Chapter Text
Allies.
That’s what they’d called themselves.
Her father had been insistent on the benefits of this move, of the decision of Cardassia to ally itself with the Dominion. The Federation couldn’t be trusted, he told her. They’d sooner see Cardassia beaten down and trod upon for their supposed crimes than treat them as an equal. Once Bajor joined the Federation, that would be the end of Cardassia as they knew it—unless they had the guts to do something unexpected.
Cardassia would win, he said, if only they befriended the one thing the Federation feared.
Ziyal hadn’t known what to say to that when he’d first told her.
They’d be Cardassia’s greatest friends, he’d said. They’d help her rise even higher than she’d ever been able to rise on her own. They’d rule the galaxy, side by side, a power unlike anything the Alpha or Gamma Quadrants had ever seen. Cardassia’s newest friends would be their ticket to glory—and soon, oh soon, Ziyal would be the daughter of the Dominion’s right hand. She would never want for anything ever again, once their friends had control of the Alpha Quadrant. Victory was so close he could almost taste it.
Friends.
Allies was one thing. Sure, not a word she’d ever want to use, but still professional. Still neutral enough. Distant enough.
But friends? Friends? With the Dominion?
It’s… unbelievable.
Almost as unbelievable as the decision for Bajor to also enter into a tentative alliance with the Dominion.
It’s because of this that Nerys was still on the station, as was Odo. Aside from the vacating of the Federation citizens and the Starfleet officers, the station had continued on almost as normal. She says almost because, though there is no real change in the operation of the station on any level that she can see, the Promenade is markedly emptier than it used to be. Many restaurants have shut down, stores locked up, missing their owners who fled during the evacuation.
Garak’s shop is one of them, locked tight, all steel shutters pulled down and closed. He’d warned her as much before the evacuation happened, that he couldn’t stay. She’d agreed with him that it was the safest bet, but for more reasons than just his own safety. Dr. Bashir had been leaving, too, after all. Even ignoring the fact that her father would have surely had him executed, she knew how much Garak would have worried had he not managed to go with the Federation.
It’s been a long few months, since the non-aggression agreement between Bajor and the Dominion had been signed.
She’s only been back on the station for a few days, but it’s strange to see it like this. Even the lighting seems a little colder than she remembers, though the station climate controls seem to have been set at a warmer temperature with the return of the Cardassians. She’d been so looking forward to coming back here—to coming home, in a way—that it’s a little disheartening to come back to… well, this.
Her University semester had ended a week ago, and she’d been looking forward to this trip for weeks. She’d expected something more comforting than this when she came back, but so far all she’s had have been hours and hours to herself, a few awkward chats with Nerys, and an awkward dinner with her father that had been cut short by the Vorta who followed him around.
It’s disappointing.
She’s contemplating calling her roommate—a half-Bajoran, half-Trill girl named Penny who had moved in only a month ago when the Bajoran girl she’d been assigned to live with originally just couldn’t take it anymore. Or so she assumed that was the reason—she hadn’t known about the transfer until after she’d come back from a weekend she’d spent with Nerys in the country. They’d struck up a tentative friendship over the past few weeks, mostly because Penny was just insistently nice, and right now she felt like the only person who might provide any sense of normalcy. Anything to distract her from the strange atmosphere of Deep Space 9—or Terok Nor, as the Cardassians called it.
Her comm device goes off before she can do anything else, lighting up with a message from someone she’d not been expecting to hear from today.
hey!
She blinks down at the message, using her other hand to half-heartedly continue stirring the soup she’s been trying to eat for the past half hour. She debates leaving the message for later, because she still worries here and there about her father finding out she’s been talking to the son of Commander Sisko… but the loneliness hovering over her gets the best of her.
Ziyal smiles a little as she types back a response.
Hi!
The typing bubble pops up for just a moment before her comm device beeps again.
how r u? ur on ds9 again right?
I am, yes… how’d you know? Haha you’re not spying on me, are you?
She doesn’t actually think he’s spying on her, but she does think it’s odd that he’s chosen now to bring this up. She catches herself pulling her jacket closer around her shoulders, glancing around the half-empty Promenade to see if maybe Jake’s trying to lead in to showing up in person. It’s a little nerve wracking, though she’s not really sure why, to think about being seen sitting down with Jake Sisko so openly in the middle of the Promenade.
