Life was hella busy that I also had to reread past chapters for this one just to avoid plot holes, and I'm very protective. XD I hope this was worth the wait, and I hope no mistakes without me realizing it.

Chapter Ten

The Ten Commandments

Her body was burning too much that she couldn't hold this back any longer. She'd realized earlier that he desired her and had just now confessed so himself - she'd just wanted to hear it from him just for confirmation. Add in the fact she had dreams about him that made her throb and moist below that she moaned his name - and did he hear her call out his name in sleep? She would blush with fury if he did; even if he DID hear her, he wouldn't tell her so.

She still wasn't sure how she could handle telling Jeffrey she didn't love him like that anymore...or perhaps it was never there.

No, it never was. She'd known all along but never acknowledged it until she kissed this incredible creature who expressed his gratitude, the tragic truth about his people, as well as his longing for her. Even protected her as she kept him alive. He had never been with a woman because he couldn't get his heart broken like before.

It made Annora wonder what happened to him then.

She slowly broke the kiss away and looked him in the eyes. Gone were traces of the anger she'd seen before, but she wasn't sure if she could let that go. She never let anything in her life slide that easily, as she told him. Damn those eyes and his mesmerizing face for melting her! But the spell Keevan's kiss placed over her mind washed everything away as though it had never been there. She felt like she had taken an aphrodisiac which ignited the sex drive, except she hadn't.

"Do you forgive me, Annora?" he whispered, snapping her out of her thoughts.

"Yes." The word escaped before she thought about it, and it made him smile with satisfaction.

"Good," he breathed, his soft breath washing over her face as he leaned up and kissed her again, chastely unlike before. "Now...about what we talked about before it was ruined?"

~o~

Keevan never thought he would enjoy a story like this one. He'd stared up at the ceiling the entire time she read to him the first ten chapters of her novel, still unnamed, and thirty eight pages by his calculated guess. But as far as he was concerned, the length wasn't important; it was the content itself.

The story opened with the main protagonist/antagonist - or perhaps antivillain, depending on your point of view - in jail and reminiscing on the past two relationships he tried to make work only for both to fail. His first one was his high school sweetheart - high school was a four-year time before Terran young adult years - who had been his chance to redeem himself after his life of sexual molestation by his own father until he took matters into his own hands and killed his father himself before staging the act to look like a suicide. The true murderer was never discovered. Unfortunately, when he married his beloved, life fared no better because he was developing the symptoms of a human mental state called schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. His wife of five years ultimately could take his issues no longer and tried to leave before he killed her, too, and dropped her body into the river somewhere. Like his father, no fingers were pointed to him.

But it was by the second time that his luck ran out.

His second love had eventually discovered her future husband's past and secrets, but she met her demise, too...and this time the authorities caught on. Enough evidence to put him away for life for first-degree murder, but ultimately the courts ruled him insane based on the "expert opinion" of a young psychiatrist newly graduated under the tutelage of a renowned face, therefore placing him under her care. But she would end up getting more than she bargained for, a young brain fresh from school and given a psychopath as a refreshing challenge for her. Oh, how naïve she was, and ambitious. Ambitious as Annora, the woman who created her, but Annora wasn't foolish as she was. She ought to have seen there was more than the man let on - and she didn't know until it was too late. Ten chapters in, and the leading lady had already begun to have unexpected fantasies of bondage with her own patient...and it scared and excited her at the same time.

He smirked when he saw Annora's cheeks flush when she read the fantasy of the heroine tied up as she was taken in bed by her patient-lover, which was wrong but delicious at the same time. Nothing he was a stranger to, and it made him wonder something which became what he wasn't afraid to ask her. "Is this what makes you tremble with pleasure when your husband fails at the job?"

He already knew the answer even before she answered. "Yes, but it's not something a lot of people would understand. I'm a bookworm, a Terran term for someone who loves books and knowledge more than anything else but still retains common sense. They're often misunderstood and looked down upon by those who think they're better than anyone else."

Between the lines, he could see that she'd been asocial as a child, but did she ever have a real friend as he had Eris and Weyoun? Another cough escaped his lips; he could feel his aches returning soon, and it had been one or two hours, but time was hard to keep track of when there was no working technology and a communication system to rebuild. "Believe me, I know what it feels like. When it comes to attracting the opposite side of the species, I'm either not interested in them for certain reasons, or they simply don't care because of my attitude, shall we say. But it's all right," he told her with a little smile. "I'm used to it, but if there is anything I don't take, it's offense exactly."

"I understand that, too," she agreed, lowering her PADD to her lap and looking at him over her shoulder; her back had once again been against the rock of a bed as she read aloud to him, and she must be tired by now. "One thing I don't take well is punishment. When I was a child, I got myself into a lot of trouble I didn't care, and no matter the level of severity, my parents reprimanded me for it."

He automatically assumed the rest of her family lived on planet Earth, but he had to make sure. He was a clone, so no family to conceive him, but that didn't stop him from wanting to learn about her. "Where are your parents now?"

