With deliberate concentration, Thriss lifted her head from the pillow. “Is Counselor Matthias out there? I thought I heard her voice.” The room heaved and swayed; she tried merging the two Dizheis rushing toward her with her eyes but her bondmate moved too quickly and the effort made her dizzy. Collapsing into the covers she willed her weighty limbs to float, to dissolve into boneless liquid. Her joints ached; their burning tightness cinched tighter like a thousand pinches in her hands and knees and hips and feet.
Dizhei smoothed her hair with a dry, cool hand. “It’s all right. Don’t push yourself. I know it’s been a hard day.”
She rolled her face down into her pillow and sought the anesthetic of memory. Shar came to her unbidden, and she eagerly allowed the room to recede from her senses as she willed her mind to recall the soft brush of his lips mapping her face. The tone of his voice that he reserved for quiet, dark moments when she molded herself to his back, absorbing with her own body the heat he radiated. Nestling her nose in his chest, inhaling the myriad of scents that were Shar. Breathing came easier as she drifted into dreams. She could almost hear him whispering the silly endearments that they’d invented as aliases, to avoid their clandestine meetings and notes from being discovered.
She missed him. Every part of her was meant to fit with him and without him, she felt adrift. Somewhere among the lights of a billion worlds he wandered where her net couldn’t draw him in. Frozen darkness, like the void of space, extinguished any warmth she could cull from her dreams.
He was lost. He had forgotten her. Since he was far away, she had passed from his memory. He wasn’t coming home. He’d never come home. Not truly. Not to her.
In the haze of sound and light, she imagined she heard Anichent and Dizhei’s voices, elongated and garbled. Home, we need to return home,she heard one of them say. She tried to explain that Shar wasn’t home so it didn’t matter, but it took more strength than she could muster. And Zhadiwas here? That couldn’t be. Thriss squinted at the wall and thought she saw Zhadi.Only Zhadiwore such bright, gaudy colors, colors that Shar thought were ridiculous. But it couldn’t be Zhadi:she was away and wouldn’t be back for days. Unlike Shar, who would never be back.
She wanted sleep. She wanted the dark numbness of sleep so she pushed past the disappointment and the pain and the useless aching prison that was her body…her body that would never carry Shar’s child…and willed it all to fade away into nothingness.
Kira picked her way past the crime scene barriers and into the nearly desolate gallery. A few of Ro’s people and the curator’s staff sorted through the disarray, searching for evidence, and gently handling the remains of Ziyal’s artwork. No one smiled.
Had it been only a few days since she’d walked here with Macetas they both sought to find a workable solution for both their peoples? In spite of the brawl and in spite of Minister Asarem closing down the talks, Kira had remained hopeful until her encounter with Shakaar. Try as she might, she couldn’t understand his untenable machinations. Yes, postponing the normalization of relations until after Bajor joined the Federation made pragmatic sense, but ethical sense? Though they’d had their disagreements—and Kira had found herself increasingly on opposing sides with him—she had always believed Shakaar to be a man of honor, a man who saw his role not only as a policy leader, but as a protector of the people’s integrity. Kira couldn’t see where the integrity was in his present course of action.
She shuffled past hateful words carved into the walls and paintings, over puddles of red paint still drizzling off benches and walls. Beneath the sadistic violence lacerating the room, Kira sensed Ziyal’s spirit—it was weaker, but it lingered. Kira’s eyes watered. Her friend’s paghhad been given a chance to live anew; after a lifetime as a fugitive, she had found a place to rest, where she could be safe from the cruelties of bigotry. And we couldn’t even shield her here,Kira thought sadly.
She wandered from space to space, lost in her thoughts, so when she stumbled upon a civilian she was slow to fix on her identity. This is a closed area. Authorized personnel only,she prepared to say until she recognized she stood face-to-face with Minister Asarem.
They considered each other awkwardly, neither knowing what to say or how to begin. That Asarem had chosen to come here now, to witness this tragedy, spoke well of her to Kira’s way of thinking.
The dullness in Kira’s chest receded, replaced by warmth. Maybe there was a reason why her feet brought her here instead of instinctively guiding her back to her quarters. After that distasteful meeting with Shakaar, she longed to shower, wash her hands of him, but instead she’d ended up taking a different turbolift and walking across the Promenade and now, Asarem Wadeen stood before her, hands laced behind her back, waiting, watching.
Kira didn’t believe in coincidences.
They exchanged civil greetings, words about the shocking nature of the crime and then, again, lapsed into awkward silence. Neither woman moved to leave.
“Minister, do you mind if I take a minute of your time?”
“Do you have another lecture for me?”
“No, more like an apology. I talked to Shakaar.”
“Ah,” she said, understanding.
“The situation is just as you said,” Kira admitted. “But you have to know that in all the years I’ve known Shakaar, to choose such a course isn’t like him.”
Asarem nodded. “We don’t always come down on the same side of things, the first minister and I. He tends to be more progressive while I feel safest with a more conservative, traditional approach. But even knowing our stylistic differences, the way he chose to handle this situation with Ambassador Lang surprised even me.”
Moved by Asarem’s gracious frankness, Kira felt ashamed by her own hasty judgment. “I’m sorry. For what I’ve said. For how I’ve behaved.”
“If I were in your place, I would likely have done as you did,” Asarem said graciously.
“Shakaar did say he thought we’d find we had a lot in common if we had a chance to get to know each other.”
“I believe that as well.”
They continued walking, avoiding looking at each other until Kira stopped. “I know as things presently stand, talks won’t resume. You can’t call Ambassador Lang and start things up again without going against Shakaar’s orders.”
“True,” Asarem conceded.
“But if you knew, in your heart, that Shakaar was wrong and that he was walking contrary to the path the Prophets have set for Bajor, would you go against him?”
“What are you asking?”
“Please. Can we sit?”
They found a small, mostly unsoiled section of carpet in front of a maintenance closet. Pushing aside a broken piece of bench and other dusty refuse, the women dropped down cross-legged to the floor. Kira fumbled around for the words, seeing her own confusion reflected on Asarem’s face until she fell back on the oldest convention of storytelling: start from the beginning. Haltingly, she asked, “Have you ever heard of the Ravinok?”
And from there, Ziyal’s story, as Kira recalled it, tumbled out. She related her own conflicted emotions upon finding Dukat’s illegitimate daughter in the Dozarian system, Dukat’s willingness to murder Ziyal, in cold blood, rather than risk her existence being discovered by his family or the Cardassian government, and Kira’s forcing him to accept responsibility for the unwanted child. Details that faded from her recollections due to the passage of time flooded back to her and Kira found herself explaining Ziyal’s uncomfortable initiation into Bajor’s art community, the prylars who grew to treasure her, and her tentative exploration of a relationship with the Prophets. How Ziyal had come to love Garak, much to the dismay of her friends on the station. Of her final days, when Sisko and Starfleet prepared to retake the station and Dukat was forced to flee or be taken prisoner, how Damar ultimately completed the murder Dukat had originally intended and how it felt to see her lifeless body. And as she spoke, Kira knew her cheeks were wet with tears and that she’d shared thoughts and impressions she’d never before voiced aloud to a virtual stranger, but she felt compelled to continue. When the last words left her lips, Kira felt she’d finally arrived at the place the Prophets intended her to, and the restlessness that had haunted her since Macet’s arrival finally abated.