A/N: This was the bit I was nervous about, but it's been burning a hole in my hard drive (and my brain!) ever since I wrote it. Thank you for the lovely reviews, they gave me the confidence to stop dithering and post it. Feedback is urgently required.

A/N Supplemental: Apologies for any errors/ridiculousness/scientific faux pas in the techno-babble – physics isn't exactly my strong point.

PART ELEVEN: DOING IT FOR A THRILL

We can fight our desires

But when we start making fires

We get ever so hot

Whether we like it or not

– La Roux

By the time she arrived back at the shuttle she'd worked up a blinding, white-hot migraine of fury. Prophets help anyone who annoyed her, because she'd flatten them – and if it was Dukat, then so much the worse for him. She slammed her way through the airlock door and found Dukat slumped gloomily on his pile of crates, a bottle of kanar in one hand. He looked up.

'So, what did you talk about with Shakaar?' he enquired, not sounding very interested. She snorted.

'How much of a bastard you are, of course.'

'In my experience, clever bastards live longer than noble idiots. He ordered you to assassinate me or something equally predictable, am I right?'

She was a hair's breadth from simply gaping at him. Oh, he knew everything! Shakaar was right, he was too clever and too dangerous to live. She summoned a defiant razor-blade smile.

'You think I need to be ordered to do that? Come on, Dukat.'

He shrugged and took a hefty swig of kanar, eyeing her impassively.

'I don't think you'll do it at all. We need each other, Major, as I keep reminding you.'

His arrogance made her itch. She thought again of her tempting vision of a world without him in it, then wondered if it'd be worth it, or whether it would only be a temporary fix. Knowing him, he'd find ways to mess her life up even from beyond the grave. She shook her head impatiently. Right now she'd do anything for any reason and damn the consequences. Do it now, whispered the little terrorist in her mind. Use this anger and shoot him dead. Turn that dial up all the way to sixteen and blast him into oblivion. She'd got as far as turning towards the rifle propped in the corner when she suddenly had a better idea. She'd make sure the Federation got their hands on him; he'd spend the rest of his miserable life in a cell, tormented by the knowledge that all his secrets had been dragged out of him and used to kill his people. Yes, that's what she'd do. She cut her eyes at him scornfully, the sinful-sweet taste of I know something you don't know in the back of her mouth. She welcomed its cloying tendrils; he'd caused her more than enough bitterness over the years.

'I'd watch my back if I were you, Dukat. I might just stick a knife in it one of these days.'

'If I were you, Major, I'd stop making threats like that,' he countered, but it had very little of its usual bite, as if he wasn't really paying attention. He waved the bottle at her absently. 'Weyoun is still convinced the Ferengi had an accomplice, and I might just have to confirm his suspicions. I do so want to trust you, but you're really not making it very easy.'

'I couldn't care less if you trust me or not!' she snarled, hating the way he looked at her with that remorse in his eyes. 'Your death at Bajoran hands is long overdue, Dukat, and the Prophets don't often leave loose ends flapping.'

'Ah, I see, you're going to kill me because your gods want you to. How very Bajoran,' Dukat sneered, evidently warming to the task of arguing with her. 'And what do you suppose Weyoun will think of that when he finds out? And he will find out – subterfuge isn't exactly your long suit, is it?'

'I'm not interested in what Weyoun thinks of it! Besides, he has gods, doesn't he?' she retorted, though she knew it was probably a lousy argument. 'He does what they want, doesn't he?'

'Weyoun's, uh, gods,' Dukat's eye-roll told her just what he thought of the Vorta's chosen deities and she couldn't help but agree, 'would have him killed if he didn't do what they wanted. And he can actually see them, which is more than can be said for your Prophets.'

She glared at him, and he calmly met her eyes with a sarcastic tilt to his head.

'Going to accuse me of blasphemy, Major? That would imply that I believed in the gods I have sinned against, which is obviously not the case. Anyway, I doubt that a claim of divine intervention will convince Weyoun, although he is gullible and stupid. Besides, if you kill me he will simply take charge, and he won't grant you half the leeway I give you. I'm the lesser of two evils, if you really feel you must see me as evil.'