Not that they’ve ever spent significant amounts of time together in person, now that she thinks about it. She’s pretty sure they’ve only seen each other in person a handful of times, compared to the hours and hours of messaging conversations they’ve had. Staying up late discussing whatever stuffy Bajoran literature she’d been reading for her required elective course with him had been one of the few things that she looked forward to, most days.
Her comm device distracts her from her thoughts.
spying? me?? please lmao u told me about ur trip last week remember?
Oh. Right.
She had done that, hadn’t she?
Another message lights up the device before she has a chance to respond.
i also saw u in the promenade the other day. wanted to say hi but i didnt want to be weird, ya know? plus im not sure u wanna be seen
with me since im Federation lol
Ziyal reaches for her tea to hide her smile, letting out a puff of air from her nose in place of a laugh. Some part of her is surprised that he had the foresight to avoid being seen with her in public, but she supposes that’s how he’s been surviving for this long on his own here. Making himself seem clueless and non-threatening has been the only thing keeping him safe from the Dominion. He’s not stupid, despite how some of his stories with Nog sound.
She bounces her foot as she types her response.
That was probably a smart move with the whole… state of things lately haha. Not that I’d be opposed to us figuring out a way to spend
some time together. My trip has been lonelier than I thought it was going to be
It’s one thing being on Bajor and feeling like an outcast—that had been something she expected. She’d always stuck out, even when she was a child, even though there were other half-Cardassians out there. She knew the stigma well, and so even though it was disappointing that she’d not managed to break through to anyone, she could deal with it. Being alone in a place she’d come to think of as home in the brief time she’d spent here was… worse.
Her eyes are drawn to the closed up shop across from her table—Pendragon’s Curios and Oddities had been a place she’d frequented when she first came to Deep Space 9. The owner, a half-Betazoid named Nox, had become one of her only friends during those first awful weeks. She’d lent Ziyal any book she wanted out of the Rare Books section of the shop, free of charge, and had only asked that she stop by with a tarkalean tea every now and then.
“I’m lonely, too,” she’d said once, without prompting because Betazoids are like that. “You’re good company.”
But Nox isn’t here now. She’d left for Betazed, last she’d heard, with the rest of the evacuees when the Dominion first arrived.
Her comm device goes off again.
yeah? the station is a lot emptier now isn’t it?
She snorts.
Not surprising, given the fact that Cardassia has moved back in, is it?
Jake’s response is swift.
no!
Her brow ridge twitches, and she goes to ask him what he means, but the little Jake Sisko is typing notification appears before she can.
not cardassia - it’s the dominion everyone is afraid of
The Dominion, who her father invited here personally. It’s his fault that they’re in this situation—Cardassia’s fault for agreeing to it instead of standing their ground. It was the only logical decision, her father had said. The only path to redemption, for Cardassia to be the superpower it had always been meant to be. She’d be proud to be Cardassian by the end of this, mark his words.
She wasn’t so sure about that, but what does she know of Cardassian pride? Only what it meant to those who had been hurt by the occupation, what it meant to the Cardassians who saw her as lesser for the Bajoran bumps on her nose. She only knew that her father was proud to be Cardassian, that Garak was so fiercely proud of his home and his people that being even this far away from Cardassia Prime was torture.
But even Garak hadn’t been keen on the Dominion alliance, so she still isn’t sure what to think.
She sets her jaw as she sends a response.
You wouldn’t know there was a difference if you saw the way people look at me lol
Somehow, the side-eyeing had gotten even more pointed and forward than it had been even before the Dominion had come into the picture. The Cardassians on the station couldn’t seem to figure out how to feel about her, and any Bajorans who had been required to stay on board for work reasons—well, all they can see are her ridges, however soft they may be.
The response she gets back from Jake almost makes her laugh.
for real? do i need to kick someone’s butt for u?
Taking another drink to hide her grin, she types her response.
What good would that do, Sisko? You might risk snapping one of your fragile human bones and all the Federation doctors are gone.
