Chapter Text
Quark is always happy to pour a drink—or many drinks—and listen to Damar talk. Has Kira told him, yet, that Damar and Weyoun are on their side, whatever that means? Or does he still think that Damar is a mark, to be liquored up and carefully handled for information?
“You know,” Damar tells him, and he’s not enunciating very well anymore, “Cardassia Prime is a beautiful place. The capital is—beautiful.”
“Eloquently put, as always.” Quark pours the next glass of kanar. “Remember, sip, don’t gulp.”
“What’s wrong with you? You’re supposed to sell me more, not less.” Damar would be suspicious if he could summon the energy.
“I just don’t want to be cleaning vomit off my bar,” Quark snaps. “Sounds like you miss it.”
“When the war is over.” It takes Damar a minute to remember his train of thought. “When the war is over, I’m going back. And we’ll—we’ll make it look like it did before the war.” He squints at Quark. “Do you have a home planet? What kind of place do you come from?”
Quark smiles with all his teeth. “Ferenginar. Very rainy. Not worth the Dominion’s attention.”
Damar shakes his head. “Be glad,” he says sadly. “I wish we hadn’t—”
Quark cuts him off by shoving another glass of kanar into his hand. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Someone sits down next to him. He winces at the light refracting off her sequined outfit. “Want some company? You should come try a round of dabo.”
Damar thinks this is one of the dabo girls from the time without Weyoun. “Quark’s—good company,” he mumbles. He hears her laughing as she leaves.
“My friend,” Quark says, “if you’re not interested in her still, you have problems. Someone else catch your eye?”
Damar inspects the bar top. There are fingerprints on it of at least half-dozen different races, some of them smudged together. It feels like a metaphor. Or something. “Rather not say,” he says. He examines his glass. It’s empty, and he thrusts it at Quark—a little too hard, because Quark has to catch it.
“Damar, let me give you some advice that the humans give each other: just apologize. That solves everything between them.”
“Ha,” Damar says. His glass is still empty. “You didn’t refill my glass.”
Quark heaves a sigh. “Oh, I did. Damar, I have to tell you, I have never in my life cut someone off. Don’t make me ruin that proud accomplishment.”
“Cut what off.” Damar shoves the glass at him. “It’s empty.”
Quark gives it back to him full of something that isn’t kanar. “Where’s your Vorta?”
He chokes a little on the drink. It had been making his head spin less. “Don’t have one.”
“Well, of course, I didn’t mean it in that…”
Damar tries to grab him by the front of his vest, but misses. “Don’t say it then.” He wonders, vaguely, who’s eventually going to come get him. Weyoun won’t. Dukat doesn’t come to Quark’s—never did. And no one really likes Damar, not anymore. “No one really likes me, Quark,” he says.
“Oh, I like you, Damar.”
“I spend—lots of money.” He’s leaning heavily on the bar now.
“Finish the drink,” Quark tells him.
Damar does, almost automatically. His mind is still wonderfully syrupy with kanar, but he can see a little better, hear what’s happening around him. Think about what’s happening. Betrayal of the Dominion. Mass death of Cardassian soldiers no matter what. Weyoun. Weyouns. “Cloning should be banned,” he says. “Genetic manipulation. Things.”
Quark looks increasingly uneasy. “It is, in the Federation,” he says, “but I would really advise you to—talk less.”
“I’d have less time to talk if you gave me another damn drink.” Damar is going to pass out here, he’s decided. Pass out and wake up and either things will be better somehow or he’ll be right in place to do this all over again.
“This is—” Quark looks pained. “This is—the third-to-last drink I’ll sell you.”
“You’re going to give me free drinks?”
Quark looks a little disgusted. Then his gaze flicks upward and he smiles. “Odo, my friend. What can I get you?”
Odo looms in Damar’s peripheral vision. “I—heard that Gul Damar might need some assistance walking back to his quarters.”
Damar imagines that Odo’s hands must always feel a little gooey, not quite solid. Odo never smiles and his ears are strange.
“Thank you for that insightful commentary on my appearance,” Odo says. “Shall we go?”
He doesn’t want to go back to his quarters. He doesn’t want to go anywhere. “I could sleep in a holding cell,” he volunteers. Can’t hurt anyone from there. Can’t make any decisions there.
“You’re—asking me to put you in a holding cell?”
Damar imagines himself smiling. “I could punch someone.” He’s not sure he actually could punch someone, the state he’s in.
“Yes, and I suppose then I would have to explain to Gul Dukat why I had his second-in-command in one of my holding cells?”
What Damar wants, more than anything, is to be insensate. A coma, even. Separate from the world and everything he might do to it, for the next— “How long do we have?”
Odo’s face is stony. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”
Five days. Unconscious away from the world for five days. It sounds like the only tolerable option. “Just—arrest me.”
Odo crosses his arms. “I will not.”