He got up and stretched his back with a sigh, then went over to the pilot's console and started the ignition sequence, jamming the eyepiece roughly over his head.

'Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get this miserable little ship in the air and then I am going to drink far more than is good for me. You're most welcome to participate, if you like kanar.'

Normally she'd turn him down and relish the momentary stab of disappointment that appeared on his face, but now she was in a reckless, savage mood which told her that alcohol would be a good idea. Even if it was with Dukat. Even if it was kanar.

'I hate it,' she muttered, 'but at the moment I'd drink anything, including bloodwine.'

She was rewarded by one of those broad, strangely guileless grins that meant he was pleasantly and genuinely surprised. A small part of her acknowledged that she rather liked that smile of his, but the rest of her forced it down hard. He only did it for effect, and he'd calculated the precise trajectory of that effect in order to get one over on everyone else. He was a cruel, remorseless killer to whom everything and everyone was fair game. He deserved only her contempt; she'd both sworn to and been ordered to kill him... and instead she was going to drink kanar with him. She sat down on his pile of crates, grabbed the bottle and downed a large gulp, savouring the acid burn in her throat even though it made her eyes water and her nose sting.

'This stuff really is disgusting, isn't it?'

'That's quite a good vintage, actually. You should have tried the swill we had on that Klingon rust-bucket, you could have cleaned warp coils with it.'

She idly took another swig, thinking about him limping around space in the cantankerous bird of prey, fighting a crazy kamikaze war against the entire Klingon Empire with a crew of disgraced former officers, unlucky greenhorns and the dregs of Cardassian society. Never knowing if the next day would be their last. Crawling back to DS9 every month or so, starving and grimy and exhausted with eyes full of the last moments of their dead comrades, desperate for any supplies that were going cheap. About how grateful he was that she'd offered to look after Ziyal – a Cardassian, grateful, to her. It simply didn't match up with what he'd done since. He didn't match up... and now she was back to thinking about that damned shot yesterday, and all the other times she'd caught him off guard, when something cracked through those hateful masks of his and she couldn't help but stare, wondering about what would happen if he let it out for good. She dumped the bottle down with a frustrated sigh, the urge for some kind of candour almost overwhelming.

'Why did you betray us all, Dukat?'

'Oh, must we go over this again?' he complained, not turning around; she didn't notice, she was struggling to sort out what she intended to say.

'I really thought you'd changed after we found Ziyal,' she began, then she realised that was giving him far too much ground and quickly changed tack. 'Oh, sure, you were still insolent and sneaky, you still detached your conscience whenever it suited you, and you still talked way too much – '

'I was still Cardassian, you mean – '

'Don't interrupt me!' she snarled. He turned around, evidently a little taken aback.

'I'm sorry. Go on.'

'When you turned renegade to fight the Klingons all by yourself, I really thought you'd found a shred of decency – you know, doing something that was more than just for your own benefit. But Miles is right, leopards don't change their spots. You'll never be anything but a cold-hearted, ruthless Cardassian bastard, and I'm sorry I ever thought otherwise,' she finished bitterly.

'I'm glad you did think otherwise. It shows my efforts were not entirely wasted, I suppose.'

She wished she hadn't brought it up. This was such a bad idea. Admitting she'd ever seen anything in him that she didn't hate was simply giving him a way in to her mind, which he'd proceed to trample all over with that singular arrogance of his. He flipped the headset out the way and looked at her carefully, evidently trying to work out what to say.

'Tell me something,' he said. She grimaced. Here goes. She'd flung the door wide and now he was going to barge in and make himself at home in her psyche without even bothering to wipe his boots. But she was the one who'd opened the door in the first place; if she slammed it in his face now, he'd know exactly how much of an impact he was beginning to have on her – which was arguably worse. At least this way she might have some hope of unbalancing him as much as he unbalanced her.

'What's that?'

'Why do you waste your energy railing against something that will never be any different?' he asked gently. 'We were on opposite sides in the Occupation and we can't change that however much we want to. I'm Cardassian, you're Bajoran, that's never going to change either. But that's not all we are, is it?'

