After the last, terrible attack, which had left her near death, Madred decided she had another, more useful purpose. She was sent to Cardassia Prime to work in a prison facility, treating political and military prisoners of various stripes. The deal was simple: work, and she would be given clothes, food, and access to medicine and medical supplies to treat herself for the crippling pain and debilitated condition she'd been left in. Refuse, and continue to be subject to the torture from the device that remained in her body as a control and a threat.

A part of her considered rejecting the Cardassian devil's bargain, considered waiting until the first moment they would leave her alone before taking her own life and ending the agony by other means. No one would ever come to look for her, she knew; they believed she was dead. Even Jean-Luc, for she was sure that was what the last attack had been: a way to convince him that Madred had made good on his final threats. And her son, somewhere on unknown planes of existence—he would have no way to know anything other than the official story, even if he ever did come home. So she was utterly and completely alone, light-years away from any connection to home, and she was broken beyond every breaking point she could have imagined.

And yet some spark of defiance still flickered in the dying embers of her spirit. She didn't want to die, to give up, to give that further satisfaction to the sadist who'd taken everything else from her. Weak, exhausted, and desperate after the weeks of abuse and journey to this place...she agreed.

Alone in her cell on the first night, she fumbled with the unfamiliar medical equipment to assess her own condition and administer the treatments that would finally begin to restore the feeling in painfully numb limbs, heal the damaged nerves and spasming muscles. As the pain, at long last, began to ease, she cried in relief. Through the early weeks she continued to focus doggedly on coaxing herself back to a semblance of health, even as she adjusted to the rough new rhythms of her days, treating other prisoners who were, in some cases, even worse off than she'd been.

One night, a few weeks in, the emotions she'd been determinedly keeping buried suddenly surged, the full weight of her situation crashing in on her in the dark, and she fought against rising waves of panic, struggling to hold off a breakdown of the kind she hadn't suffered since—since the last night Jean-Luc had been with her. No, no, no. She didn't want to think of him. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to calm her gasping breaths, but in her mind she could see his warm hazel eyes, feel his arms tightening around her, hear his whispered words, as he tried to give her the comfort of hope.

Hope of *what*?

She wanted to laugh in despair, at Jean-Luc and his stupid, damnable optimism. She had always been more fatalistic—realistic, she would say—while he never failed to maintain his implacably patient, positive outlook, no matter how dire their situation. On Rutia, on Kesprytt—

There's a way out of every box, a solution to every puzzle.

But this time there hadn't been, had there? This time even he had given up. And still, even though he had lost all hope, he had tried to keep it alive for her. She couldn't even hate him for what he'd done, what he'd kept from her, because she knew, in spite of everything, he'd done it out of love. But what good had it done? Hope had no quarter in this hell. Hope was cruel, cold. What was she even supposed to hope for? For the dead, for the disappeared, this was all there was, all there would be.

Another memory: an underground cave, grim defiance in the face of mortal threat:

Beverly, it is our obligation to think of escape.

How? she demanded, aware that she was arguing only with the ghosts in her mind. There was no way out of this that she could possibly imagine. People don't just walk out of Cardassian prisons, Jean-Luc. I can't. I can't. She hugged her knees, breathing through the panic until it finally eased, and then felt a resolve take hold of her. If she was going to stay alive, she couldn't allow herself the luxury of feeling like this anymore. Feeling anything at all, but especially, especially not for Jean-Luc. If she ever hoped that she could see him again, she would only be lost in despair.

So she worked. She was a doctor; she was better trained than any of her Cardassian counterparts; and there was a desperate need for medical care in the prison. She always had excelled at caring for others and so, keeping her head down to avoid attracting any untoward attention from the harsh, omnipresent guards and officers, she focused simply on healing those who needed her skill. There was a surreal futility to much of it; for the prominent capital prisoners who had been subjected to tortuous interrogation, her job was to heal them only so they would be well enough to stand the Cardassian farce of a trial. Had she let her detachment slip, those cases would have been harder than her normal ones, for she knew that, despite all of her efforts, after the show trials these men and women would be summarily executed. But they knew that too, and often seemed glad simply to find a kind face and some relief before the end.

One morning she was admitted to the the cell of an older Cardassian dissident. She didn't know his name or his putative crime—the machinations of Cardassian politics were such that all she could be relatively certain of was that he was innocent of anything that would have been considered a crime under Federation law. As the man turned bloodshot eyes up from where he'd lain crumpled on the floor, likely for hours, he stared at her incredulously.

