply meeting it moment to moment.

His practiced rite of seduction began. Remaining a couple of meters distant, he addressed her: "My name is Dukat. Please don't be frightened. I won't hurt you. I would never force myself on a woman who wasn't willing."

"In that case, it would be better for me to leave now, so as not to waste your time." Her voice conveyed no naive hope. She had simply called his bluff. Typical Bajoran insolence! And yet it didn't anger him the way Bajoran insolence usually did.

He took a step toward her - but only one - and flashed his most disarming smile, "I wouldn't advise that. There are other men in the barracks who don't have my scruples. We wouldn't want them to assume that our business had concluded so soon."

"I see. Unlike them, you will only force yourself on me after we've talked for awhile."

He made a show of exasperation. "You don't understand. After they've gotten to know me better, most women become quite willing." This time she didn't answer, just stared at him with those big eyes.

Before sending for her, Dukat had placed a dish of hasparat, bread, and fruit and a glass of kanar on a small table that stood beside a chair in the center of the room. He motioned to the chair.

"Please sit down, why don't you, and have something to eat." She did as he suggested, consuming the food greedily, but ignoring the kanar after an initial sip.

Her actions mildly surprised him. He had taken her for one of the proud ones who would sweep the food and drink to the floor. "The kanar isn't to your taste?" he queried. "I could get you something else to drink."

"It's not the taste I object to; it's the effect."

"Ah, many young women in your . . . circumstances are grateful for the effect."

"I prefer to be clear headed for what's coming."

"Should I take that as a compliment?"

"No. I intended it as an insult."

He passed off the "insult" with a little laugh. "At least you found the food satisfactory."

"Hunger makes an excellent sauce," she returned sharply. "As you are well aware, for the past month, since it was discovered that the wounded resistance fighter had taken refuge in the camp, we've been given rations only three times a week. My husband and I have been saving half of ours so that the children can eat every day. We've begun to envy the fifty men you executed. A disruptor blast is far more merciful than slow starvation."

Her words shook Dukat's confident composure. "Gul Nared believes it may take another five to ten days for the lesson to be learnt, but he will reinstate full rations soon," he replied defensively. "We're not monsters, after all."

"I'm sure that will be a great comfort to the families of the seven who died of hunger last week."

He had found her candor amusing at first; he wasn't amused any longer. It was time to bring the evening to its inevitable conclusion. "How many children are you sustaining by your admirable self denial?" he asked coldly.

"Three," she said, after a long pause, her first sign of uneasiness.

"I'm sure they're a great concern to you. Bajor is a very dangerous place these days. Something untoward could overtake a little one at any time."

The panic in her eyes was unmistakable. It gratified him that she had divined his meaning so quickly. He hated it when he had to put matters on a vulgarly obvious quid pro quo basis. He walked slowly over to her chair and took her hand in his. "Stand up my dear," he said quietly. When she complied, he stroked her hair, then her cheek. "I trust you are willing now, brave little mother?"

She nodded slightly, then with slow, deliberate movements removed her clothing. Standing very still, with only the tears that filled her eyes revealing what it was costing her to give herself to him without protest, she looked up at him and spoke with that same unnerving calm. "So, Cardassian, tell me what is required to please you."

. . . When the dream reached this point he invariably awoke, aroused, and as he eased his arousal the dream images that had sprung from memory were replaced by other, later memories. She had pleased him, more than any of the other Bajoran women he'd ever taken. Certainly more than his Cardassian wife, who viewed their bed as the origin of a dynasty rather than as a place of passion. So he saw no reason to send this calm, compliant Bajoran back to the camp. He moved her into his quarters and kept her there for the six weeks his battalion continued to be stationed in Dakhur. He grew quite fond of her company and even made efforts to please her when they were intimate. Countless times he would ask her whether she found pleasurable a caress to this place or his mouth upon that. Always she replied, "Of course, Cardassian" - her refusal to call him by name, or tell him hers, was her one small act of defiance, one he indulgently tolerated. But always her body told him that no touch of his ever aroused her in the slightest. Well, he supposed you couldn't have everything.

