The BLTS Archive - Winning companion piece to 'Darkness' by Your Cruise Director (cruisedirector@livejournal.com) --- The Spiritual Leader of Bajor made me write this nasty little story. For some reason she really wanted to get it on with "Anjohl" after finding out that he was Dukat...and who am I to tell the Kai what she can or can't do? I promise to try not to stray from the path of the Prophets again... even though Dukat made me tell his version of events... --- Familiar. She'd known it from the moment he walked into her rooms on the station. Strange she hadn't realized right away. All too willing to accept that the Prophets had sent him - and all too joyful. No simple farmer had a pah like his. Stronger than Jaro Essa, stronger than Bareil Antos, stronger than the Emissary - stronger perhaps than herself. He made her burn until she thought she must be made of light to survive such a flame. She'd very nearly felt love for the Prophets for sending him to her. For the man, too, she'd very nearly felt...but it was never love for him. It was for herself. From the moment he walked into her rooms on the station, she'd felt that he was hers. His eyes scalded her from across the room, stinging like the heat which emanated now from the forbidden Book of the Pah-Wraiths. She raised her head to look at her nemesis. Solbor's blood still stained his hands - blood she had shed in her lover's name and her own. She regretted having been the agent of Solbor's death but she did not regret the cause. Serving the Pah-Wraiths had made her strong again, as she had not been since she'd worked to resist this man and the people he commanded, years before. This man, her nemesis, her savior. His name hovered on the tip of her tongue, the flavor of its syllables as illicit as the pleasure of reading the Kosst Amojin. "Dukat," she voiced experimentally, so that the Ranjins beyond the locked door could not hear. Her throat closed over as the breath caught in her chest. The word had the same effect on her body as Solbor's blood had had on the manuscript: she caught fire. "Adami," her lover murmured in response, the only man to call her by name in nearly a decade. When she'd first spoken it, he'd told her that her name was beautiful - giving her the courage to move beyond talk of their shared destiny and invite him to her bed. That night he had whispered it, cried it, gasped it over and over until she nearly forgot how much she'd liked hearing him call her "my Kai." He knew what she wanted. He always knew what she wanted - something she'd attributed at first to the Prophets, then the Pah-Wraiths, but now that she knew his real identity she suspected it was a skill all his own. She'd known of Dukat's Bajoran mistresses, reportedly dozens of them...all willingly sharing a bed with the man who had enslaved them. Collaborators. How could he have wanted such weak creatures? Women with no desires beyond soft clothes and safe children, no ambitions, no hunger like she shared with him. Perhaps he kept them out of pride instead of desire. But this man was a creature of desire. She knew he had not been pretending with her: he burned for her as did she for him. Her title and position were undoubtedly part of the thrill, but she'd assumed that before she knew who he really was. To most, the Kai was nearly as untouchable as the Kosst Amojin. It was rare for visitors even to clasp her hands, as this man had done in feigned passion for saving Anjohl Tanon's life. He wanted Her Eminence. Yet her lover's passion did not arise entirely from his private quest for power - no more so than for her. She had seen the look in his eyes when she denounced the Prophets, after sharing with him the secret emptiness she had hidden from everyone. And she had seen his admiration when she murdered Solbor to protect them both. Kindred spirit. Dukat had not expected that of her. He liked it. She felt the heat from him as he approached. "Now," she pleaded, or demanded, tearing the crown of the Kai from her head. Her hair was still beautiful, though a Vedek's hood had hidden it for much of her life. She would not have thought her features would attract Dukat - a man who had surrounded himself with chiseled young Bajoran women - yet when he made love to her he praised her beauty, pressing reverent kisses over her flesh. She had not had a lover since Jaro, had not really expected another in her lifetime. Aging Vedeks and simpering politicians surrounded her. Nobody with power to fuel her own. Dukat's power was dangerous, was going to have to be stopped, soon...but not yet. It still served her. He still served her. His hands tugged at the vestments of her role, freeing her from the trappings of the Prophets and himself from borrowed Bajoran clothes. She no longer needed to pretend that this was a spiritual bond in the name of the Prophets or the Pah-Wraiths. Now they were only the Kai and the Gul, architects of the Bajor that would be. "Fuck me, Dukat," she commanded. His eyes widened, and a grin distorted his features. She should have recognized the Cardassian at once from