"Human..." he grunted as two guards hoisted him roughly off the ground and half-dragged him to a bed so he could be treated, before leaving them alone.

She didn't make eye contact at first, instead silently snapping open her instruments, cumbersome Cardassian models, to evaluate the man's condition: broken ribs and wrist, concussion, dislocated shoulder, internal bleeding from the beatings.

She'd seen worse.

"We still have human prisoners here," he repeated to himself in disbelief. "Maquis?"

She hadn't intended to engage with him but something in his eyes, a kindliness she hadn't encountered before, was disarming, drawing her out. "Starfleet."

"Birek Rill," he introduced himself, as if he was meeting her for coffee and not bleeding slowly to death in a high-level detention cell. Bemused, Beverly nodded at him in reply as she administered a strong painkiller first, then local anaesthetic. Rill breathed a sigh of relief as the pain eased, then coughed and winced again, eyeing her. "You know we're supposed to be allies now. The treaty. Why are you here, Starfleet?"

"They didn't give me much of a choice," she murmured. Setting out a laser scalpel, tissue regenerator, and other surgical equipment to focus on the bleeding first, she cursed again the lack of adequate supplies for what she needed. In Sickbay she would have had a team working with her to triage everything, and a sterile and state-of-the-art facility, but here she routinely had to manage the best she could on her own, in circumstances that were, to her mind, practically medieval.

"No, I imagine they didn't." He gave a pained smile, which she returned in spite of herself as she kept working. "Didn't give me one, either. You know why I'm here?"

Beverly shook her head. He was surprisingly talkative for someone who'd just been beaten half to a pulp, but then again she'd come to see all kinds of reactions to fear and trauma. Rill, she thought, seemed to be resigned to the fact that he'd likely never be leaving this place alive, and figured he had nothing to lose now by talking to her. Really, the unusual thing was how gentlemanly he was about it.

"We know the Obsidian Order is working to undermine the treaty, and the government, working secretly with the Dominion so they can seize power for themselves." There was an indignation in his voice as he explained it, to her and to whichever guards were monitoring the room. "But some of us still believe in the peace, you know—believe we're stronger with the Federation than without it. Some of us were impressed that a human who had actually been through one of these hellholes would be the one to forge the peace with us." He raised an index finger for emphasis, eyes gleaming with appreciation. "That, madam, is an honorable man. And that treaty has allowed us to hold off the Dominion so far and build our alliances where we should be, in the Alpha Quadrant."

Jean-Luc. Her breath caught in her chest involuntarily as she realized who Rill was talking about, and she gripped the edge of her medical cart. So, he'd done it after all—negotiated the treaty. And it had apparently been successful, because of course he would have done the best damned job anyone could have.

Even if he couldn't save her at the same time.

What did it do to you, Jean-Luc? She felt, underneath the weight of the numbness, the prick of long-buried emotion, knowing what it must have cost him, because she knew him, and she had seen the devastation in his eyes. He would especially have remembered how she had been so bitter at the end, and blamed himself for everything...but, she knew with sudden certainty, she didn't blame him for any of this. She knew that he had only ever cared for her, had tried desperately to protect her...even though he'd failed. Fighting against an overwhelming desire to see him again, she hastily blinked away tears and took a few deep breaths to steady herself.

"It took us too long to get here—we can't give it all up now," Rill was saying. "The Order has to be resisted." He raised his voice to the invisible monitors and tried to sit up. "You hear that? Resisted!" He coughed again and sank back, casting a resigned, weary smile at her. "Ah. Not by me, anymore, Starfleet."

She smiled again at Rill and touched his uninjured shoulder, finding her refuge in familiar detachment once more. "Hold still," she ordered, not unkindly. "At least we'll get you feeling better here soon."

Rill's trial would be heavily publicized, and Beverly heard the talk among other patients when the dissident was hanged two weeks later. The regret for him stung more than usual, but she told herself that at least she had allowed him not to live his last days in pain, and that was all she could have done. There would be more like him. In here, there always were.

The months passed slowly, and she could feel the increasingly heavy toll it was taking on her body and mind. Given rations barely sufficient to subsist on and a schedule of constant work, with sanitation sorely lacking and infection and disease difficult to contain, she struggled to maintain her own health, even as she treated others. Practiced discipline kept her mind from wandering too far afield from the concrete realities of her days; but occasionally, late at night, she would dream of life outside the walls, and she would remember: the cinnamon spiced aroma of her favorite tea, the sheepishly affectionate smile of her son, the sight of the stars.