His line of attack was different every time – sometimes indignant, sometimes humorous, sometimes even a semblance of deeper and more genuine feelings which were obviously dragged out of the dress-up box especially for the occasion – but the target was always the same, it was always her. He was a good shot, too; some of the things he said and did, or maybe didn't do, hit perilously near the mark. But she'd spent a long time fighting him and his kind, and the hard-talking, aggressive exterior she'd developed was as tough as duranium, or so she liked to think. She glared at him.

'To me that's all you are, a Cardassian. You might think you're other things, but I can't see past all the Bajoran blood on your hands.'

'Can't, or won't?'

'What's the difference?'

'The difference between ignorance and denial? You tell me, Major.'

Damn him for always having the last word. He turned back to the helm and engaged the autopilot, then hung the headset on the side of the console and sat on the floor at her feet, reaching for the kanar and drinking several swift measures without a word. She realised he must be upset; normally nothing short of a blow to the head could make him shut up. He obviously hadn't expected Shakaar to react like that, but then, she scoffed at him in the privacy of her mind, what did you expect, Dukat? You spent over twenty years turning Bajor into a living hell, you must have known you didn't have a leg to stand on. But then he probably didn't know that, did he? His arrogance blinded him to the way other people really saw him; if he thought he was right, he automatically assumed that everyone else would fall into step behind him. She wondered if he was born that way, or developed it over a long time of having his orders obeyed. Then she decided she didn't want to know. The less she knew about him the better, and also the less he knew about her the better – if indeed there was anything the Cardassian spy networks and his own inquisitive nature hadn't found out already, which she doubted. Oh, how she would gloat when she saw him arrested and thrown in a Federation brig. Starfleet wouldn't execute him, although he richly deserved it; instead he'd be forced to accept their mercy and live out the rest of his life in some penal colony building roads or mining ore, and he'd hate that even worse. She looked over at him. His silence was beginning to unnerve her. He was cross-legged on the floor, chin in one hand, nearly empty kanar bottle in the other. He looked up at her briefly and his eyes were unusually dull and lacklustre.

'I wish Shakaar had listened,' he muttered. 'I don't want anything to happen to Bajor, but if my plan works out the Dominion will be looking for a new conquest. And if it doesn't work, I will have made it blatantly obvious that Cardassians cannot be trusted, so the Dominion will simply massacre us... and move onto a new conquest. Bajor is right in the firing line whichever way you look at it.'

'Should have thought of that before you jumped into bed with the Founders, then, shouldn't you?' Kira sniped automatically, even as she realised that this was one of those strangely disarming moments of honesty, that in some twisted way he really did care about Bajor. He snorted.

'That is not an image I want in my head, thank you,' he quipped half-heartedly. 'And if you think I jumped into bed with the Founders,' his face twisted in distaste, 'without a great deal of thought and deliberation – and an equal amount of reluctance – you really don't know much about me, do you?'

'What makes you think I want to know anything about you? Besides, you tell me more than enough without me even having to ask!'

'And why do I do that, Major?' he said with a sudden lupine grin. 'Could it be because you do ask? You don't say it, of course, because that would be fraternizing with the enemy or something equally blinkered and ignorant, but really, it's written all over your face – '

She got off the crates furiously and bent close to him, using the fact that she was higher than he was to lean into him and block out his personal space, just as he did to her. Oh, he pushed her buttons and she responded like a well-tuned engine, try as she might to rise above it. He was too much.

'You're obviously not very good at reading faces, then, are you?' she snarled, the kanar singing through her veins making her hot and irrational. 'Can you read this?'

He blocked her swing and tried to grab her arm; his refusal to hit her in return annoyed her even more. She launched herself at him, knocking him onto his back, and sat on his midriff. She hit him in the face but he forced her arms to her sides before she could get another punch in. She struggled hopelessly like an eel for a few seconds, his armour digging painfully into her thighs, while he simply lay there under her, laughing, panting, bleeding from the corner of his mouth. That infernal grin! She ground the sharp heel of her boot into his knee; he hissed in pain and let go of her arms for a second, which was all the time she needed to pin his hands down either side of his head, driving his wrists into the rough steel of the deck-plates. They were both out of breath, her heart was racing, and she could see the pulse beating in his neck. She couldn't take her hands off his arms to hit him, so she settled for jabbing her heel into his leg again. He just looked at her.

