Chapter Text
Weyoun is gone when he wakes up at 0600, thankfully. Who knows if the Vorta even really need sleep, or if Weyoun was only doing what he knew would weaken Damar further. He can only hope that no one saw Weyoun sneaking out of his quarters with that purple mark on his neck. Dukat may approve but he doesn’t want anyone else to know.
This morning, after drinking his breakfast (some kind of nutrient beverage that the Federation left programmed into their replicators, vile but efficient, and some low-quality kanar), he goes directly down to engineering instead of working from ops and tries firing a sweep of broad-spectrum proton beams all along across the front line of the minefield. It produces a series of small explosions, detonating the entire front line, and for a moment he thinks that maybe he’s finally done it. Maybe the Dominion reinforcements can come through and the Alpha quadrant will fall and Cardassia will forever be another faceless Dominion planet—
But when he scans the minefield again a minute later, they’ve already replicated and have now produced an additional row of mines. He swears for a long time and the other Cardassian scientists all edge away from him. It’s a truly brilliant design, what the Federation has done here. He’s beginning to think that the wormhole can never be accessed again—certainly, it can be opened, but nothing is going through it either way.
Damar isn’t sure he can face returning to ops and explaining his latest failure—and its further consequences—to Dukat, let alone to Weyoun. Instead, he sends one of his subordinates up to Quark’s for two zabo steaks, a bottle of good kanar, and a pitcher of gelat. He spends the next three days in engineering, sleeping only a few hours each night, armor discarded in a heap in one corner, working through new simulations. Nothing seems to work, and the other scientists are giving him a wide berth. He must look insane.
He expects Dukat, but it’s Weyoun who comes down to engineering at last. He’d thought he was safe from Weyoun here, in the bowels of the station, but apparently nowhere is safe. Weyoun doesn’t even wait for the other scientists to scatter before saying, “You look appalling.”
Damar’s vision has started to go a little blurry—he’s had the computer reading calculations back to him instead—and he can only imagine what he must look like. Clothes stained, unhealthy yellow pallor blooming under his skin, empty cups and plates and bottles scattered or stacked haphazardly. “What would you know,” Damar says. “All the way up at the top, doing nothing, sneering down at my work. I can do it.”
“You know, I believe that you can do it,” Weyoun snaps. “But I don’t think that you will.”
Tired as he is, it takes a minute for him to recognize the paralyzing panic sweeping through him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I don’t think that you’ll take down the minefield,” Weyoun repeats, and Damar sees nothing of the man who broke him by holding him close in bed. It’s worse, this way, than if Weyoun had never asked to touch him. Now everything he feels is—confused. Tangled.
“I will.”
“No.” The finality in Weyoun’s voice makes him numb. “Because you don’t want to.”
And there it is, said aloud, the accusation of treason. “You’re wrong.” At least they’re alone now, no one else to hear it. “You’re wrong. I’ll do it.”
Weyoun’s purple eyes are hard. “You hate the Dominion.”
“I don’t hate you,” and it’s the worst, the worst thing he could have said. This is what Weyoun has wanted, it must be—this admission, this realization.
“What would it take?” Weyoun mistakes his silence for lack of understanding and says, “What would I have to do, to persuade you to take down the minefield?”
“I don’t want anything from you.” The words nearly choke him as he says them. “I’ll do it.”
“Now, Damar, don’t try to lie to me,” Weyoun chides. “You want all kinds of things.”
“So do you.”
Weyoun considers it and looks almost surprised. “Strange. I do. You would let me do anything with—anything to you, Damar, wouldn’t you? And then curl up in bed with me afterward. I liked that. I want to do that again.”
Damar stares steadily past him. “I’ll take down the minefield.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” Weyoun says, and looks confused as he does. “But I can’t allow your willful failure to jeopardize the war effort. If you don’t solve the problem within seven days, I’ll be forced to consider—replacing you.” He pauses. “I don’t want to have to do that,” and there’s something sincere beneath his words, something that sounds like he regrets saying it. “But I will if I have to. The Founder will demand it.”
“I’ll do it,” Damar says again.
Weyoun looks pained. He reaches out and puts a hand on Damar’s shoulder, warm through his flimsy shirt. Engineering is one of the few places that’s actually warm enough for comfort. “First you should sleep.”
