Fool me once, shame on you...

[ma_capitaine]

Who:  Kathryn Janeway, Gul Dukat, Elim Garak
Where: Inside Dukat's Room, Hallways and Lift
When:  Late Afternoon, following the events of this post
What:  In trying to fix the mess the hotel has caused, Janeway bites off more than she can chew again, Dukat evens the score, and Garak settles some accounts.

Comments

[shadowed_scales]

Dukat had not been idle while she slept off the heavy stun from the doctor's phaser, and oh, how he had relished the irony of that, a Federation weapon used to down a Starfleet officer. It seemed fitting. It completed the grudge circle in a way that his (mostly) ordered Cardassian mind found most agreeable

[ma_capitaine]

Janeway suppressed a breath of exasperation. She did not want to talk about Kowalski. Has he followed her orders, things would not have progressed as far as they had. Now Julian was hobbling about the hotel with a concussion and she had stupidly walked into a mad man's room.

"Did you take the medical kit?" Janeway asked, deciding to get to the point and not waste time running circles around the elephant in the room with them. "Having seen Bashir, I thought it would be a courtesy to bring you a kit. And your weapon, as I promised." She didn't need to add any quip about the fact Dukat had already acquired a new phaser.

[shadowed_scales]

"We Cardassians are made of a little sterner stuff. You shouldn't have worried about me." She really shouldn't have, he reflected, almost laughing aloud again. "I notice it only functions on the stun setting." He packed enough implication in his tone of voice to imply he had tried a higher setting, perhaps on her while she lay helpless. "Whose handiwork was that, I wonder?" he drawled.

[ma_capitaine]

Janeway quirked a brow, though the Cardassian obviously couldn't see it. She remained calm, mostly because there had been a whole hell of a lot worse than a mentally unstable Cardassian.

"Precaution. Even my own has been disabled to it's lowest setting." Janeway admitted. There really was no point in lying about it. But she wasn't going to give him the reason why. Should the hotel decide it fit to bless her with a hallucination, the last thing she wanted to end up doing was killing a bystander thinking they were a Borg drone.

"I'm certain you are fully capable of fixing it. If not, I'm sure Bashir will do it for you once his head has stopped spinning."

[ma_capitaine]

Janeway didn't flinch when the lights went out, but she choose to remain still. She set her head down from where it had been craned to watch the Cardassian and picked a point on the wall to stare at in hopes her eyes would adjust.

It was probably the darkest room she had been in since coming here. Even at night she left something on to push away the darkness. Her aversion to sleep was coupled with the desire not to close her eyes...because even awake the horrors she had seen and done came back in startling clarity.

She listened to him move, felt her heart sputter when he said he wasn't asking about the Delta Quadrant.

What Dukat described about the pagh-wraiths was eerily similar to her current situation. But from what Janeway knew of history, he welcomed it. The hotel had striped people of their gifts. What the Cardassian probably heard was his own insanity talking back to him.

She was in the middle of thinking that maybe she was a little be insane herself when Dukat said, "Let's talk about the Alpha Quadrant. And the Borg."

[shadowed_scales]

He made a small sound of negation. "Mnh. That's not what my associates tell me. You see, they know things, and thanks to them, so do I."

He shook his head despite the fact that she couldn't see it. "I don't think Picard would be in this situation, even given his experiences with Gul Madred. Picard has something you don't, Janeway. Humility."

[ma_capitaine]

Janeway's eyes narrowed slightly. At best now she could only make out vague shapes and nothing more...and Dukat was completely out of her line of sight. She bit back a retort, given that Picard himself had done something incredibly stupid by turning himself back into Locutus before stopping the first new queen.

Something a bit more chilling had just been said.

Janeway's common sense kicked into gear and pushed itself to the forefront of her mind, kicking away ghosts and scrambling to assert itself. She took a slow breath and said, with as much measure as she could. "I had enough humility to come up here and right wrongs and make peace instead of fighting with you more." She said. "Because I had every intention of doing so until Bashir explained it to me."

[shadowed_scales]

"Yes, that was quite civil of you, actually," he said, sounding more conciliatory. He also sounded closer to the bed opposite the side to which her face was turned. "It was less civil of me not to show my gratitude." He reached out then and ran long fingers lightly up her calf. "Would you like more gratitude?"