'You appear to have me at your mercy, Major... I must say, this is practically indecent assault...'

'Shut up! Just shut up for once in your life!' she growled. He raised a mocking eyeridge at her, and he was still smiling! It made her see red. She crushed his wrists under her fingers, feeling the cool dry scales crinkle slightly under her pressure, the strangely frail bones of his forearms.

'One of these days I'll kill you, Dukat,' she spat. 'I swear I will.'

He shook his head, smile fading, and raked her face with a gaze like a phaser beam.

'And then what will you do? Will you be at peace, or will you just find something else to hate?'

It was the gentleness of his voice that disarmed her the most. The way he let her hurt him and offered no resistance, simply lay there defenceless and looking up at her with those eyes the colour of a Bajoran summer sky. She could see things reflected in them that made all the fight leave her; she simply hung there for a minute over him, staring, speechless. He smelt of hair-oil and armour, the dark acidity of kanar, the hot mineral tang of blood that stained the corner of his mouth, and something else – a faint, elusive scent as heady and intoxicating as spring wine. It made her head reel slightly, and all of a sudden she was rocking backwards into his lap as he sat up, her knees either side of his waist and his hands gripping her around the hips. She could feel the heat coming off him in waves, she could feel her own shortness of breath and her suddenly sweaty palms which lay uselessly on his shoulders and her jumping, skittering heartbeat, all mixed up with the smell of him, the hard strength of his arms, the grey, angular, impossibly familiar face with its too-bright eyes so close to her own. She knew she should get out, push him away, hit him again, anything but this almost painful nearness – but she couldn't find it in her to move, or speak, or do anything at all. She couldn't even remember who he was and what he'd done, because it didn't matter; all that mattered was his hands on her waist and her gaze locked to his like a fish on a hook. They hung there, the two of them, so delicately balanced, then he smiled; a tender, wary little lopsided smile with all his shields down that made something inside her feel bruised.

'Let it go, Nerys. Stop hating. Stop hurting yourself.'

Oh, the way he said her name – Prophets help her, it was too much. She felt like someone else was guiding her hand as she lifted it and carefully wiped the thread of blood from his mouth. Then, not knowing why, only that she wanted to, she traced the half-circle of ridge around his left eye, the tiny scales soft and smooth under her fingers. His eyes flickered shut for a moment and he pulled her closer; she was now flush against him, his mouth an inch from hers... she closed her eyes...

If he hadn't shifted just then and caused the crest of his armour to poke into her, she would have done it. That brief flash of pain flipped the world into ice-cold focus – she was, oh Prophets, she was about to... She couldn't even begin to think about it. She shoved him away with both hands against his sternum, knocking him onto his back again; his head hit the deck with a clang and he let out an 'ugh!' of surprise and pain. Hair disordered, he gaped at her from his ungainly position on the floor as she got to her feet, not looking at him. Her hands were not shaking. She didn't feel somehow bereft at the loss of his touch – absolutely not. Her instincts had not been telling her to listen to him, to give in and let go and stop all the hurt by meeting his lips with her own. No way.

'If hurting myself is the price I have to pay for hurting you, I'll gladly pay it,' she said, hating the fact that it took her several breaths and a trembling voice, ignoring the voice inside her trying to force different words out of her mouth – shameful, un-Bajoran words. 'Because as long as you're still here, I'll never have any peace.'

He simply stared at her, mouth slightly open. The heat from his gaze was unbearable. She got up and walked into the back part of the shuttle, desperately trying to get herself under control.