When the orders came for the battalion to move on to combat Resistance activity in a neighboring province, he gave her a new dress, five generous ration cards, and a pass that would permit her and her family to leave the camp and return to their village. He kissed her good bye, and just before she left him, she turned and fixed him with those big eyes of hers and said, "Cardassian, I've done everything you've asked without resistance or complaint. In return, I expect you to see to it that no harm ever comes to my children from Cardassia."

As he recalled the scene now, he was amazed that he hadn't knocked her to the floor for her impertinence. At the time, however, he had merely bowed his head and assured her that he would do everything in his power to keep her and everyone dear to her safe. It was an empty promise. He was about to be transferred over 100 kilometers away from her village, and, despite his threat that first time, he would have been hard pressed to have distinguished her children from among the scores of ragged brats that filled the camp. And yet, during all the years that intervened before they were together again, a guilty hope that nothing had happened to those children of hers frequently ambushed him.

With that thought he became fully awake, and left the past of memory for the bleakness of his present, the present in which he had failed utterly to keep their child safe, the present that found him captive, caged, alone, scorned. As they had on so many other nights, grief, shame, and fear totally unmanned him. He struggled in vain to stop the screams that would bring the alien doctors and their hated hyposprays.

* * *

Kira knelt in prayer beside Ziyal's grave. It had been one month since she had arranged to have the girl's body interred on Bajor, next to the graves of Kira's Bajoran and Cardassian fathers. Somehow that had seemed appropriate for the young Cardassian Bajoran woman, who was almost like her own daughter. Already the grass had begun greening the disturbed soil. The site retained the atmosphere of loveliness and serenity for which Kira had chosen it so many years before. She was sure the girl's body rested peacefully there, and that her spirit had found its home with the Prophets.

Nevertheless, burying Ziyal here nagged at Kira. Surely such a decision should not have been hers but Dukat's. Much as she loathed the Cardassian, he was Ziyal's father and only known blood relative. His wishes for the disposal of her remains should have been paramount. She had waited two weeks, keeping the body in stasis, hoping that Dukat would regain his senses. And periods of apparent lucidity had returned rather quickly, periods in which he acknowledged that Ziyal had been killed. Whenever Kira asked him about the funeral arrangements, however, he reverted to his delusion that Ziyal was alive and safe on Bajor. Then Starfleet had transferred him to the psychiatric ward on a starbase, with the issue still unresolved.

Dukat doubtless would not have tolerated the Bajoran death rites. Kira had in fact asked Garak to perform an additional Cardassian funerary ritual, or at least to assure that the Bajoran practices did not result in anything a Cardassian would perceive as sacrilege, but the tailor had only looked at her enigmatically and insisted that he was an atheist, unfamiliar with such practices. She was sure that he knew all about them, even if he didn't believe in them, but it had been hard enough even to get him to attend the services. If he didn't want to preside, she had no way to compel him.

So here Ziyal lay. Kira finished her prayers and placed the floral wreaths she had brought on each of the graves. With a little sigh, she departed, still troubled.

* * *

Kira pressed the entry chime for the Security office. "Come in, Major," Odo said with that all business formality that still marked their post Dominion interactions.

"Odo, I want you to do some detective work for me. It's a private matter."

"Oh?" The changeling cocked his head quizzically. "What sort of private matter?"

"I'd like you to investigate Tora Naprem, Ziyal's mother. Maybe Ziyal has some Bajoran family we aren't aware of. They deserve to know about her life, and her death."

"Are you sure that they are eager to discover that one of their family had an extended liaison with Gul Dukat?"

"Probably not," Kira admitted. "But I think Ziyal deserves to have at least one blood relative say the Death Chant for her."

"I hate to disappoint you, Major, but I started trying to compile a dossier on Tora Naprem as soon as Ziyal came to live on the station. There are no records of her anywhere. I'm sure Dukat saw to it that they were all expunged. There were no records on Ziyal either."

"I suppose I can start some inquiries on Bajor. There are still several organizations that try to trace people who were lost during the Occupation."