And occasionally, on the worst nights, she would remember the gentle accent and warm timbre of Jean-Luc's voice, and his words: Beverly, the important thing in any confinement is to not lose hope...there's a way out of everything... And she would argue with him silently, because she didn't believe it.

...but she wanted to.

And then came the chance. It was late at night, and she was still working, this time with a Cardassian operative, Vodas Zelet, whom she understood had been found out as a high-level military spy within the Obsidian Order. In far worse shape than most of her patients when she was assigned to him, his evident intelligence and quiet strength had impressed her, and she'd come to make more of a connection with him as she spent the extra time needed trying to heal him. As an orderly exited his cell, Beverly, fighting her own fatigue, stepped in to monitor the slow progress of his treatment. Checking her readouts, she realized he seemed more tense than he should be, and she frowned. "Is something hurting in particular, Vodas?" she asked, wondering if she was missing something.

He shook his head, and then his black eyes met hers and he actually reached out to touch her hand for an instant. "Go along with it," he whispered.

Go along with it?

With the sharp clack of boots and mechanical hiss of the door, a team of four Cardassians marched abruptly into the room, two with weapons drawn, and Beverly looked up in uneasy surprise. One pointed to Zelet. "You're coming with us."

She wasn't about to argue with disruptors, but this wasn't normal, even in here, and surely they could see how poor of condition Zelet was in. "His trial isn't for four days," she said, even as she backed away from his bed, hands raised cautiously. "And he's in no shape to be transferred right now."

The lead officer gave her a contemptuous look. "Ask our gul if he cares."

Zelet narrowed his eyes, turning his head away from them. "You think I'm going to come with you? I can't even walk, thanks to the ministrations of your gul."

"You don't have a choice. Traitor," spat the leader, as two of his team seized Zelet's arms and wrenched him up from the bed, ignoring his cries of pain.

Beverly clenched her hands in frustration. "You're making it worse," she said, and the fourth Cardassian stepped in front of her and raised his weapon in warning. She almost didn't care, half considering raising an alarm to the actual prison guards once these men left, because for all the ugly, inhumane conditions in this place, there were supposed to be some rules, damn it, and dragging out a patient—her patient—who'd already been brought in for treatment to torture him again was against those rules. It was such a stupid waste—

Go along with it. She glanced at Zelet, gasping in the grip of the two officers—

And then she noticed they were handling him rather more gently than Zelet's groans were indicating.

Thinking fast, Beverly shot a fierce look at the one holding his weapon on her, even as she slumped in apparent defeat. "Then at least take me with you," she argued. "Unless you want him to die before you can execute him."

The leader turned towards her again, an ironic smile twisting his lips as he studied her, and she met his cruel gaze without flinching. Finally he gave a dismissive gesture to the one in front of her to stand down. "Yes, I imagine he will need a doctor when we're through with him," he hissed. Heart racing, Beverly quickly retrieved her medkit before the fourth Cardassian shoved her in front of him and they were marched out.

Her heart was in her throat as they passed through multiple manned, forcefield-secured checkpoints, and finally exited the prison. The cool, humid night air, the first feel of the outside environment she'd experienced in years, raised goosebumps on her skin. She tried to keep her breathing steady, staying alert, ignoring the occasional prod of a disruptor at her back. She thought they might be heading to a transport vehicle area, but with no knowledge of the prison grounds, she had no way of knowing—

Without warning, Zelet dropped from the grasp of the two officers holding him, hitting the ground with a—genuine—strangled cry of pain. With faster reflexes than she would have guessed herself capable of in her condition, Beverly dropped, too, ducking under the quick weapons fire of the two officers as they shot and disarmed the leader and the one behind her. One of the first two tossed a disruptor to her and she caught it, staring dumbly for an instant before scrambling to her feet. "Come on—we've got to make it to the transport zone outside the dampening field." The officers dragged the inert bodies of their comrades quickly out of sight in the darkness, then hoisted Zelet up again with his arms over their shoulders. "Keep us covered."