"Back on Earth, still living in New Orleans, which is where I was born and grew up," she answered, not smiling. "My mother is a medical doctor, my father also a member of Starfleet, with the rank of General recently. He's Uncle William's older brother." She shook her head. "We don't get along."

Keevan felt his lips tighten. Perhaps he should have expected that, because how could someone willful and resistant as Annora O'Neal want anything to do with strict parents? He wasn't sure what they did to her exactly, but he guaranteed it was enough to drive her away from the two people who conceived her. What did he know of that subject, too, when he wasn't mated and didn't have offspring? "How about you? I take because you're a clone, you have no parents," she stated.

"None at all. I have the Founders, my gods...although I doubt they are now," he confessed. Because what gods hated their children and let them suffer the way they did? Here he was, weak and lying underground...but he was also watched over by what he could call an angel. She was his savior in all things. "If my friend and old mentor heard me say such a thing," Keevan added, looking up at the ceiling again and almost seeing Weyoun's disapproving features looking down on him, "he would tell me I am defective. That I am a fallen angel."

If he was truly defective, then perhaps he was grateful to be, because he would not follow orders because he was made to do so. He was no one's slave and never would be. He wouldn't be surprised if Mia Sisko on Terok Nor had tried to convince her lover, Weyoun, of the belief that the Founders were not gods and never would be. He might not care about her, but at least he agreed with her.

"I don't believe that." Annora's hand came over to rest on his which lay on his stomach. "And I wish there was a way to free your people from that bondage they live in. There's an ancient story from planet Earth in the Bible, in the Exodus section about a Hebrew man named Moses." Keevan looked at her; he loved ancient history as much as field reports. He suspected this man she spoke of could relate to this situation of his people. "He was the son of a Hebrew slave woman, but unlike other infants who were ordered to be put to death under the Egyptian pharaoh, his mother put him in a basket and sent him down the Nile River to save his life. He ended up in the water gardens of the palace, taken out by the pharaoh's daughter; she always wanted a son and therefore raised him as her own. She named him Moses because she pulled him out of the river." She smiled proudly that it matched Keevan's own; he couldn't think of anyone of the Vorta race to relate to this Moses character, but this tale was sure to take him farther than he was now.

"He grew up and raised as a prince, alongside his brother Rameses. Eventually, though, Moses learned of his true heritage and set out to search for his identity as well as chosen by God to save his people from slavery under Rameses, who had become pharaoh himself years later. Brother against brother over one race of people. Multiple times, Rameses refused and forced Moses to raise God's hand and let loose the plagues of Egypt on the city until Rameses let the people go for Moses to take them to the Promised Land for a new life that they prayed so long for."

Keevan looked back up at her from staring at the ceiling and taking in the story...a story of bondage and escape from that bondage, as well as the promise of a better future and salvation for such a sinful past. He needed to learn more about this story because the Moses figure fascinated him...

...and delve into how he managed to save an entire race of people from enslavement and servitude. Would there be hope for the Vorta then if he uncovered facts instead of myth like that fairytale his people lived with?

~o~

The story of Moses was one of the oldest lessons and stories she had grown up and loved, took to the depths of her heart especially when it came to the fight for freedom and fleeing bondage. She loved the idea of fighting for the freedom of your people as it was never something freely given, and to flee to another land for a better life but had to come with a set of laws you had to abide by. That was when the Ten Commandments came in; she wasn't religious by any means, but they were all clear by listing and truer words never spoken:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me...

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image...

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain...

Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy...

Honor thy father and thy mother...

Thou shalt not kill...

Thou shalt not commit adultery...

Thou shalt not steal...

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor...

Thou shalt not covet...

All of them she knew to follow good and well...but then it came to that one in particular. The seventh commandment regarding marital fidelity, with two men on either side of her - her husband of nearly five years, Jeffrey, and Keevan, an agent of the enemy waging an all-out war against her peace-keeping affiliation who awoke the sensations a hormonal teenager would feel...but it was much stronger than that. But the more time she spent with him on their second day on this deserted star system, her morals were almost forgotten, and they were just a couple normal beings enjoying each other's company.

She had spent the next two hours telling him about the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments, and he had grown fond of it as much as she was. He even agreed with most of them, except for the killing and covet parts. Killing a being was never acceptable, but necessary when it came to the circumstances they lived in. Annora had never killed anyone in her life, but Keevan assured her there was always a first time even as he voiced his view of the Ten Commandments.

"I believe in gods and creation, yes," he said, starting with the first, dull and monotoned, "but the Founders no longer fit in that category now that it is clear as a crystal to me. But I do not know who to turn to and pray now," he said, unhappily turning his face away and closing his eyes again. "No matter how many times you cry to the heavens high, no spiritual rescue will come to you. Even those who fight and die in battle as well as non-believers put their lives on the line for those whose freedom they fight for know they need all the help they get before their times run out."

His eyes remained closed the whole time he continued to speak of the commandments, comparing and contrasting to what his "gods" established for him and his fellow Vorta. "We have no need to worship images representing a god, just as the Bajorans worship their Prophets spiritually. Images are nothing compared to the one true god; the female Founder herself made it clear herself by standing in our presence and having us bow down to give her the respect she's due." He paused there and snorted disgustedly, shaking his head. "But that is what I would label now as a puppet master, the term used before as you might have heard before, Annora? Or anyone you know?"