"There's one other avenue you might try," Odo added thoughtfully. "The Cardassians compiled a database of DNA profiles of every Bajoran with whom they had contact during the Occupation, everyone who was ever issued a ration card, who worked in the mines, who was questioned by the authorities "

"In other words, the entire population of Bajor," Kira interrupted ruefully.

Odo smiled, "A very large percentage of it, yes. They purged the database from the computers when they withdrew six years ago, but Dukat reinstalled it when he retook Terok Nor, and when the Cardassians left this time they had no opportunity to delete it. I doubt you'll have any luck finding Tora Naprem by name, but I'm sure Dr. Bashir has a DNA sample from Ziyal. He could try to find a familial match in the database."

"That sounds like my best hope," Kira replied. "Remind me never to try to hide from you, Odo." The minute she said it, she realized her mistake. The silence between them grew uncomfortable in the extreme. After all, for so many years they had been hiding in plain sight from one another. Reddening, she nodded apologetically and left the office.

* * *

Julian had brought the datapadd with the results of his DNA search to Kira in Ops. To her, all it showed was a mass of numbers and probability statistics. Fortunately the doctor, as usual, was hardly reticent in explaining his findings, although she did sense some reluctance in his manner.

"There are 1723 individuals in the database who have some genetic connection to Ziyal. But that's going back to links five or more generations past. For consanguinity at the level of first cousin or closer, there are only a dozen matches. The intermixture of Cardassian DNA makes it harder to estimate the precise relationship." Julian hesitated, then plowed ahead. "But the closest matches all have one thing in common."

"What?" Kira asked impatiently.

"They belong to you, your brothers, and a scattering of your cousins."

"That's impossible!"

"I've checked the results thoroughly. It is absolutely certain that Ziyal is a generational relative of yours. Most likely one of your mother's sisters was her mother."

"Why not my father's?"

"His DNA shows absolutely no connection to Ziyal's. The relationship must derive from the maternal branch of your ancestry." Responding to Kira's obvious bafflement, Julian tried to make it clearer to her. "Tora Naprem's DNA is not in the database, of course. But she has to be a close relative of yours."

"But she couldn't have been, that's what I'm trying to tell you. My mother's clan was the Tamlo. Her sisters' given names were Natal, Prelom, Lemerel, and Chakra. Her own name was Meru."

Julian entered the names into the padd. "Your aunts all share DNA with Ziyal," he confirmed. "And there are many Tamlo matches in the further distant generations. Your mother died before the database was developed, but I'm sure that she's connected as well. None of your aunts or cousins matches closely enough to have been Ziyal's mother, however. Tora Naprem must be a relative you know nothing about."

"What are you suggesting?"

"There could be a number of explanations. Perhaps your maternal grandfather fathered a daughter outside of wedlock, or your grandmother gave up such a child before she married him. I don't mean to insult your family honor, but such things do happen. Or perhaps one of your aunts, or an older cousin, was a collaborator with the Cardassians. Wouldn't it follow that all mention of her might be banned in the family, and mightn't she change her name to spare them the disgrace?"

Kira's head was reeling. "Of course, all those things could have happened. It's just such a shock to think that any of them did happen."

"Do you know your maternal grandmother's original clan name, or the name of her mother's clan?" Julian asked, a suspicion growing in his mind.

"I'm afraid I don't. The Occupation didn't leave much time for genealogical investigations. My mother died when I was so very young, and we lived among my father's kin for the most part."

"I'd advise you to fill in the blanks on your family tree, and get back in touch with any of your mother's surviving siblings," Julian said. "That's probably the quickest way to solve this mystery."

* * *

Filling in the family tree did not prove very difficult. Nearly every large clan on Bajor had entrusted the maintenance of its history to the Vedeks at one monastery or another. The Tamlo clan records had been preserved at one in far northern Dahkur. In a small room illuminated only by candles Kira read over the names. Tamlo Meru and her eight brothers and sisters were the children of Tamlo Haran, whose original clan name was Seleriel. The mother of Seleriel Haran, was Seleriel Chama, whose original clan name was Chukaar. Then came the entry that made Kira blink her eyes and wonder if the flickering candlelight was playing tricks on her. The mother of Chukaar Chama was Chukaar Naprem, original clan name Tora. The coincidence was far too great, on top of the DNA evidence. Clearly Ziyal's mother and Dukat's lover, the woman who called herself Tora Naprem, was a direct descendant of Kira's maternal line.