She nodded once, keeping pace as they covered another hundred meters as quickly as possible in silence, senses alert to any movement in the darkness around them. She heard shouts in the distance behind them and the sounds of an alarm being raised, when one of the officers hit a comm badge. "We're out, get us up now!" he said urgently, and in an instant Beverly felt the tingle of an unfamiliar transporter beam and the planet surface dissolved around her.

As they rematerialized, Beverly took in her new surroundings—a cramped, grey-green cargo hold, dimly lit and full of containers strewn haphazardly—and the tall, gray-ridged woman with tightly braided black hair in front of them.

"Nice work. Vodas—welcome back. I see you've brought us a guest."

Zelet, breathing heavily through his pain as his two compatriots supported his weight, nevertheless managed a weak grin. "Glad to be back, Alain. This is my doctor—wanted to come along. Pretty sure...I need her help right now," he added, before his head lolled forward and he lost consciousness.

The woman muttered a curse. "Prulin, Tohil, leave him here, I'll stay. Get to the control stations and get us out of here," Alain ordered, looking at Beverly as the men quickly eased Zelet down to rest on the ground and disappeared from the room. "You can help him?" she demanded, eyes narrowed.

Beverly, tense as she tried to evaluate the situation, glanced between Zelet and Alain and nodded. "Yes."

The woman nodded. "All right, go ahead. Perhaps you'd be so kind as to hand that over first?" she asked, gesturing to the disruptor Beverly still held out in front of her. She sounded oddly amused, and her demeanor was unthreatening.

With a grimace, Beverly flipped the weapon to her and knelt beside Zelet, first feeling for his pulse—weak but steady—and then opening the medkit she had still been holding in her other hand. "You don't have any other place to treat him—no better supplies?" she murmured. This was even worse, from a medical standpoint, than the prison had been.

"If we could have gotten our hands on a better ship, trust me, we would have," Alain told her, kneeling next to her and carefully watching her work. "You take what you can get, if you're looking for a cloaked one. I didn't think he'd be in quite this bad condition, though."

"Where are we going?" she asked tersely, as she scanned Zelet's prone form, searched for what she needed to at least stabilize him from shock of having his injuries aggravated during the escape. Her voice was steady, but her pulse was pounding in her ears, adrenaline still racing. Everything had just happened so quickly—she had never even set foot outside the prison walls since she'd arrived, and now she was on a cloaked ship somewhere in orbit over Cardassia….Had she been right to follow her instincts—was she really about to be free?

"You don't seem like Maquis," the woman said thoughtfully. "You're what—Starfleet?"

Beverly glanced up at her briefly and nodded, but didn't volunteer any further information.

"All right, I won't ask your story," Alain said with a raised eyebrow. "We're heading for the Federation border by Bajor—the station there. You know it?"

"Deep Space Nine," she murmured, pressing a hypo to Zelet's neck. Then this really *is* happening.

"Seems the safest bet for now, although it's still risky. We need to get beyond the reach of the Order as quickly as possible—they won't have been expecting this, and Vodas was a high-profile exposure for them. They'll be angry about Prulin and Tohil, too. Didn't want to have to break their cover yet, but we were running out of time." Alain tilted her head. "I wasn't expecting to arrive at the station with a Starfleet officer, but your presence might benefit us."

"It might cause some trouble," she countered, already thinking through the implications. She'd gathered enough of the political situation over the past months to understand immediately now that if it came widely to light what the Cardassians had done to her, if someone were to use her to challenge Jean-Luc's actions during the treaty negotiations and undermine the treaty itself, the consequences could be far-reaching.

Her mind stumbled over the thought of Jean-Luc, and suddenly her throat tightened, breath stopping for an instant as she allowed herself to imagine that she might finally, finally see him again. Jean-Luc. Oh my God.

"Oh, ours might, too." Alain smiled thinly. "We'll deal with that when we arrive. Can you take care of him until we get there?"

She steadied her breathing with an effort. "Yes, I think he's stabilized for now—I'd rather move him to somewhere more comfortable, though."

"We'll handle it. You might as well make yourself comfortable, too, Doctor. Looks like you're along for the ride. We'll be there soon enough."

"Thanks," she said, and stood up slowly, leaning weakly against a stack of crates, looking around but not really seeing the debris strewn everywhere. Her mind was already light-years ahead of here.

Jean-Luc, she thought again, raising a suddenly trembling hand to her face, and her heart stirred with a flutter of—

Hope.

She didn't know where he was, what he was doing, but she would find a way to reach him, somehow.

And she knew he would come.