help_haiti lightning round fic for trascendenza
I'm actually quite nervous about posting this. The request I got was for either Kira/Ziyal or warm gen featuring the two. What resulted was semidark introspection from Ziyal's POV, though there's definitely some warm fuzziness in there, as well as Ziyal/Kira. This was written for trascendenza via the lightning round at help_haiti. I really, really hope it works.
Title: Colored Canvas
Author: Chanter
Fandom: DS9
Rating: PG
Pairings: understated Ziyal/Kira
Summary: Tora Ziyal has three constants in her universe.
1100 words
Sometimes, if she spends too many days planetside with her studies, Tora Ziyal forgets what it’s like to be wanted in a room.
She’s used to glares, short sentences, icy looks thrown at her from halfway down corridors, snubs and turned faces and remarks made just loudly enough to carry to her as she passes. Nose ridges and spoons, the other students say, don’t go together well. At least, so the plainly-etched implication goes, nose ridges and spoons shouldn’t do. And when they do, when they try, even when they don’t try, the end results-well. There are edges and angles that defy common realities, then, the awareness of the occupied and the logic of the oppressor, and when you’re the wrong shape for either one, inside and out? Then prophets know you really don’t fit anywhere. And you really don’t belong anywhere.
And well you shouldn’t, if you’re a diametric mismatch like Ziyal is. So they tell her, even when no one’s opened their mouth.
So they say.
Nobody explains things; not aloud, not in precise language, not in so many words. But Ziyal learns anyway, and learns fast. Ziyal knows she’s marked in red, sketched in caricature in a hundred hundred minds, drawn in broad watercolor brushstrokes that proclaim her half a killer just for existing. Ziyal knows nearly everyone brands her something evil, something traitorous, something tainted and fluctuating between poor unfortunate and blood collaborator, the instant they see her. It’s no secret who her father is. It’s no secret what her father did. Even when she’s on the station she gets looks, though they’re not half so cold as the glances she’s given on the surface. She only vaguely suspects that the presence of the Emissary is what’s tempering people’s reactions to her. Whatever the cause, Ziyal thinks, she doesn’t mind the effect.
Some days it seems as though everyone has a story, and in this world’s reach, at this time, maybe everyone does. On Bajor, common knowledge and common reality parallel each other closely enough to bump shoulders on every other step. The truth is bold, bold as brushstrokes in red; Gul Dukat is the former overseer with the velvet voice and the oily, carefully placating ways. Everyone knows about him; about his dreams, and about his rhetoric, and about the scores and hundreds and thousands of good people he ruled, ruled down into the soil with his orders and his ideas and his means, ruled so hard they never got up again. None of it’s hyperbole. And just because the occupation’s ended doesn’t mean he’s gone away. It’s equally plain what her father does now - he with his skirmishes and alliances and cold, cold reasons. Truth’s the best they can offer, this time just like the last time and here, on this station, nobody’s holding it back. Citizens everywhere know it and tell it; Starfleet officers know it and stand firm; the Emissary knows it and never denies the knowledge.
The truth is bold as brushstrokes in red: she’s the overseer’s daughter.
No one asks her why she still loves him. No one asks her how she still can. For all their familiarity with recent history - maybe because of it, Ziyal isn’t sure - they don’t question her openly about her devotion to her father. When she thinks about it, and she does more often than she’d like, ziyal finds that strange. It doesn’t feel like denial; nothing the people of Bajor do feels like denial, ever. In this system, in this time, reality is written in large letters, visible to all eyes and maybe, she muses, that’s why she thinks it’s so unusual when one vital detail isn’t talked about. Then again, maybe it’s only a vital detail to her. Here, Gul ducat is a malevolent symbol in dark velvet, inside and out. Here, Tora Ziyal is a patchwork, the coltish, awkward child of two stars - the dwarf snuffed, the giant slowly burning. No one asks how it’s possible for her to love her father.
In her bleaker moments, Ziyal thinks that no one asks because no one wants to know.
Ziyal is no stranger to living on, living with, what little she can. If her childhood hadn’t taught her as much, life on a planet slowly rebuilding itself, pulling itself upright by force of character and strength of prayer certainly would have. Ziyal has no illusions about living on lean rations, physically or otherwise. In the end, she’s sure of three things. She has her father, whether or not he wants her; she has her artwork, and she has Kira. The overseer, the talent, and the truth.
The truth is written in red.
The truth is, Major Kira knows Ziyal’s story, knows it in all it’s aspects - facts and anecdotes and bloodlines, and Kira’s never been cold toward her. Kira’s never once treated her like half a killer, never once not wanted her in a room. She’d have reason to as much as anyone, reason and more. Kira has years with the Resistance, life as a refugee, identity, personal history, simple principle to fuel her loathing. She could easily hate Ziyal for her family’s fate, or her world’s, or the girlhood she scratched out of the ashes with a phaser in her hand. Kira could hate Ziyal for the half of Ziyal that is the oppressor rather than the oppressed. Kira could hate Ziyal for the half of Ziyal that is Dukat. But she doesn’t.
She never has.
If she ever tried, and she never will, to say she wasn’t grateful for all three constants in her world, all three certainties in her reality, Ziyal knows she’d be a liar. The first is half her DNA, moral greyscale, killer’s genes or not. If she denied him, she’d be denying half of herself. The second is at her core, colors and patterns growing green as Bajor’s fields, real as a breath. Denying it would be like denying her mother had existed. The third is someone to aspire to, someone to take after. The third is the star by which, by whom, ziyal sets her course.
The third is a paragon.
A paragon in red.
