The BLTS Archive - Undertow
by Kassandra (obscure_creature@gmx.net)

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Published: 10-08-06

Updated: 10-08-06

DISCLAIMER: All belongs to Paramount.

NOTES: Kira somewhere in the 4th season, when Dukat showed his gentler
side.

SPOILERS: Nothing spectacular.

FEEDBACK: Will make my day.

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It isn't enough that she has to walk through this space station every
day and be reminded of how it was built with the blood of Bajoran
slave labour. Be reminded of their master's scales and ridges and
their sense of aesthetics in the shapes and designs everywhere around
her. It isn't enough that every night when she undresses she sees the 
scars on her body from her time in the underground  or even before
that, from the camps when she was still a child. After asking her for
the third time Julian had given up on suggesting a dermal regenerator.
She wears them with pride, now, even if they had been meant as a
humiliation.

It isn't enough that she still dreams of them too often, their
squinted arrogant reptile eyes and grey sallow skin and the engulfing
heat that always seems to cling to them just like the derision for her
whole people. Sometimes she wonders whether they are like snakes,
whether they would fall into a kind of hibernation when being deprived
of the warmth for too long. The thought makes her smile. She wonders
whether they could live without their persistent overbearing scorn,
too.

But it still isn't enough. It isn't enough that she has to meet the
tailor every other day, and that he always makes a point out of
looking her straight into the eyes, no matter how much she tries to
evade his estimating if not unfriendly gaze. It isn't enough that she
has encountered representatives of their race that she has actually
learned to like, reluctantly, and more patient with herself than they
would ever give her credit for.

It is never enough, because there is always Dukat.

She dreams of Dukat, too. But those dreams are... different. In them
she never is the hunted. She is the predator. In real life he has
never beaten her, hasn't even touched her so much as in passing, but
his supercilious and condescending manner somehow infuriates her more
than remembering all the thrashings she has taken from various other
Cardassians. As much as the man exasperates her on regular occasions,
she has to admit that his rhetorical and manipulative abilities are
considerable to say the least. If she didn't hate him as much as she
does, she would have to admit that his mind is brilliant. He's smart
and charismatic in that horribly dangerous way that makes masses of
people of all times and in all parts of the galaxy bow down to the
tyranny of one power-hungry megalomaniac 'chosen' leader who only has
their best interests at heart. And to protect them more often than not
means enslavement and genocide. She knows that type all too well. And
Dukat fits the description perfectly. Most of the Cardassians she's
met do.

But the worst thing is that, even though she knows where his charm
comes from and that he uses it to manipulate those around him, she
often realises that it also works on her. That she sometimes has to
remind herself of who he is and what he has done. When she realises
that she's slipped up, has let her guard down, she reacts twice as
harshly, reminding him of where exactly the line is drawn between
them. But the more hostile she gets, the more smoothly he pulls her
wires again, making it appear as if he was the most innocent man in
the universe, unjustly condemned by a woman who is a murderer just
like he is.

She knows he greatly enjoys the usual two-step between them, the
insistent flirting on his part and the cold hateful derision on hers,
and that he's always disappointed if she isn't letting herself in on
it. It is really the only way to get back at him, to not take part in
his game, to deny him the sick pleasure he gets out of playing with
her head. Something in the tone of his voice always makes her skin
crawl, and sometimes his smile makes her want to flee his presence.
She doesn't know what to make of his words most of the time, which
unsettles her, and she knows that this is exactly what he's tried to
achieve with choosing them. What to make of it when his deep-set eyes
flick over her body she knows even less.

In the dreams she turns the tables. She would lie if she said that
those dreams actually involved some sort of sophisticated
conversation, because they really don't. When she dreams, she lets
that one certainty come to the surface, that certainty that she never
allows to appear when he's around, because then he could be a witness
to her reaction to that particular thought: He's in love with her. Or
at least thinks he is, whatever being in love might mean in his
twisted and vicious view of the world. He has never said it to her
directly, but she knows.

She knows.