Damar looks around the bar unsteadily. He sees a lone Jem’Hadar staring at him—or in his vicinity, it’s hard for him to tell exactly—and stumbles toward it. “What do you want, Cardassian?”
“What are you, Third? Fourth? Why’re you in here when you never eat or drink? Here, have some kanar.” Damar thrusts his glass at the Jem’Hadar, and a little splashes onto its boot.
“I am Second,” the Jem’Hadar says. “I provide—security. Cardassians cannot be relied upon. As you are proving.”
Damar snorts. The Jem’Hadar are usually easier to goad into a fight. If he starts a brawl, Odo will have to arrest him. “And we can rely on you, when you have to get your white to function? They would get rid of you if they ran out of white, you know. Your gods.”
That’s enough to get the Jem’Hadar to punch him, and it catches Damar on the side of the head. His ears ring and his vision is blurrier than it was before. He smashes his glass against its head and yanks out the tube of white, and the Jem’Hadar roars. It punches him in the mouth and Damar tastes his own blood. There are chunks of glass in his hand and he charges at the Jem’Hadar, lands his shoulder in the middle of its chest. His shoulder pops out of its joint, but the Jem’Hadar falls back a few steps before clubbing him down. If there were more of its kind here, they would tear Damar apart, but this is the only one. Damar can’t hear what’s happening, the floor is rushing toward his head, and he sees the Jem’Hadar’s foot descending toward his neck—Odo grabs it by the shoulder and it kicks him in the head instead of breaking his neck.
Odo beckons another Cardassian over—Damar’s vision isn’t working properly to tell who it is—and they drag him up together. His shoulder is screaming in pain and his hand is a bloody mess and the entire world is very distant, but he tries to move his feet as they haul him away, enough to ease the pressure on his shoulder. He has a very vague impression of Major Kira watching him, but he’s fading in and out of awareness and it could be another Bajoran who looks like her—could be poor delusional Liana, he and Liana pathetic together.
* * * * *
He’s not sure where he is, only that it’s too cold and too bright and he hurts everywhere. He seems to be propped against something, a bucket next to him, and he’s vomiting into it before he realizes it. It burns in his sinuses and there’s a stabbing pain in his shoulder when he tries to lean on it.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’d better stop.” Kira’s voice cuts through his pounding headache, and he squints at her. “If you’re serious—we need you. Not—whatever sloppy drunk you feel like being on any particular day.”
Damar wipes his mouth. He’s not wearing his armor, he remembers. “I’m,” he starts. “Do you know—” He retches in the direction of the bucket. “Do you know how many Cardassians are going to die?”
Her voice is sharp. “Do you know how many Bajorans died in the Occupation?”
“What if you’re right?” he asks. “What if I’m—blind? Pathetic?”
“You’re pathetic, all right.” Kira crosses her arms across her chest. “That’s what this is? You’re spiraling because that Vorta might not actually care about you, when the fate of the quadrant is at stake?”
“No,” he says, and it sends another stab of pain through his entire body. “Because if I’m wrong—”
“If you’re wrong, we’re all dead,” Kira says flatly. “It’s a little late to worry about that.” The room is spinning around him. “Get yourself together, Damar.” She disappears from his field of vision, and he thinks he passes out again.
“Damar, Damar.” That’s Dukat’s voice, and if anything could drag him back to wakefulness, it’s him. Damar struggles to sit up. He’s in the holding cell, he realizes. He feels—like a Jem’Hadar beat the shit out of him, though his shoulder is functional again and his hand isn’t bleeding anymore. When he runs his tongue over his teeth, they’re all solidly in place. But his throat burns and his mouth tastes like vomit and— “You know, Damar, if you’d been in armor, you’d have fared a lot better. Where was your armor?” Dukat can probably guess.
Damar blinks, his vision clearing, and sees Weyoun and Odo standing behind him. “Sir,” he says, focusing his eyes on Dukat.
Dukat frowns. “I need you at your best, Damar. You found a solution to the minefield, but it requires extensive field-testing before we can assure our—friend—that the Jem’Hadar reinforcements can come through safely.”
Will Dukat join them, in the end? Will Dukat renounce the Dominion too? Damar feels something choking him whenever he thinks about it, because he’s beginning to suspect that Dukat won’t. The Dominion gave Dukat his position back. They keep him there. “Just—celebrated too much, sir.”
“Not much of a celebration, without a woman or two,” Dukat scoffs. “My friend, you like your kanar a little too much.”
Damar attempts a smile. He keeps his eyes fixed on Dukat so he won’t have to meet Weyoun’s eyes. “I’m getting that feeling.”
“Get to sickbay and get yourself a hypo to sober up,” Dukat tells him. “Then get back to work. There will be time to celebrate later.” He nods at Odo and leaves. Odo’s mouth tightens, but he lowers the forcefield.
Damar stands slowly. His balance is a little better now. His body has gotten better at processing kanar…efficiently. “Which way is sickbay?”
Odo points.