The term HAD been used before, yes, more often with others she couldn't conjure at the present. Keevan continued. "By respect means not taking her and the other Founders in vain, otherwise we are called defective. Mistakes they could fix any time they want, even if it means execution and manufacuring a newer, more disciplined incarnation. I endured it once and will not go through it again, I can assure you of that." He paused and opened his eyes again to gaze into hers again.

"My story of my people and where we came from, it's too good to be true, but I suppose you already knew that."

She nodded. It was too perfect and idealistic, like any fairytale designed to be safer for the fainthearted and hiding the true facts. She looked down and saw Keevan reaching out for her, asking her to hold his hand while he carried on. His skin was moist around hers. "We all remember it from the first few minutes of our first incarnations, but our progenitors are complete blanks from our minds - some of us, at least. Our originals aren't as important, or so we were told."

She had parents that deserved the respect they demanded, but she'd been a child back then but didn't care as much as she didn't now. Keevan and the other Vorta, on the other hand, had no parents unlike their originals; they had their false gods who tried to be gods. Those gods deserved to be honored when they didn't.

Murder was common within the Dominion; the Changelings would do anything to get what they wanted, even taking the lives of their own servants but never each other. It was one of their most sacred laws: "No Changeling has EVER harmed another." The Federation was more justified than that. Even adultery was severely frowned upon within Vorta society; they were eternally loyal to their soul mates and partners. Stealing was a penalty punished amongst as well, but the punishment was sealed away from public eye until the actual trial date.

"Bearing false witness is often mislooked upon," Keevan told her with a sarcastic smile. "Lying, shedding blood and not caring about innocent or otherwise, I can go on forever, Annora. The Dominion and Cardassia are too proud with order to care about such things."

All of the commandments were covered, except one which bore the gray areas regarding the two of them. "Covet means to desire other things you can't have," she told him gently, sorrowfully, lowering her eyes to the ground. "For example, as the Bible goes, your neighbor's house and wife, and any of his possessions. What doesn't belong to you shouldn't become yours."

Perhaps she didn't realize it, or maybe she did unconsciously, but she was referring to her and Keevan together despite their longing for the other; she was married despite not loving her husband as much as she thought she did. Right now she searched his face, seeing him melt away with a sorrow that made her do the same. He had terrible luck, trying to get someone to spend the rest of his life with. She paused there and corrected herself: someone to spend his immortal life with. He might never die completely, because he was a clone and frozen in state. Taking in his ethereal features, if he were human as she was, she'd say he was the same age as she and Mia were.

"True words I wish weren't so," Keevan whispered, and she could have sworn she saw his eyes glaze again. His bare arms unwrapped themselves from around his torso to bring the blanket up higher over his body to cover more of his chest. His decision to remain naked after his bathing didn't bother her anymore, and a part of her wanted to see his body again, but she couldn't just brazenly ask him if she could.

"Keevan," she said instead, "who broke your heart before?"

It was clear he had been attracted to only one person that he suffered so much, hiding it well from others who weren't her. But his response made her take a small slide backwards. "I thought I told you not to ask me," he snapped, face twisting like before until it softened with the speed of a whiplash. Vanishing as though the anger had never been. "I'm sorry, Annora. Don't hate me again. I can't bear the thought of you hating me."

Annora shook her head. She didn't hate him at all, anymore. She was just...afraid of losing him once they were rescued. The path ahead of them both was filled with the unknown, but while she never feared for it then, it had dawned brighter and that much greater.

However, she tried to comfort herself and him with the thought that they both walked through barriers in front of them like they didn't exist.

Two or three hours passed by since her reading her barely finished novel and discussing the Ten Commandments, comparing and contrasting to real life laws set by the Dominion, when Annora began to search through her bag for the medical kit to take care of Keevan's side again - only to look up in alarm when Keevan began to gasp and sob, the act coming out of the blue altogether. "God, Keevan, what's wrong?" She quickly pulled the blanket back down and exposed his bandaged wound, pulling it off and revealing the black hole, no longer bleeding but possibly infected.

"Oh, no..." She couldn't hold back the gasp that escaped her throat. Keevan's eyes were wide, and the tears came strolling down his cheeks in heavy streams.

"Yes." His voice was croaking now, trying not to cry anymore and failing. "It's the second day this has been left untreated properly...and it's getting worse." He paused, pursing his quivering lips together. "Annora...I'm going to die soon."

Oh, God, noooo Keevan. :( But we all know him too well. He's strong to last a little longer, and Annora is doing everything she can.

Things in the timeline here will speed a little faster than the actual show, not that I'm trying to force it or anything.

Annora and Keevan's moments are kind of like mine with my boyfriend when it comes to him reading my stories; he's supportive in every step of the way. :) The issue with Moses and the Ten Commandments DOES compare to Keevan and his people under Dominion rule, does it not?