Driven now by a far greater urgency than merely having Ziyal properly mourned by one of her blood for it now was apparent that she herself had satisfied that obligation Kira sought out her maternal uncle and aunts. Only three of them were still living, Chakra and Natal, and their youngest brother, Feron. Kira had last seen them at the wedding of Feron's third daughter, five years before. She contacted each of them with the astonishing news and asked them if they knew any facts that might solve the puzzle. All of them insisted that there were no female members of the clan unaccounted for at the time of Tora Ziyal's birth, that despite all the evidence, Dr. Bashir's scenario could simply not be correct.

Kira showed the tapes of her relatives' replies to Odo and Julian separately. Their statements had seemed truthful to her, but she had never been very good at reading people. Both the constable and the doctor studied the messages carefully and replayed them several times. Both came to the same conclusion, that the only one who showed the slightest hint of concealing something was her Uncle Feron. Kira recalled that Feron had in fact lived with her family until she was about six. She left on the next shuttle to Bajor.

* * *

Feron ran a small craft shop in the countryside of Dahkur Province. The works of local artisans crowded his shelves, and a small locked case underneath the pricing scanner held artifacts of pre Occupation vintage. He welcomed his niece with a warm embrace. "I can't tell you any more in person than I did by comm channel, Nerys, but if this winged tarton hunt has brought us face to face after all these years, then I don't regret that you've been all riled up for nothing."

Leaving the shop in the charge of an assistant, he escorted her into a back room where he replicated two steaming cups of ginger tea. They were welcome, for the winter solstice on Bajor's northern hemisphere was only a few days away. Kira finished her drink completely before saying what she had come to say.

"This cannot be just a winged tarton hunt, uncle. This girl did share the blood of clan Tamlo. I think you know that, and I further suspect that you know how she came by it. I'm not leaving until you tell me."

"Well, well, I can look forward to a long visit then, eh?"

"I'm serious about this, uncle."

"And the Prophets know that no one dares stand in the way of Kira Nerys when she's serious about something?" Feron's eyes were twinkling, but gradually the merriment faded. He bowed his head, and when his eyes met hers again, they were very serious indeed. "What I'm about to tell you is going to be very unsettling for you. Please don't reproach me with not giving you fair warning."

"The whole business already has me unsettled. I just want to know the truth."

Her uncle took a deep breath. "The only woman of clan Tamlo who could possibly be the mother of this Tora Ziyal you speak of is your mother, my sister Meru."

The shock was so great that Kira thought she might faint. "How could that possibly be, uncle? My mother died nearly a decade before Ziyal was born."

"No, she didn't Nerys, or at least we can't be sure that she did. It's simply the explanation the family agreed upon to cover her disgrace."

"What disgrace?" Kira felt herself unable to breathe. "My mother was a fine woman, devoted to her children, an artist " She stopped short, her stomach contracting with fear: Ziyal was an artist, too.

"Nerys, I need to tell you the whole story," Feron said gently. "Then I'll try to deal with your questions." Kira nodded in mute agreement. "When you were three, Nerys, the Cardassians made all the inhabitants of your father and mother's village move to the Singha refugee camp, so that the spoon heads" he spat on the floor "could more easily wipe out the Resistance cells in the area. I had come to live with your family after Father was conscripted for the mines and Mother fell ill and was taken to that dreadful medical ward that hardly any Bajoran ever survived. I was only fifteen, the last of us left at home. One evening, when we'd been in the camp about four months, a group of young Cardassian officers came striding in, pointing their rifles and ordering all the women out into the center of the camp. Your father and I watched from our tent; fortunately you and your brothers had already gone to sleep. The Cardassians looked the women over, laughing and gesturing among themselves, uttering Cardassian obscenities that was always the first Cardassian vocabulary any Bajoran ever learned. I think there were about ten of them, and they each selected a woman and marched her off in the direction of the command barracks. We'd seen such selections before, but usually the spoon heads went after the teen aged, unmarried girls. Meru never thought she had anything to fear. But this one arrogant Glinn seemed fascinated by her, even though she must have been several years older than he was, and he picked her and took her away.

