Chapter Text
In an ideal world, the Jem’Hadar would all have died quietly, out of the way, so that their bodies could be stored in a cargo bay or otherwise dealt with efficiently without anyone noticing. Unfortunately, it isn’t quite that quick, which means that six of them drop dead while looming in Quark’s. Quark shouts, “You can’t do that in here!” and “Someone tell Odo I didn’t do this!”
At least the actual death is swift. Damar sees no sign of pain, or even the discomfort that they do occasionally display, on their faces. He can’t quite tell if he feels some—emotion—but Weyoun is staring at them with obvious distress. “Oh dear,” he says, and his voice is high. “Oh dear,” he repeats.
“Must have been a bad batch of white,” someone says—from Rusot’s old unit—and when Damar meets his eyes, the man nods very slightly. “Too bad.”
“Must have been,” Weyoun says. He’s too obvious—how did Weyoun Five manage to be so deceitful, when this Weyoun seems to be incapable of hiding his feelings? His hands are betraying the slightest tremor.
Odo is never far from Quark’s. “What’s all this?” he demands. “More fighting in your bar, Quark?”
“It’s not my fault! They just—dropped dead!”
“Maybe you added a little something extra to their drinks.”
“They don’t drink! I hadn’t served them anything!”
“Hmph.” Odo glances up at the second level, ever so briefly, and Damar sees Kira there. What does she actually think about it? He was far from Bajor during most of the Occupation, but he knows the tactics that her terrorist cell used—the incidental civilian death toll deemed necessary to drive the Cardassians from Bajor. And these aren’t civilians. “Well, I suppose we’d better get things cleaned up.” He gestures at Damar and three of the other Cardassian soldiers. “You, and you, help me with these bodies.”
They pile the bodies in a heap. Odo calls for an emergency transport, and does indeed transport them all—including Odo, Damar, and the others—into a cargo bay. He supposes Odo is the closest thing to one of their gods, here on the station. Maybe that’s something they would care about. He doesn’t have time to ponder it, though. The entirety of the Jem’Hadar presence on the station appears to have been reduced to these corpses laid out in the cargo bay. “Is this all of them?” Damar asks. He’s having—more of an emotional reaction than he’d hoped. He would have fired on every single one of these Jem’Hadar, had they been pointing a disruptor at anyone on his side. He would have destroyed a ship full of them if he found it disabled. He’s already in contact with Cardassian rebel forces off the station to arrange the bombing of two different Jem’Hadar hatcheries. This feels—he’s glad Weyoun isn’t here in this room.
“It would appear so,” Odo says. “Accelerating the timeline, are we?”
None of the other Cardassians look surprised. “What should we do about the bodies?”
Damar looks to Odo, who stares blankly back at him. “Do they have some kind of—death tradition?”
“Why would you expect me to know?”
It’s not as though the Jem’Hadar have told anyone about their cultural rituals, if they even have them. Cardassian funeral practices would be both inappropriate and impractical. “Incinerate them,” he says. At least some cultures treat fire as a kind of funereal purification. “Tell Dukat that they’re out scouting, if he asks.”
He leaves the other soldiers to dispose of the bodies and leaves the cargo bay with Odo. “I suppose you disapprove.”
Odo’s face is impassive. “I’m certainly not surprised.”
Damar tries not to think about it. “Of course.” He takes a deep breath. “Things will be—precarious for the next few days.”
“You mean that without the Jem’Hadar here, the Cardassians will remind themselves that they’re superior to the Bajorans and run rampant on the station? Yes, I would think so.”
“Weyoun—”
“You’d better hope that Weyoun is better at persuading Dukat to intervene than you are. Since you’ve successfully convinced most of the people on this station that they don’t need to consider the Dominion anymore.”
And there, there’s that stab of fear again that someone will try to kill Weyoun. “I’ll try to—remind everyone that Weyoun gives us the element of surprise.” He swallows. “I would appreciate it if you could do the same.”
“Hmph.” Odo crosses his arms. “You’re an odd one, Damar.”
“As are you.” Damar was banished from Terok Nor to the Federation border long before Odo arrived.
“Not one that I would have expected to betray your own commander.”
Damar grabs Odo hard by the arm. “I’m not betraying him.”
