The Story That Has Already Happened.
Convoluted Deep Space 9 fic for babel because ahahahahhaha. Who else do I love enough to put up with even though she won't read the GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING books because she has fucking ISSUES with the fact her favorite FIGMENT OF FEVERED MARY SUE FANBOY IMAGINATION ain't in them?
Cardassian fiction aims to be realistic. True, it describes ideals -- family, Cardassia, generation after generation of devoted, loyal service to the state -- but in style, it aims to be descriptive. It wants to evoke feelings that are real; it aims to remind you of ambitions that, as a Cardassian, should have become real and vivid to you shortly after you learned to understand your parents names.
It wants, very badly, to be telling you a story that you have already read.
...
When you were almost an adult, your father was executed as a traitor. He knew that he was going to be put on trial, and everybody knew the outcome, so he made peace with your mother, and he thanked the household tutors for their service to his family. He said goodbye to you and your four brothers and lone sister, and you stood with them in the courtyard of the family compound when the arrest squad arrived.
The sun was low in the sky. It was barely visible, in fact, over the wall that ran around the family compound, and your father was not entirely steady on his feet. He had taken painkillers, as any Cardassian, cautious with his dignity, would. Perhaps he had taken too many, though; after the soldier on his left grasped his elbow, he swayed and wavered, and, in fact, fell to his knees.
He put a hand on the seat of the bench underneath the courtyard tree, and he knelt there for a moment, in the shade, fighting for breath.
You were the second oldest. Insulated by the fact that it was Mekor, as the oldest, whose career would suffer, you stayed home from the execution.
The rest of your family went; the torture preceding the execution was, apparently, extensive and bloody. When you watched, later, in the privacy of your room with the sound muted and your hand laid over the bloody mess of your father, who was probably still alive, you could see Enabran Tain, standing halfway into the shadows, leaning against a bench.
...
When you were an adult and a traitor under conservative Cardassian opinion, you became friends with a Glinn named Damar. He was conservative, and he was married, but he could not produce more than the single son. He was also a leader of limited imagination and ambition -- the combination of all this was probably how he ended up on the Groumall in all of her filthy, weaponless squalor, trying to find something to wrap his hands around so that he wouldn't strangle Kira Nerys.
Still, he made you laugh. He even claimed that you had been a hero, of sorts, to him, and it had been a very long time since you had a friend.
...
One night, after you have taken the Bird of Prey and Ziyal was with the Major, you are in what passes for the captain's quarters, and Damar is in there with you. The cabin is shaped wrong; the lights are in the wrong spectrum, and the air still stinks of Klingon. You have shut all the ports because Klingon windows are a different shape from either Cardassian or Bajoran windows, and you cannot accustom yourself to them.
But you brought kanar with you from the Groumall, and Damar is almost giddy with delight at the fact that you have invited him to drink with you. You smile at him, and you talk to him. Occaisionally, you solicit his opinion. You do not want to admit it, but there is a great deal of sense in what he says. He has proven himself to be an able, efficent administrator, and you pour twice into his glass for every time you pour into yours.
It is not malicious in any way. You like him; you find pleasure in his company, and you wish him to stay. He has difficulty talking to you about more personal subjects.
"Do you read, Damar?" you ask. "Meditations on a Crimson Shadow or The Neverending Sacrifice?"
"Ah," he says, a little embarrassed. "A Lesson of Cardassia."
You nod approvingly. "Old fashioned, but nevertheless relevant. A true story for soldiers."
It is the truth, but he is so pleased by hearing it that he begins to fidget, to feel uncomfortable in your presence, so you change the subject and tell him about your taste for Bajoran didactic theater. You press him to drink more, to take more of your hospitality. On the third time that he comes to your quarters to drink kanar, after you fill his glass, you brush your palm over the back of his hand.
He goes very still, and then he closes his eyes and turns his palm upwards. You look at his face while you press your palm to his; the ship smells a little strange, and the lights and the hum of the ship are diffrerent. You wish that you could even claim, to yourself, that it was weakness that made you engage with Damar on this level.
That it is loneliness that makes you do this, not genuine sentiment.
...
You do not know if your father ever had sex with Enabran Tain. You know that he was friends with Tain, that they had met because of an arms dealer, and continued the friendship up to the moment when Tain had brought about his trial. There is a memory in your mind, of Tain sitting with your father on the bench in the family compound, underneath the courtyard tree. The sun is low over the compound wall, and they are talking. Laughing.