'Nerys,' he began, but she refused to look back at him; she whacked the door control, not missing his muttered curse as it slid shut. She leaned against the wall and sank down in a crouch, hands covering her face as if to shield herself, but there was no shield against what assailed her. How could she have been so stupid? What was she thinking? No, that was the problem, she wasn't thinking at all. Instead she acted off that impulsive, reckless streak so common among Bajorans, that streak that made it so easy for the Cardassians to mess them around for so many years – and that's what he'd done, he'd messed her around; with a few little words he'd turned her upside-down and fool that she was, she hadn't seen it coming, again. He didn't make you react like that, though, did he, Nerys, that cold little voice of reason said in her head. That was all you. She ignored it; she was not a reasonable person. The luxury of being reasonable had been taken from her a long time ago by people like him. How dare he knock down all her walls like that, just by saying her name in that damned smoke-and-velvet voice of his – and worse, how dare she let him?

'You can't stay in there forever,' he called from the other side of the door, the jaunty note in his voice suggesting that he'd regained his composure much faster than she had. She merely directed a string of the foulest insults she knew at him, wondering if the Dominion translators would pick them up and bowdlerise them; his cackle of laughter told her that they hadn't, and also that his Bajoran was good enough to understand every obscene word.

'Major, as much as I enjoy being on the receiving end of your impressive vocabulary, there is still a lot of work to do before we reach Terok Nor which I will need your help with.'

Damn him. How was she going to face him, after that display? His delight at her discomfort, at knowing that she'd enjoyed it just as much as he had, despite her frequent protestations that she would never enjoy anything that involved him, made her furious enough to throw caution to the winds and barge right out there. The sight and the smell of him did affect her, as she knew they would, but she clamped down on them mercilessly and fixed him with her stoniest stare.

'Dukat, I'm only going to say this once. That will never happen again. Do I make myself clear?'

'Perfectly,' he answered with a mocking half-bow, though there was a spark in his eyes that she didn't like at all. He indicated the headset which once again adorned his face.

'We'll be within sensor range of the station in about fifteen minutes, so I suggest we get on with sabotaging this ship in a convincing manner.'

She glared at him, but he only grinned.

'I thought you'd enjoy the chance to make a mess of Dominion property. I certainly will. Come on, we don't have much time. You short out the flow regulators once we drop to impulse, I'll see if I can scramble the sensor logs enough to cover our tracks.'

She went to the engine control hatch and wrenched it open, glad to have an excuse to turn her back on him, but wrestling with the unfamiliar workings of the shuttle did little to improve her mood. As she fought her way through plasma conduits, phase coils, power relays and Prophets only knew what else, she was sure she could feel his eyes on her back, travelling obscenely down her body. She swung round, whacking her elbow hard on the edge of the console as she did so.

'Stop staring at me, you – ' she began furiously then broke off, embarrassed; he had his head under the communications console and quite obviously hadn't been staring at her. He snorted.

'Major, shouting at me won't achieve anything... Alright, I'm finished here, what about you?'

'Ready,' she muttered, turning back to the hatch and quickly wiring in the last few patch-cords between a flux capacitor and what she hoped was the manifold valve. Dukat took the helm.

'Right. Returning to warp... now.'

It was probably just as well that she didn't know much about Dominion warp technology, because the explosion would have been catastrophic if she had known exactly what she was doing. As it was her more or less arbitrary cross-patching, bypassing, uncoupling and jerry-rigging produced a blast from the plasma feed that rocked the ship and sent her reeling backwards. Amid the blaring warnings and flashing lights, they staggered to the back of the shuttle to inspect their handiwork. The engine was horrendous; a hot, reeking hell of smoke and fumes and bright green plasma flares from at least three ducts, another exploding right before their eyes and showering the whole compartment with sparks. Dizzy and half-blind with the fumes, Kira lunged towards the front of the shuttle but the ship gave another lurch and she staggered; Dukat caught her almost automatically and steered her away from the fire, the closeness of him making her head spin even more than the fumes. This was ridiculous; she was stuck on a shuttle that was about to blow up and all she could think about was him? What the hell was the matter with her?

'Get off me! I can walk just fine!' she snarled, but the effect was somewhat spoiled by a sudden lungful of fumes which made her cough and choke. He ignored her feeble protests until his arms gave out, then dumped her down unceremoniously on the crates where she simply folded into a wheezing heap, cursing herself for her weakness. Over all the noise and smoke and her streaming eyes she heard him shouting down the comm to the station, then felt the familiar freezing sensation of being enveloped in a transporter beam.