that rapacious smile. It was her wish, but it would be his pleasure. Despite his efforts to make her happy, "Anjohl Tanon" had never been a selfless lover. Even the first time, he had taken her greedily - with surprising speed for a man of his age, and impressive stamina. She had let him see her discomfort, and he had tried to adjust, but in the end his desire overwhelmed them both. Afterwards he kissed away the sting, then fell asleep with his head pillowed on her belly, his semen still slicking her battered vulva. She'd had trouble walking the next morning; her attendant Ranjins had noticed. Bajoran religious leaders were not prudes, as humans seemed to expect based on their own historical customs, but the Kai was expected to be above the yearnings of her own flesh, concentrating on the will of the Prophets. Perhaps if the Prophets had ever given her a taste of the grace they granted the Emissary, she might have been able to concentrate on non- corporeal ecstasies. But they had never bothered with her at all - not even when she became the spiritual leader of their people. Dukat's fervent hunger fed her own pangs. How had he guessed that slavish adoration would not fulfill her needs? Did the Cardassian recognize himself in her, that he understood his own pleasure would satisfy her more than his obedience? "Adami," he moaned again, lifting her onto her desk beside the Kosst Amojin. Her fingers splayed across the occult pages as he spread her thighs and impaled her, quickly as she'd stabbed Solbor when the Ranjin tried to flee. The ancient paper wrinkled but did not tear under her hand. Dukat fucked with his eyes open, and preferred the lights on. She'd been shy at first but found pleasure in his gaze, his obvious delight at her response to him. In the mornings, when she was stiff and sore, he would massage and tease her with such patient determination that her body sometimes surprised her, and he watched her with a smile of satisfaction. She knew Jaro had often pretended to be with someone else, clenching his eyes shut against her face; he never spoke her name in bed. At first she'd suspected that he loved another, but in the end she realized he preferred fantasies - unreal women who could not challenge his own power. Dukat had no such insecurities. He knew his power. He was so confident in it that he could allow her to keep her own. Dark fire surged from the burning point where they met. It was going to have to stop. Soon - tomorrow - she would not allow him to touch her like this. Not with the blood of her people on his hands, not when she didn't yet know what he was after. If he sought the destruction of Bajor, as the ancient prophesies foretold, he would have had an easier path remaining among his own people, fighting at the side of the Dominion. Why go to the trouble to change his face, to come to her as a Bajoran, to win her to the cause of the Pah-Wraiths? Only she could learn what the Kosst Amojin required. He needed her. The Cardassian Gul needed the Kai of Bajor - the woman who resisted the Federation as she had once resisted the Occupation. She had resisted Dukat as well when he demanded the secret book, but now she knew the tome had been waiting for her, centuries of wisdom meant for her eyes alone. Power flared in her. She had to know what Dukat expected. Whether he intended to share her power or try to usurp it for herself. He may have been her people's conqueror, but this time, she was stronger. The thought made her molten. Her lover shouted, bending her backwards so that her hair spilled over the far side of the desk and their hands clutched together on the pages of the forbidden text. Dukat might believe he could bend her to his will, but his acts of possession only fed her power. A new Bajor would be born of this spawning, a world which would hail her as its ruler. She imagined the Vedeks coming in to find their spiritual leader coupled with the head of the Occupation atop the book of evil - oh, the horror on their impotent faces! The Pah-Wraiths would burst from the Fire-Caves to reclaim the Celestial Temple from the false Prophets. She pictured invading fleets crushed in the wormhole as the Dominion had been. She heard Dukat's voice calling out her name. She screamed as flames engulfed her from her loins, from the Kosst Amojin, from the blood on his hands and on her own. She was the Chosen One - and if the Pah-Wraiths rather than the Prophets had elected her, it was right for the Kai to follow their path. She believed that now. She had told Dukat she was happier than she had ever been in her life, and she was. The Pah-Wraiths had sent him to help her to lead Bajor to its restoration, and she would. Dukat would have to be taught to know his place, but once he atoned for his sins - once he recognized that he could never share her power - she saw no reason why he should not serve her and the reborn world which they would both help to shape. He had guided her to this place. The fires would purge them both of the past. Power and love would be hers at last. This time, she would win. -- The End