Squeezing once, he withdrew the touch only to sit on the edge of the mattress, the bed shifting with his weight. "How have you been sleeping lately?" His voice shifted again, solicitous concern. It really was just as well that she couldn't see his eyes.

[code_obsidian]

"No," Garak said sharply, eyes beginning to smolder. "It couldn't have been Damar," he agreed. "I do have to give you credit where it's due, also. You trained him beautifully, fed him that hard party line for years, groomed him to be the perfect tool." His mouth tightened. "And he was. My reputation was too tainted by the past, but Damar? He was the old glory, embodied everything we aspired to for so long. They rallied behind him. It didn't take much. Not much at all to persuade him to die for Cardassia. I think...he had been looking for a way to redeem himself after Ziyal. You knew him better. What do you think?"

[shadowed_scales]

"I think you don't have the right to say her name," Dukat snapped before he could stop himself. He pulled himself back under control quickly, knowing Garak sought to goad him. "Damar did what he did out of love for Cardassia. Do you honestly expect me to be surprised that he lost his life in service? You're right. It's exactly what I taught him, and I never blamed him for being a good soldier."

He glared at him for a moment before turning his attention to Janeway. "Since he insists on speaking of it, did your newfound friend tell you how he seduced a twenty year old girl after murdering her grandfather? Say whatever you like of me or any other Cardassian, Janeway, but Ziyal was innocent. And that vole..." he jabbed a finger toward Garak, "took unspeakable liberties."

[ma_capitaine]

Janeway didn't shy away from the Cardassian's gaze and listened to what he was saying. She glanced at Garak, mostly seeing his shoulder and the back of his head and not his face before looking back at Dukat.

"Fathers tend to be overly critical of whom their daughters choose to associate with." Janeway said, coolly. "If she was happy, then there is nothing I can say on the matter. I was fifty thousand light-years away when the events of the Dominion War took place, or did your pagh wraiths forget to remind you?"

[code_obsidian]

"Think whatever you want of me," Garak said. "But that's your own daughter you're slandering, Dukat. Naprem raised her better than that, not that you would ever understand that situation. She's far beyond either of us now.

"You asked who appointed me Ambassador. Alon Ghemor, our duly elected castellan after the war." Garak inhaled deeply. "You left a legacy. You got what you always wanted, your name on every Cardassian's lips, from Cardassia City to Kulat. All seven billion of us, give or take a few."

[only_human]

Julian was in 'professional doctor mode' now and went about assessing the situation with confidence and authority. Julian knew triage. He was an expert. To glance at a crowd of victims of a disaster and be able to ascertain which patients needed immediate medical care and which ones could wait a reasonable amount of time for treatment was vital for someone operating as a CMO on a busy station such as Deep Space Nine

[code_obsidian]

Garak cleaned his hand thoroughly and clenched a clean washcloth to staunch the bleeding. It had been a shallow cut that wouldn't need anything beyond basic attention to keep it from getting infected. He knew, however, that the doctor and possibly the admiral would worry if he didn't at least give Bashir a chance to look at it. He had caused both of them enough grief for one night.

Emerging back into the front room, he held his hand out and peeled back the washcloth enough so that Bashir could see the cut. He refrained from giving his own opinion of it other than to say, "It's not very painful. I'm not concerned about it."

[ma_capitaine]

Janeway looked down at her wrists for a moment and then back at Bashir. There was no point in hiding it or trying to make excuses. She started to offer Bashir one when Garak reentered the room to show his wounded hand to the doctor. She stepped back for him to see to the Cardassian first.

[only_human]

Julian was pleasantly surprised to see Garak emerge from his room. Usually, when wanting to be alone, the tailor was quick with an excuse for why he didn't need Julian around and seeing him this cooperative almost made Julian suspicious.

He made his way over to his coat that he'd removed earlier to get his tricorder. When he reached in the pocket, he jerked his hand back and hissed, as if he'd been bitten.

"What the hell is that?"

Reaching back in, he pulled out the tricorder and a dermal regenerator. He held up the dermal regenerator for both Kathryn and Garak to see.

"Wha ...? This ... this was not in my pocket earlier." A chill ran down his spine and he shivered. He closed his eyes for several seconds and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, it was clear he was in no mood for hotel games.

"When we were in the infirmary, did either one of you place this in my coat pocket?"