She has to fight the urge to smile for several minutes as she waits for him to respond. Teasing had been something she hadn’t quite expected from this when they’d started talking—she’d never really had any friendships quite like this, after all. Nerys didn’t tease her, and neither did her father. Everyone else either didn’t want to talk to her or was too afraid of who she was to be playful like this. Her new roommate, Penny, was the closest any of her other relationships got, but they’d not known each other quite as long as she’d been talking to Jake.
The next response she gets from him is an image with words overlaid on top of it.
The image is just a fairly unflattering picture of his face from the nose up. From the looks of the background, he’s sitting in Quark’s, which is probably one of the only places on the station he feels comfortable at the moment. All that’s written on the picture is:
wow. rude.
Ziyal can’t quite bite back the laugh that bubbles up at the picture. Two Cardassians standing in line for the replicator look over at her curiously, and she has to force herself to start coughing to pretend like she wasn’t laughing. Not that she thinks they’ll actually ask her what’s so funny, but she doesn’t want anything to be suspicious. She doesn’t want anything getting back to her father right now. Not when they’ve only just managed to get back on speaking terms after she refused to return to Cardassia with him. Whatever her father had done during the war, he was still her father and he was still all she had.
She didn’t want to risk ruining that again—not yet, anyway. Not until she’s had a better chance to sort out her own feelings on…
Well, on everything.
Suddenly uncomfortably aware with how very exposed she is sitting here on the Promenade, she decides it’s high time she return to her quarters.
The truth is, despite whatever she’s told Nerys and her father, she’s still not adjusted to being able to live freely. Some days she wakes up still expecting to be in the Breen labor camp, still waiting for a father that she knew in the back of her mind would probably never come. She’d expected to live the rest of her life in that mine, as sad as it had been, and it’s weird being free again. It’s weird to be able to go anywhere she pleases, any time she pleases, and have nothing bad happen to her as a result. She’d never been so free, even before the shipwreck on Dozaria.
It’s weird being around people again, too.
Even with the new, strangely vacant atmosphere left on the station after the Dominion alliance, there are still so many people around all the time. So many people, who all feel like they have some kind of opinion one way or another about her existence. Sure, she’d been around other prisoners and Breen guards back in the labor camp, but that had almost become something she could tune out after 6 years of it. The creeping feeling of being watched—or leered at—trickles down her back at the oddest of times here when she’s just minding her own business, and more often than not she can find at least one person peering curiously at her, trying to figure out why she looked the way she looked.
Of course, she could also be imagining it, she supposes. Perhaps it is all in her head, and no one’s really paying that much attention to her. Maybe she’s just overly paranoid after the uncomfortable looks she’s had to deal with on both Cardassia Prime and Bajor that everyone secretly hates her. Maybe people really don’t care, and she’s just too self-absorbed to believe otherwise.
Or maybe not. Maybe she’ll always be an outsider no matter where she goes, no matter what she does, and she’ll just have to get used to it.
Either way, she’s done with the Promenade for the day, and she’s ready to retreat back into solitude for the rest of the night. Hopefully enough people have seen her out and about to assuage any concern Nerys might have about her isolating herself that she wouldn’t be getting any surprise visits or lectures about taking proper care of herself.
Not that she doesn’t appreciate the worry. Of course, she does. She’s also very aware that, had Nerys not been there when her father found her in that mine, she herself would be very much dead.
Just… gone. She’d be gone without Nerys.
...she needs to get out of the public eye for a bit.
Ziyal manages to make it to her quarters just as the familiar, uncomfortable tightness in her chest makes it impossible to keep her face trained into the careful, neutral mask she’s constructed to keep herself out of trouble in public. The door slides shut with a quiet whoosh behind her, and she gasps in a rough breath of air at the sound. She leans back against the cool metal for a moment, closing her eyes and listening to the sudden, frantic beating of her heart in her chest.
Though the station is no longer controlled by the Bajorans, the temperature still hovers a bit cooler than is comfortable for most Cardassians. She’s a bit warmer-blooded than full Cardassians, but the chill has finally settled into her skin to a point where it’s unpleasant. The shiver that runs up her spine is the first sign that the tightness in her chest is something more than she’d originally thought, and she finally caves to the crawling feeling just under her skin.
Temperature up. Lights down. Breathe. Count backwards from ten.
She’s been fighting this off for the past few days. The fact that it’s finally come to a head when her thoughts had taken such a sour turn isn’t surprising, but…
10.