They are also drinking kanar. You can remember the color of the sky, the shape of high city towers in the Northwestern sector, almost directly behind your father's head, but you cannot remember whether their hands ever brush.
...
You were -- you are -- close with Damar. He was the first friend you had in years, and he has done more for you than any friend you have ever had. Tain killed your father, and you hated his son as a result. You do not think you could hate Damar; you do not think you could work up more than a low level of irritation against his son, and even that, if what you've heard bears any resemblance to reality, would probably be the result of the wife's influence, rather than anything to do with Damar.
And yet, Tain killed your father because he thought -- rightly, as you discovered, while investigating your father's affairs -- that your father was a traitor. Damar killed your daughter because he knew, knew that your daughter was a traitor.
It is similar, and yet, painfully different.
...
"Meditations on a Crimson Shadow or The Neverending Sacrifice?"
"Ah," your father says, a little amused. "Would you believe that the last volume I read was the conclusion to A Lesson of Cardassia?"
In the days immediately afterwards, while you are still grieving for Ziyal, you find yourself remembering this conversation even though it couldn't possibly have happened. Sometimes, in fact, you imagine that Damar is the one who is talking about the Meditations. Other times, you are suggesting them to Enabran Tain.
Damar comes to your quarters again, but there is no kanar, and no sex. He is doing the honorable thing and taking responsibility, and you can talk to him in other parts of the ship. Outside of this room, you know that he did the right thing. Inside this room, though, inside your mind that sometimes looks like a courtyard and sometimes the corridor where Ziyal died, it is confused.
...
Cardassian fiction aims to be realistic. It describes ideals, but it aims to be descriptive. It wants, very badly, to tell you a story that has already happened, but the truth is that reality never happens twice. Events never repeat themselves. Other species look at Cardassian fiction and find tragedy in the fact that so many people die, that everything centers entirely on family and loyalty and devotion to something greater than the individual. The self is lost in the group. The order of the state is triumphant.
Cardassians, on the other hand, have long known that the deepest tragedy of their fiction how it tells a story that will never happen. They will never admit it, but neither the courtyard or the corridor ever entirely fades.
The grief never disappears.
Cardassian fiction aims to be realistic. True, it describes ideals -- family, Cardassia, generation after generation of devoted, loyal service to the state -- but in style, it aims to be descriptive. It wants to evoke feelings that are real; it aims to remind you of ambitions that, as a Cardassian, should have become real and vivid to you shortly after you learned to understand your parents names.
It wants, very badly, to be telling you a story that you have already read.
...
When you were almost an adult, your father was executed as a traitor. He knew that he was going to be put on trial, and everybody knew the outcome, so he made peace with your mother, and he thanked the household tutors for their service to his family. He said goodbye to you and your four brothers and lone sister, and you stood with them in the courtyard of the family compound when the arrest squad arrived.
The sun was low in the sky. It was barely visible, in fact, over the wall that ran around the family compound, and your father was not entirely steady on his feet. He had taken painkillers, as any Cardassian, cautious with his dignity, would. Perhaps he had taken too many, though; after the soldier on his left grasped his elbow, he swayed and wavered, and, in fact, fell to his knees.
He put a hand on the seat of the bench underneath the courtyard tree, and he knelt there for a moment, in the shade, fighting for breath.
You were the second oldest. Insulated by the fact that it was Mekor, as the oldest, whose career would suffer, you stayed home from the execution.
The rest of your family went; the torture preceding the execution was, apparently, extensive and bloody. When you watched, later, in the privacy of your room with the sound muted and your hand laid over the bloody mess of your father, who was probably still alive, you could see Enabran Tain, standing halfway into the shadows, leaning against a bench.
...
When you were an adult and a traitor under conservative Cardassian opinion, you became friends with a Glinn named Damar. He was conservative, and he was married, but he could not produce more than the single son. He was also a leader of limited imagination and ambition -- the combination of all this was probably how he ended up on the Groumall in all of her filthy, weaponless squalor, trying to find something to wrap his hands around so that he wouldn't strangle Kira Nerys.
Still, he made you laugh. He even claimed that you had been a hero, of sorts, to him, and it had been a very long time since you had a friend.