"Usually the Cardassians sent our women that they'd violated back to the camp in a day or two. But if one had been chosen by a particularly brutal soldier, she sometimes never came back at all. When two weeks had passed, and Meru had not returned, we assumed that had been her fate. Your father told you children that she was dead, and we all believed that to be true.

"A month after that, the soldiers who had taken your mother left the camp. That same day, she turned up at our tent. She was wearing a beautiful dress; she'd been well fed and didn't show any bruises. No Bajoran woman who'd been with the Cardassians ever returned in such a state unless she'd sold herself utterly. Your father hustled her out of sight and told her in no uncertain terms that he considered her dead to us, that he wasn't having any spoon whore bringing up his children."

"She wasn't a whore, she can't have been," Kira protested, anguished.

"You have to see it through his eyes, Nerys. Many of our men believed that any decent Bajoran woman who'd been so dishonored owed it to her family to end her life. I tried to convince Brother Kira that there had to be some reason for what Meru had done, but he wouldn't hear of it. 'Six weeks in that lizard's bed, and you dare come back to us all fat and dressed up like a peacock!' he had said to her. 'It's not hard to provoke them to kill you, you know.' And he told me that she didn't dispute him, or offer any explanations. Her Cardassian had given her ration cards and passes to get us out of the camp. She pleaded with your father to take them and go. She'd stay there. And that's what he did. No one in either clan Kira or clan Tamlo ever saw her or heard anything of her again. Now, that was many years before you say this Ziyal was born, but once a Bajoran woman had done what Meru had, there was often little choice for her but to be passed from Glinn to Glinn and Gul to Gul. So it's possible that she was this Tora Naprem' you're trying to trace."

"It still seems impossible," Kira said, at the same time wondering if it was only her reluctance to abandon the image of her sainted, dead mother that made it seem so. "The way Gul Dukat speaks of Naprem, it's hard to imagine that she was a woman of that sort."

"Gul Dukat?" Feron asked in astonishment. "You mean that you think your mother had a child with the Butcher of Bajor? You left that little detail out of your story, Nerys."

"I know. I thought it was disturbing enough without telling you that Dukat was the Cardassian involved."

"Well, I'm afraid the only way you'll ever be certain is to ask the monster himself," Feron responded sarcastically.

"You're right," she said grimly. "There's no choice but to ask him."

* * *

The doctors at the starbase informed Kira that although Dukat could hardly be pronounced mentally stable, he hadn't manifested delusional behavior for several weeks. He should be able to respond lucidly to her inquiries if he chose to. Obtaining leave from Sisko, she set out to obtain, she hoped, the final pieces to this fearful puzzle.

Visitors were not permitted in the psychiatric ward, so they arranged for her to meet with Dukat outside a holding cell. He was already standing there in the cell when she entered the room, and he was the first to speak.

"Why, Major Kira, I'm touched by this visit," the Cardassian said, in the tone of patronizing insincerity that had so galled her during the Dominion occupation of DS9.

She wasted no time on social pleasantries. "Dukat, I want you to tell me more about your relationship with Tora Naprem, where you first met, for instance."

"Major, surely you know how painful such recollections are to me, particularly in light of the death of my dear girl. Is there some compelling reason you must press your inquiries now, when you find me at such a severe disadvantage?" He gestured toward the cell walls with both hands.

"It's very important in Bajoran culture that the dead be properly mourned by their blood kin. I was hoping that I could locate some living Bajoran relatives of Ziyal's. I haven't had much luck so far," she lied.

He cocked his head and gave her a searching look. "I'm afraid I can be of little help to you there. Naprem never spoke of her family to me, except to tell me that they were lost to her. You can well understand that thoughts of them made her very sad."