“I doubt he’ll see it that way.” Odo looks down at Damar’s hand on his arm and doesn’t bother to try to remove it.
“He—the Dominion tricked him.” It sounds like a rationalization even as Damar says it. He knows the truth. Dukat sold Cardassia out to the Dominion to regain his old position. “Misled him. He’ll be glad, when Cardassia is free.”
“Oh? When the Detapa Council is re-established, I suppose? Is that what you’re all fighting for? Civilian government?”
The soldier in Damar bristles at the idea. The engineer in him wonders what Cardassia under the Council might look like, if they’re given the opportunity to govern. “We’ll figure it out when we’re free,” he snaps.
“Hmph. Of course.” Odo looks unconvinced, but then he always looks unconvinced. “If that’s all?”
Damar releases him. Would his grip have left a bruise, if Odo were human? Can changelings bruise?
He spends much of the day trying to move subtly from group to group of Cardassian soldiers, trying to feel out their opinions. He has to distinguish between those who simply hate the Jem’Hadar—that is, all Cardassians—from those who are ready to leave the alliance with the Dominion. It’s exhausting, and he does share a glass or two of kanar with several of them, but he keeps himself in check—mostly by thinking about his promise to Weyoun. As he’s leaving, Quark says, “Damar, usually you’re a better customer than this?”
He works on smiling, though his face is tired of trying to smile. “I’ve sampled just about everything you have to offer, Quark. I’m not sure your selection of kanar has anything new to offer me.”
“I see.” Quark’s smile always shows so many teeth. “Root beer?”
“Root—beer?” Quark offered it to Weyoun, he remembers, but all Damar noticed was that Weyoun didn’t like it.
“Medicinal,” Quark assures him. “Non-alcoholic,” he hisses.
What Damar really wants is to go h—to Weyoun’s quarters. But he’s walking a fine line between his old jovial drunken self and his new persona, and so he says, “I’m not paying for it, Quark.”
“On the house,” Quark says, and it looks like it’s physically painful for him to speak the words. He lifts a glass bottle up from beneath the bar and pops the top. It’s dark and thin and it fizzes as he pours it. He inhales the smell and almost looks—melancholy?
Damar accepts the glass and swirls the liquid in it a little. “Is this a traditional Ferengi beverage?”
Quark lowers his voice. “Human.”
Damar has the glass halfway to his mouth and freezes. “You’re trying to poison me.”
“Your countrymen have drunk it without dying,” Quark assures him. “Some of them even claim to enjoy it.”
He doesn’t think Quark would actually try to poison him, especially not now. Damar tosses back most of it and chokes on it, barely managing not to spit it out. “That’s—vile.”
“Yes,” Quark says sadly. “But I’ve been thinning the cheapest kanar with it and no one has noticed.” At Damar’s expression, he adds, “Never yours! But I have hundreds of cases of the stuff. I have to get rid of it somehow.”
Damar sips the tiniest bit of what’s left in his glass. “I would notice this even in replicator-quality kanar,” he says. “I’m confident.”
“The chemical composition is pretty close, actually.” Quark refills his glass before he can protest. “No bubbles in kanar, of course.”
Even as his new responsible self, Damar isn’t good at turning down a drink when it’s put in front of him. He can only imagine how much he told Quark in the old days, when he was half-drunk at all times and desperate to tell someone something. The bubbles go up his nose and he sneezes. Further down the bar, a glinn he doesn’t recognize laughs and then quickly stifles it. “Come, come.” Damar beckons him. “It’s Quark’s latest poison, root beer. You have to be quite the man to drink it.”
If Quark’s face ever showed gratitude, he would look grateful now, as ten Cardassians suddenly crowd the bar, demanding glasses of root beer to chase their kanar. Damar takes a certain amount of pleasure in watching them, though he feels very old. It’s a testament to the war that most of these men are younger than he was when he first came to Terok Nor. That was nearly thirty years ago, and he wonders what it would have been like, if he’d been here for more than two years of the Occupation. Do these gils and glinns look around and feel comfortable? Did they grow up hearing stories of the Occupation and expect deployment to Bajor? Would they trust their commanders, if not for the rebellion fomenting? Would they be ready to die?