...
One night, after you have taken the Bird of Prey and Ziyal was with the Major, you are in what passes for the captain's quarters, and Damar is in there with you. The cabin is shaped wrong; the lights are in the wrong spectrum, and the air still stinks of Klingon. You have shut all the ports because Klingon windows are a different shape from either Cardassian or Bajoran windows, and you cannot accustom yourself to them.
But you brought kanar with you from the Groumall, and Damar is almost giddy with delight at the fact that you have invited him to drink with you. You smile at him, and you talk to him. Occaisionally, you solicit his opinion. You do not want to admit it, but there is a great deal of sense in what he says. He has proven himself to be an able, efficent administrator, and you pour twice into his glass for every time you pour into yours.
It is not malicious in any way. You like him; you find pleasure in his company, and you wish him to stay. He has difficulty talking to you about more personal subjects.
"Do you read, Damar?" you ask. "Meditations on a Crimson Shadow or The Neverending Sacrifice?"
"Ah," he says, a little embarrassed. "A Lesson of Cardassia."
You nod approvingly. "Old fashioned, but nevertheless relevant. A true story for soldiers."
It is the truth, but he is so pleased by hearing it that he begins to fidget, to feel uncomfortable in your presence, so you change the subject and tell him about your taste for Bajoran didactic theater. You press him to drink more, to take more of your hospitality. On the third time that he comes to your quarters to drink kanar, after you fill his glass, you brush your palm over the back of his hand.
He goes very still, and then he closes his eyes and turns his palm upwards. You look at his face while you press your palm to his; the ship smells a little strange, and the lights and the hum of the ship are diffrerent. You wish that you could even claim, to yourself, that it was weakness that made you engage with Damar on this level.
That it is loneliness that makes you do this, not genuine sentiment.
...
You do not know if your father ever had sex with Enabran Tain. You know that he was friends with Tain, that they had met because of an arms dealer, and continued the friendship up to the moment when Tain had brought about his trial. There is a memory in your mind, of Tain sitting with your father on the bench in the family compound, underneath the courtyard tree. The sun is low over the compound wall, and they are talking. Laughing.
They are also drinking kanar. You can remember the color of the sky, the shape of high city towers in the Northwestern sector, almost directly behind your father's head, but you cannot remember whether their hands ever brush.
...
You were -- you are -- close with Damar. He was the first friend you had in years, and he has done more for you than any friend you have ever had. Tain killed your father, and you hated his son as a result. You do not think you could hate Damar; you do not think you could work up more than a low level of irritation against his son, and even that, if what you've heard bears any resemblance to reality, would probably be the result of the wife's influence, rather than anything to do with Damar.
And yet, Tain killed your father because he thought -- rightly, as you discovered, while investigating your father's affairs -- that your father was a traitor. Damar killed your daughter because he knew, knew that your daughter was a traitor.
It is similar, and yet, painfully different.
...
"Meditations on a Crimson Shadow or The Neverending Sacrifice?"
"Ah," your father says, a little amused. "Would you believe that the last volume I read was the conclusion to A Lesson of Cardassia?"
In the days immediately afterwards, while you are still grieving for Ziyal, you find yourself remembering this conversation even though it couldn't possibly have happened. Sometimes, in fact, you imagine that Damar is the one who is talking about the Meditations. Other times, you are suggesting them to Enabran Tain.
Damar comes to your quarters again, but there is no kanar, and no sex. He is doing the honorable thing and taking responsibility, and you can talk to him in other parts of the ship. Outside of this room, you know that he did the right thing. Inside this room, though, inside your mind that sometimes looks like a courtyard and sometimes the corridor where Ziyal died, it is confused.
...
Cardassian fiction aims to be realistic. It describes ideals, but it aims to be descriptive. It wants, very badly, to tell you a story that has already happened, but the truth is that reality never happens twice. Events never repeat themselves. Other species look at Cardassian fiction and find tragedy in the fact that so many people die, that everything centers entirely on family and loyalty and devotion to something greater than the individual. The self is lost in the group. The order of the state is triumphant.
Cardassians, on the other hand, have long known that the deepest tragedy of their fiction how it tells a story that will never happen. They will never admit it, but neither the courtyard or the corridor ever entirely fades.
The grief never disappears.