"Perhaps if you just told me the history of your . . . acquaintance, it would provide a few clues." She hoped she sounded convincing. The last thing she wanted to do was let him know the truth she feared.

"Very well, since it's for Ziyal's sake. But the tale is rather - complex, and it isn't easy for me to share. And knowing your poor opinion of me, I fear that you won't believe it"

"I'll try to keep an open mind."

Oddly, he turned away from her as he spoke, placing one hand on the back wall of the cell, leaning forward slightly. He told the story in an atypically soft voice, almost as if he were speaking to himself, taking no notice of Kira standing less than a meter distant. She wished she could see his face, the better to gauge his veracity. On the other hand, he wouldn't be able to read her reactions to his narrative this way either. On balance, a good thing.

"When I first met her, Tora Naprem was merely a convenient means for satisfying a young soldier's desires," Dukat began. "I selected her for my companion when I was stationed near one of those refugee camps in Dahkur province. When my battalion moved on, I sent her on her way. That was, let me see, about thirty years ago."

Kira's heart sank, but she said nothing.

"But it was the strangest thing. Once I had left her, I couldn't get her out of my mind, waking or sleeping. And when I finally became Prefect, eight years later, I rather impulsively used the resources at my disposal to track her down. They had been very hard years for her. Four more in the refugee camp, until she was apprehended stealing food from the officers' barracks, where she worked as a maid. I learned from the investigator's report that her name was Tora Naprem. I'd been too careless that first time even to bother to ask it. Then three in a labor camp, where she was punished five times for insubordinate behavior. The fifth infraction automatically earned her a transfer to an ore processing facility. And that's where I found her, in the middle of her 12 hour shift at the conveyor belt.

"You can imagine what such a life had done to her I'm surprised she even survived it. Yet she looked just as beautiful to me as she had in my memories. I had them bring her to the overseer's office. She didn't want to look me in the face, but when I spoke her name, she immediately raised her head, and there was recognition in her eyes. 'So, Tora Naprem,' I said, 'is it possible you still remember me?' And she replied, 'How could I forget, Cardassian? You made me what I am today.'

"Since I'd been quite generous with her when we parted, I'd always imagined her prospering while we were separated. The realization that I had instead brought her to this positively devastated me. At first I told myself that once I got her out of there, I could soon repair the damage I had done. I had her paroled immediately into my custody and brought her to the Prefect's residence, fed her, had her cleaned up. My desire to reclaim her had grown quite powerful over the years, and I'm not a patient man when my desires are thwarted."

You don't have to tell me that, Kira thought, steeling herself for what he was bound to say next.

"She was quite, quite defenseless, physically, spiritually. She'd borne so much, and she would have borne me in that same mood of passive endurance. We were in my room; I'd undressed her and myself. Then--" He broke off and briefly turned to face his listener. "It quite astonished me, as I'm sure it will astonish you, Major I found I couldn't lay a hand on her. Not like that. I had her put her clothes back on, led her to one of the guest quarters and told her to rest. We'd dine together later. I let her reprogram the door lock with her own code. She only spoke once, to ask me, 'Why, Cardassian?' I didn't know the answer myself.

"Weeks passed. I respected her privacy. I waited for her body and mind to heal. Sometimes she would talk to me; most days, though, we just took walks together, shared meals in silence. I'd never treated a woman like that before; I hadn't treated her like that, the first time. Now, however, it seemed impossible that I should treat her any other way. Then, one evening, after she'd been there about a month, something happened that I'd never dared to hope for. She knocked on the door of my bed chamber. When I opened it, she looked up at me with those big, sad eyes of hers and said, 'Cardassian, I'm so tired, I can't fight any longer. Do you know what it's like never to feel a loving touch?' I asked her if she wanted to come in. She said that she did. I led her eagerly to my bed, but she lay there so still, that I hesitated again. In the end I only held her until she fell asleep in my arms. I had to leave her there and spend the night elsewhere a man can exercise only so much self control.