Ziyal and Nerys are both like Bajor, in a way. One is plain-spoken by nature, and the other’s never learned how to be anything else. Reality and knowledge treat them identically; they brush sleeves and rub noses when either woman is around. The way she sees it, Ziyal has three constants in her universe, three reasons at her center, three aspects to herself. Grey, green, and red.
She’s right.
Title: Colored Canvas
Author: Chanter
Fandom: DS9
Rating: PG
Pairings: understated Ziyal/Kira
Summary: Tora Ziyal has three constants in her universe.
1100 words
Sometimes, if she spends too many days planetside with her studies, Tora Ziyal forgets what it’s like to be wanted in a room.
She’s used to glares, short sentences, icy looks thrown at her from halfway down corridors, snubs and turned faces and remarks made just loudly enough to carry to her as she passes. Nose ridges and spoons, the other students say, don’t go together well. At least, so the plainly-etched implication goes, nose ridges and spoons shouldn’t do. And when they do, when they try, even when they don’t try, the end results-well. There are edges and angles that defy common realities, then, the awareness of the occupied and the logic of the oppressor, and when you’re the wrong shape for either one, inside and out? Then prophets know you really don’t fit anywhere. And you really don’t belong anywhere.
And well you shouldn’t, if you’re a diametric mismatch like Ziyal is. So they tell her, even when no one’s opened their mouth.
So they say.
Nobody explains things; not aloud, not in precise language, not in so many words. But Ziyal learns anyway, and learns fast. Ziyal knows she’s marked in red, sketched in caricature in a hundred hundred minds, drawn in broad watercolor brushstrokes that proclaim her half a killer just for existing. Ziyal knows nearly everyone brands her something evil, something traitorous, something tainted and fluctuating between poor unfortunate and blood collaborator, the instant they see her. It’s no secret who her father is. It’s no secret what her father did. Even when she’s on the station she gets looks, though they’re not half so cold as the glances she’s given on the surface. She only vaguely suspects that the presence of the Emissary is what’s tempering people’s reactions to her. Whatever the cause, Ziyal thinks, she doesn’t mind the effect.
Some days it seems as though everyone has a story, and in this world’s reach, at this time, maybe everyone does. On Bajor, common knowledge and common reality parallel each other closely enough to bump shoulders on every other step. The truth is bold, bold as brushstrokes in red; Gul Dukat is the former overseer with the velvet voice and the oily, carefully placating ways. Everyone knows about him; about his dreams, and about his rhetoric, and about the scores and hundreds and thousands of good people he ruled, ruled down into the soil with his orders and his ideas and his means, ruled so hard they never got up again. None of it’s hyperbole. And just because the occupation’s ended doesn’t mean he’s gone away. It’s equally plain what her father does now - he with his skirmishes and alliances and cold, cold reasons. Truth’s the best they can offer, this time just like the last time and here, on this station, nobody’s holding it back. Citizens everywhere know it and tell it; Starfleet officers know it and stand firm; the Emissary knows it and never denies the knowledge.
The truth is bold as brushstrokes in red: she’s the overseer’s daughter.
No one asks her why she still loves him. No one asks her how she still can. For all their familiarity with recent history - maybe because of it, Ziyal isn’t sure - they don’t question her openly about her devotion to her father. When she thinks about it, and she does more often than she’d like, ziyal finds that strange. It doesn’t feel like denial; nothing the people of Bajor do feels like denial, ever. In this system, in this time, reality is written in large letters, visible to all eyes and maybe, she muses, that’s why she thinks it’s so unusual when one vital detail isn’t talked about. Then again, maybe it’s only a vital detail to her. Here, Gul ducat is a malevolent symbol in dark velvet, inside and out. Here, Tora Ziyal is a patchwork, the coltish, awkward child of two stars - the dwarf snuffed, the giant slowly burning. No one asks how it’s possible for her to love her father.
In her bleaker moments, Ziyal thinks that no one asks because no one wants to know.
Ziyal is no stranger to living on, living with, what little she can. If her childhood hadn’t taught her as much, life on a planet slowly rebuilding itself, pulling itself upright by force of character and strength of prayer certainly would have. Ziyal has no illusions about living on lean rations, physically or otherwise. In the end, she’s sure of three things. She has her father, whether or not he wants her; she has her artwork, and she has Kira. The overseer, the talent, and the truth.
The truth is written in red.
The truth is, Major Kira knows Ziyal’s story, knows it in all it’s aspects - facts and anecdotes and bloodlines, and Kira’s never been cold toward her. Kira’s never once treated her like half a killer, never once not wanted her in a room. She’d have reason to as much as anyone, reason and more. Kira has years with the Resistance, life as a refugee, identity, personal history, simple principle to fuel her loathing. She could easily hate Ziyal for her family’s fate, or her world’s, or the girlhood she scratched out of the ashes with a phaser in her hand. Kira could hate Ziyal for the half of Ziyal that is the oppressor rather than the oppressed. Kira could hate Ziyal for the half of Ziyal that is Dukat. But she doesn’t.
She never has.
If she ever tried, and she never will, to say she wasn’t grateful for all three constants in her world, all three certainties in her reality, Ziyal knows she’d be a liar. The first is half her DNA, moral greyscale, killer’s genes or not. If she denied him, she’d be denying half of herself. The second is at her core, colors and patterns growing green as Bajor’s fields, real as a breath. Denying it would be like denying her mother had existed. The third is someone to aspire to, someone to take after. The third is the star by which, by whom, ziyal sets her course.
The third is a paragon.
A paragon in red.
Ziyal and Nerys are both like Bajor, in a way. One is plain-spoken by nature, and the other’s never learned how to be anything else. Reality and knowledge treat them identically; they brush sleeves and rub noses when either woman is around. The way she sees it, Ziyal has three constants in her universe, three reasons at her center, three aspects to herself. Grey, green, and red.
She’s right.