Her heart beats unsteadily in her chest, fluttering like a panicked bird in a cage.
9.
Her palms are starting to sweat. Even the strongest of her Cardassian genes can’t stop the slickness between her fingers.
8.
She closes her eyes and tries to ignore the uncomfortable fullness behind her eardrums.
7.
We’re not gonna faint. We’re not gonna faint. We’re not gonna faint.
6.
Her comm device chimes from her wrist again, but she barely hears it. The ringing in her ears has crescendoed to a mind-numbing level, and all she can hear around it is the thudding of her heartbeat.
5.
Inhale. Balikam. Balikam. Balikam. Exhale.
4.
The ringing fades as she takes another slow, shaky breath. She doesn’t open her eyes, but her awareness of her surroundings is coming back into focus.
3.
Under her breath, she hums a few notes of a melody she’s long-since forgotten. Something her mother used to sing for her when she was a baby that has always helped her through moments like this - even back in the mines.
2.
She can feel the floor beneath her feet. Her lips tingle. The comm device on her arm chimes with another notification.
1.
She takes another slow breath and opens her eyes.
The world doesn’t spin anymore, and though she still feels a little shaky, her head is clear enough to get her from the front door to her little sofa by the window. She collapses onto it, sinking into the cushions as much as the unforgiving material will allow. Rubbing tiredly at her face, she tries to will away the last of the shakiness from the episode. She’d gotten so good at controlling them back in the labor camp, but somehow being free has made it that much harder to keep herself calm and collected. The fact that she was able to stop this one in its tracks isn’t really a good sign, either—it’s just putting off the inevitable. Every episode she fights off adds to the buildup of nerves for the middle of the night breakdown she’s got on the way.
Her comm device chimes once more, somehow louder and more insistent than the last two times. As her heartbeat slows, she finally finds it in her to look down at the device.
Jake had sent her several messages a few minutes apart during her walk home. The first, he sent after she didn’t answer the picture message he’d sent for several minutes.
anyway.. what have u been up to since u got back?
The next was sent a few seconds later, accompanied by a little yellow smiling face.
think u might wanna drop by quark’s tonight? i’ll buy ! :D
The last, final message was just sent, several minutes after the previous one. She frowns a little at it, a pang of unexpected guilt twinging in her chest.
sorry if anything i said was weird i havent spoken to anyone my own age in a while lol
She hadn’t expected the invitation, certainly, but he has no reason to apologize. She had no idea how it might be perceived as weird for him to invite her out for drinks—it’s more than anyone else her own age has in…
...well, in ever.
Ziyal hurries to type another message back to him. As much time as she’d spent stewing over people brushing her off at the university on Bajor, she didn’t want Jake to feel the same way over her. Especially since she wasn’t trying to brush him off.
No, it’s okay! I was just walking back to my quarters and didn’t see your messages until just now.
He responds faster than she’d been expecting, and it makes her lips twitch a little, the ghost of a smile trying to curl the corners of her mouth. Though she’s still feeling off, it’s so incredible to have someone so worried about how she feels that she can’t quite bite back the little flutter of excitement in her gut as he sends his response.
oh good!! im glad i didn’t make u uncomfortable lol
The padd beeps again almost immediately.
ur probably all settled in for the night now tho so nvm about quark’s
It surprises her, still, how some people care about her comfort, and put her comfort before their own wants. They’re few and a bit far between, but she’d been in that labor camp for 6 years, and it was hard to remember what it was like to have her feelings respected, to have people care about her feelings. Even before the labor camp, she’d still had less of a say in what she did and what happened to her than, say, her father had because of who she was. Her mother being a Bajoran under her father’s rule had been unfair even at the best of times, and that meant they’d ended up with far less freedoms than they would have if she’d been full Cardassian.
She shakes herself out of that dreary train of thought before it can go any further. Spiraling won’t do her any real good, and she doesn’t want to hold onto that weird little pit of resentment in her gut. Not when her father is trying so hard to make her feel loved—that’s far more than a lot of other people have in their lives. She should be grateful to have what she does have, and not dwell on what could have been.
...maybe a night out with Jake wouldn’t be such a bad idea. She could really go for a drink and a distraction right now anyway.
As tired as she is of being around people, she’s even more tired of being alone.