"The next day, when we were together, she said nothing of what had happened. I seriously entertained the thought that she might have been sleepwalking the previous evening. That night, though, she was back at my bedroom door. This time I told her that if she came to my bed again, I wouldn't hold back. Did she understand? She gave me the ghost of a smile and said, 'I'm willing, Cardassian.'

"From that night on, her happiness became my obsession. Or rather, her unhappiness, for that never seemed to heal, even after the scars of the camps had long faded. Finally, I realized that she had never stopped mourning her lost children. I persuaded her that we should have a child of our own, and Ziyal laid the cornerstone of our love." Dukat turned back to face Kira, "Naprem at last started calling me by name the day our daughter was born," he said wistfully.

Kira had begun to cry very early in Dukat's recitation, and now she was sobbing loudly enough to break him out of his reverie. "Major, whatever is the matter?" he asked in his harder, more familiar tone. It was as if he could only speak tenderly, as he had about Naprem, when he was speaking of Naprem. "I admit that it's a very touching story, but I wouldn't expect it to affect you quite this deeply."

"I'm fairly certain that Tora Naprem was my mother," she said through her tears.

He laughed that obscene laugh of his. "What a remarkable coincidence! At least I have consistent taste in women."

His inappropriate reaction jarred her. Where was the shock, the surprise, the tenderness he had so recently articulated? In a flash, she realized that he had been toying with her. "You bastard," Kira screamed. "You've known all along." It was fortunate that she didn't have the access code to the holding cell. She would have gone in and killed him with her bare hands.

He smiled at her smugly. "No, not all along. I only began to suspect when I watched you and Ziyal together on that borrowed Bird of Prey of mine. I scanned the DNA database, just as I'm sure you did before coming here. My copy, of course, includes a sample from Naprem, and it wasn't hard to pick up traces of yours and Ziyal's from your quarters, after you'd returned to Terok Nor. I know what you must be going through, Nerys. The revelation absolutely floored me. I'm eternally grateful to our friend Odo for preventing me from executing you over that Vaatrik matter. I could never have forgiven myself for bringing one of her children to harm."

Kira was boiling with anger. "And you didn't think you owed it to me, and to Ziyal, to tell us that we were sisters?"

"You were behaving like sisters without my telling you anything. I wanted the time to be right. When you so adamantly denied a few months ago that we could have any kind of special bond, I almost told you then. But you were so angry. This was not a truth to be shared in anger. Your mother loved me deeply, and I her, Nerys. That's why it never seemed impossible to me that we could love each other."

"What unmitigated conceit! My mother never loved you, Dukat. She was drowning, and you cast her a lifeline. Once Ziyal was born she had to stay with you for the sake of her child. You may have loved her, as much as you're capable of loving anyone besides yourself, but the most she could possibly have felt for you was gratitude. And what kind of gratitude? For saving her from the Hell that you and your kind had created for her? No, I'm betting that, in her heart of hearts, she only felt disgust."

Dukat threw himself against the force field, beating on the energy barrier with his fists. "You're lying!" he thundered. "You weren't there, you can't know. She loved me, I tell you."

"Never!" Kira shouted back.

His face filled with icy malevolence. "You treacherous, ridge nosed bitch, get out of my sight."

Kira had never complied with one of Dukat's suggestions more willingly. She only made it three meters down the corridor, however, before she fell to her knees and vomited.

* * *

That night Naprem came to his dreams in a very different form. She had her usual expressive eyes and indistinct features, but she was wearing Major Kira's uniform. And she kept saying, over and over, "I never loved you, Cardassian, I never loved you."

He put his hands over his ears to block out the sound, and when he removed them and opened his eyes, she was still there, but she had fallen silent. It occurred to Dukat that he wasn't dreaming anymore, but how could he not be, since she was still standing there? He got out of bed and paced the room. He rubbed his eyes. He was definitely awake, and yet there she stood. For a fleeting moment he pondered whether he should be alarmed by this phenomenon. Then he realized that he was no longer alarmed about anything. The fear, grief, and weakness of past awakenings had evaporated. In their place was a single emotion, a strong, virile, pure Cardassian emotion, one to which he was glad to abandon himself totally. Rage.