She dreams of teaching him a lesson. It has just recently occurred to
her that his 'feelings' for her actually give her power over him.
Maybe the only power she can ever have, short of just getting it over
with and killing him. But that is no victory, and maybe that is
something she's learned from the Cardassians. After all, what
gratification is there in ramming a knife into someone's body when
that astonished and agonised look on their faces only lasts for a
couple of seconds? What if you could bask in that anguish every time
you encounter them? Now that is victory.

These are thoughts she only allows herself to act on when she dreams.
When she dreams, he's on his knees in front of her, beneath her.
Stripped of his armour and his smug superiority. Stripped of all the
things that make her so very much afraid of him, even though she'd
never admit it. He's at her mercy then, and the irony of that isn't
lost on her.

There's something else that becomes more and more clear to her the
older she gets - she is more like Dukat than she will ever be like the
Federation, and when he watches her from below her, his grey features
swollen and bloody from her treatment, she realises that he's aware of
that, too. And that even in his state it makes him obscenely happy to
discover yet another bond between them. One that he and all his fellow
Cardassians had forged by forcing her to grow up under inhumane
circumstances. By forcing her to become what she is now.

She sees herself reflected in his eyes, sees the young Kira Nerys, the
idealistic freedom fighter that was lost, abandoned so many years ago,
and somehow she can't even find it in her heart to hate him for that,
too. She wonders whether there's been one defining moment in his life
that has created the man that is now cowering beneath her in his own
blood. Or whether he's just always been this way, shaped by
circumstances from the very beginning. Just like her.

His hands are bound behind his back, of course, because even though
she knows she could take him to the bitter end in a fair fight, it
wouldn't be half as humiliating as being beaten down by a woman, and
this particular woman no less, unable to even raise a hand to defend
himself. The look in his eyes is still defiant, still filled with all
the things she wants to thrash out of him, and she starts to think
that maybe she should change the way she is going about this. She
thinks that violence is probably not the method to break someone who's
whole life has been filled with it, who inhales violence in one way or
the other with every breath he takes.

So she folds herself down in front of him, cocks her head and extends
a finger to slowly trace it along his cheek. Her first instinct when
her fingertip comes into contact with the scaly skin is to draw back
as if burned, but she quells the urge and takes her time with
analysing the feel that is unexpectedly warm and dry. He turns his
face away with a curt movement, obviously taken aback by her action,
but he isn't quick enough for her to miss the embarrassment in his
gaze. She contemplates this for a moment. Isn't that what he wants?
For her to touch him? Touch him like that? In that special way that
leaves bruises only on the inside?

She roughly grabs his chin and forces him to look at her. Her thumb
comes to rest on his thin lips, and this time he doesn't evade her but
instead returns her steady regard. A shudder of pain is suddenly going
through him, and a thin line of blood is trickling from the corner of
his mouth when it starts to move with some effort. She removes her
hand and bends closer to listen to what he has to say, and when he
whispers brokenly, "May I kiss you now, Nerys", it is the moment she
wakes up.

She drags herself out of bed to take a sip of water from a glass by
her bedside with jittery hands, and a part of her is completely
disgusted with herself, while another part desperately wants to go
back to that dream, to feel more of that reptile skin, to hear him
moan for some other reason than agony. She raises her eyes to the
mirror on the opposite side of the room, and with a conscious effort
she buries that particular fantasy. Dukat is going to arrive at the
station in a few hours, and she'd better be ready for him.

She wonders whether she will ever do any of the things she's dreaming
about in reality. And if so, she would like to know whether she's
going to fuck him before beating him to a bloody pulp or afterwards.
But of one thing she is finally dead certain: Whatever the order
beforehand - at the end there will be a killing. And that will take at
least as much time as the other two things combined.

When he comes towards her in the airlock, walking in his usual
swaggering way, smiling his usual patronising smile, she crosses her
hands behind her back, raises her eyes to his and pulls one corner of
her mouth up in a self-ironic way, almost imperceptibly. And for the
blink of an eye she witnesses his steely self-confidence slip when the
expression on his face changes from complete control of the situation
to incertitude about the meaning of her smile and back again. She
raises a brow, and in that instant they both know that she has won
this battle.

But the war is far from over.

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The End