“It doesn’t sound like I have time to sleep.” Weyoun isn’t wrong. He’s only an hour or two from collapse, no matter how much gelat he drinks. But seven days is only 182 hours, and he has no illusions that, however Weyoun might claim to regret it, Weyoun will terminate him at the end of that time if he hasn’t succeeded.
“I’ll add five hours to your deadline,” Weyoun says, and that startles Damar more than anything. “Let me make you sleep. Not here.” He moves his hand from Damar’s shoulder to the side of his neck.
Damar brushes away his hand. “Fine.” He follows Weyoun to the turbolift, and Weyoun is the one who remembers to bring his armor. Weyoun directs the turbolift to a different section of the habitat ring and Damar realizes too late that they’re going to Weyoun’s quarters. “This isn’t the way to my quarters,” he says stupidly.
“No. My quarters have less kanar in them.” The doors hiss open and Damar follows Weyoun in. Weyoun removes his shirt and pants carefully, wrinkling his nose, and then pushes Damar gently onto the bed.
“I can’t—” Damar mumbles.
“No, shh,” Weyoun says, and climbs onto the bed with him. He arranges Damar on his side, facing Weyoun, and then presses his body along Damar’s and leans in to kiss him. Damar is too tired to do more than mouth back against Weyoun’s lips as Weyoun strokes the ridges around his eyes, his neck, his shoulder, slow and firm and warm. Damar touches Weyoun’s ear and runs his fingers over the strange shape of it, the almost gill-like consistency, and Weyoun’s entire body shudders as he makes a noise that Damar has never heard before. “No—I want you to—sleep,” he tells Damar, and his voice is shaky. “You have to find a way to fix it. I don’t want to kill you, Damar.”
“Touching,” Damar mumbles, and he’s aware only of Weyoun’s heat next to him as he falls into unconsciousness.
The problem is, he’s starting to believe that Weyoun might be right. He doesn’t want the Dominion to come through the wormhole. He’s been paralyzed by that subconscious belief, but now that Weyoun has said it aloud, it’s the only thing he can think about. He stares at his notes and all he can imagine is the Cardassian death toll, whether or not the Dominion wins the war. The Dominion doesn’t care about their lives. The Dominion has occupied Cardassia and it won’t leave unless someone—the Federation?—gets rid of them. But the longer the war lasts, the more Cardassians die.
At the next station council meeting, one day left before the deadline, Damar is forced to admit that, despite continued efforts, he’s been unable to find a way to disable the minefield, and that his real-world experiments only make it expand. Odo is impassive, but Damar knows enough of his background to know that Odo does not consider himself a Founder and does not want those ships to come through the wormhole. Dukat is peeved. “Damar, you’re supposed to be one of the best engineers among my soldiers.” Left unsaid is the fact that there are civilian scientists, ousted from the current military government, who are undoubtedly better than Damar but are also unreachable. “Why can’t you accomplish this one thing I’ve asked of you?”
Weyoun’s face is impassive, but his eyes are—painful to meet. “The Founder has instructed me that, if the minefield is not deactivated within the next twenty-six hours, I am to remove him from the project.” The method of that removal is left unsaid but obvious.
“Damar is under my command,” Dukat snaps, and his smooth mask is faltering. “I’m the only one with the authority—”
“Cardassia is part of the Dominion. Damar, like you, is under the command of the Founders.” Funny, how those words hurt more coming from Weyoun now that Damar has heard him speak kindly. “If the Founder orders his termination, he is to be terminated.”
“I see,” Dukat says, and his tone is one that Damar—and everyone else under Dukat’s command—knows to fear. “I’m sure Damar is—adequately motivated.” At the end of the meeting, when everyone but Damar has left the office, Dukat says, “Tell me, Damar, are you going to have the minefield deactivated in time?”
Damar considers his options. Weyoun is going to execute him in twenty-six hours—and he has no doubt that Weyoun will obey his god’s order, however much he may regret it. “It’s unlikely,” he says finally.
“I see.” Dukat leans back in his chair—Sisko’s chair, which Dukat has kept in place. “Well, Damar, go back to engineering and keep working.”
“Yes, sir.” Damar recognizes that expression in Dukat’s eyes. Dukat is going to prevent the execution, whether to spite Weyoun or because he has faith in Damar’s ability to accomplish the goal immediately. The only question is how.