Kanar used to blunt questions like that. He’s tired of death. He doesn’t want to think about the Jem’Hadar no longer taking up space in the cargo bay. He doesn’t want to see these men throw themselves bodily into battle like kotra pawns. He doesn’t want anyone more to die, and he knows there are millions, if not billions, of deaths yet to come.
“Thank you for the drink,” he tells Quark, and slides the empty glass back to him. His tongue is coated in the flavor of root beer. It’s growing on him.
“Thanks for the free advertising,” Quark says.
Damar walks to the turbolift only to find Major Kira about to board it. There’s a fraught moment and then he says, “Go ahead, I can wait.” He can see how tense her body is.
“No. There’s enough room for both of us.”
He walks onto the turbolift cautiously, making sure to leave space between them. They have an uneasy kind of détente, he and Kira. “You should be careful, especially now. Dukat is—obsessed with you,” he warns, out of some bizarre sense of obligation.
Kira’s face betrays her disgust. “I know.” She’s silent for a moment and then says, “Did you know he and my mother were—” She can’t say it. “He told me himself. Like it would make us—closer.”
He wants to say something, but what is there to say? That he disapproved? That not all of them did it? None of that matters. “I know.” The root beer has turned sour in his mouth. “Or—I knew.”
“What heroes you all were,” Kira spits.
Damar can still remember, distantly, the hatred he felt for the Bajorans after he lost Veja. It all feels very far away now. “Do you think we should have—kept the Jem’Hadar alive, somehow? Would you have?”
“What, do you need my approval for your decision to execute them?”
He wishes he’d drunk more kanar at Quark’s. A lot more. “Weyoun feels bad about it.”
Kira snorts. “I didn’t know Vorta could feel bad. I didn’t know Cardassians could feel bad.”
“Weyoun is different from the other Vorta,” Damar insists.
“You’ve said.” Kira looks up at him. “You’re very sure.”
What does it cost him, to admit it to her? “I’m—betting my life on it. All our lives. I don’t want anyone else to die.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “If he dies—”
Kira sighs. “Would you trade his life for Cardassian freedom? If it came down to that?”
The question is paralyzing. It should be easy. “Weyoun Five would have killed me, if Dukat hadn’t killed him first.” Hardly a secret.
“That’s not what I asked.” If she were anyone else—if he were anyone else—he thinks she’d put a hand on his shoulder. Offer some kind of—comfort?
“I can’t—” He clenches a fist. “I would trade my life.”
“That’s not what I asked,” she says again, and her voice is hard. “What if that’s all that the Dominion wanted? Their wayward Vorta back, in exchange for Cardassian freedom?”
“I would have to.” It sounds like someone else’s voice. “I would do it.”
“Good.”
“Don’t you think that’s—bad? The unfeeling Cardassian, when it comes down to it? Willing to trade away my lo—” He can’t finish it.
There’s some kind of compassion in Kira’s eyes, or as much as she can muster for someone like him. “Not to win a war,” she says. “When I was in the Resistance, we all knew it had to be that way. No one person could be more important than the cause. No matter how much you loved them.” She clears her throat. “Kai Opaka knew that,” she says, and she isn’t talking to him anymore.
“I—don’t know if he would say the same,” Damar says.
“I suppose you like that.”
“I have to tell him it can’t be that way.” It sounds almost like a question as he says it, and he finds himself looking to Kira for confirmation. “He’s not like—like we are.” She doesn’t hit him for saying ‘we.’ “The Vorta—all they have are their gods. They don’t spend time together. They don’t have relationships with each other.”
“He doesn’t care, you mean. About which side wins, beyond what happens to you.”
“Do you know, I regret every time I talk to you about him.” Damar does.
“What, because you think I’ll give a kill order if I decide he’s dangerous? You have a strange idea of who I am, Damar.”
Damar can admit, though certainly not to her, that he thinks Kira is one of the strongest people he’s ever met. Whether or not he likes her. “I heard you and Dukat talking. On our bird of prey. You know how to—fight.”
“You heard Dukat talking.” Kira shakes her head. “The Occupation is over. Some of us figured out a way to grow. Some people didn’t.”
“So you would have found another solution for the Jem’Hadar.”
He almost has to look away from the fierceness of her eyes. “I’m glad I didn’t have to decide.”