Note:

Kanar is a Cardassian alcoholic beverage, which varies in color and is somewhat thick in consistency compared to most Human drinks.

36.

Before consciousness, before hearing or tasting or (much later) seeing anything, there was the pounding. She had come to welcome the savage pain in her head because it reassured her that she was still alive before having to open her eyes and begin the distasteful task of taking in her surroundings. Why it should be important to be alive for one more pathetic, wasted day, she didn't know, and didn't ask. She didn't ask herself much these days.

After a few more dates with Damar, the tiredness crept into Ziyal's bones and stayed there. She felt like she needed to lie down and sleep all the time, and when she was sleeping, it felt like she was awake, and being awake in her dream, she felt tired and wanted to sleep. She didn't have nightmares anymore. Instead, she dreamt of endless dates with Damar, listing to his voice drone on and on, watching him pick the food from between his teeth, smelling his breath when he burped after his tenth beer. At least the nightmares had made her feel the beating of her heart in her breast. At least in them she had seen people who she had once believed to be her friends. Now she didn't have any friends. She had her father, and she had Damar. She could hear her father's voice: "What more do you need?" What more did she need, indeed.

Despite his lecture to Ziyal about Cardassian literature, she had soon discovered that Damar had never read a book in his life and didn't consider it necessary either. It was enough for him to know that there were other people dedicated to the continuing glorification of his home planet through the arts. He was a soldier and his duty was to protect them and to ensure their works reached the farthest corners of the Universe, were everyone could bask in the shining glory of… And so on. What had at first seemed like a refreshing display of sincere emotion was nothing more than the empty repetition of empty phrases he had learned without understanding them, and after fifty minutes of it, Ziyal found herself again contemplating the best angle from which to break a man's neck.

It was not like he wasn't making an effort, in his own way. Even Damar had enough presence of mind to stop his tirades occasionally and ask her things like how she had liked the University on Bajor or what her favourite colour was, things a man like him would suppose a woman would like to talk about. The smile on his face when she told him she had been delving into Cardassian history and literature lately was genuine, and she hadn't even said it to flatter him. It almost made up for the long minutes of mind-numbing blathering. But not really.

He even asked her about the camp once or twice, and Ziyal could not help but appreciate this. She suspected Damar was the kind of guy who liked to imagine his girlfriends had no past, that their real life started when they met him. She had to be an immaculate flower, a blank piece of paper on which he, the man, the great Damar, would write the beginning, middle and end of their story. Not that actual writing was an interest of Damar's, he had only blinked and nodded when, out of sheer boredom and despair rather than the wish to share anything with him, she told him she led a journal and liked to write poems occasionally.

"Very bad poems, but still, it's fun. And I hope in time they will get better."

"I'm sure they are very good."

"I could read you one. I could recite one right now, if you want."

That was cruel, admittedly. Damar looked as if she'd proposed that for their next date, they should try to flush themselves out of an airlock.

"Uh… sure, if you like…"

Ziyal sighed and shook her head. Her poems, all three of them, were about Garak, and she was too tired to remember any of them anyway. She would throw them away as soon as she got to her quarters - if she didn't fall asleep first. They walked back in silence, she leaning on him, the way she always did, and Ziyal thought what she always thought: if it could always be like this, if we didn't have to talk, it wouldn't be so bad.

"Would you like to come to my quarters?"

Will there be a bed there?

Will I have to talk?

Sure, if I can be unconscious.

I'd rather poke my own eyes out of their sockets with a spoon.

Father, will you not help me? Is this what you want?

Garak, are you really dead? Where are you?

Think of Lamar Toral, Ziyal. Think of him.

"All right", she said. She couldn't think of anything else.

So, first, there was the pounding, steady, resonating, sending waves down to her stomach where the familiar nausea was already uncurling. Every time was like the first time. Damar had assured her it would get better, she would get used to it and then she could finally appreciate the benefits of Kanar without any of the inconveniences, as he did. Every night before she lost consciousness, Ziyal hoped that the next day would finally be the day she woke up without a headache, without the nausea and the stomach cramps, or that at least they would be less intense. And every day she woke up feeling just as terrible as the day before, and all she could think was: I'll have to try again tonight. I'm getting there, I'm sure I am. She never though: I have to stop. She needed it.

Why did she need it? Because it tasted so good, laying on her tongue like velvet, bringing tears of relief to her eyes. Because it made her thoughts sparkle and expand and dance, instead of just falling to her feet like grey bricks. Because it made her laugh and laugh and laugh. It made her want to strip off her clothes and tell Damar the story behind every single one of her scars, and it made her bold enough to do it. It made her bold enough to do anything.

Kanar had freed her.

She hadn't realised how afraid she was of everything until she started drinking. The drink made her fear go away; the drink made everything go away and only left joy, pure and simple. No more complicated, slippery feelings, no more trying to convince herself that she was this or that: a student, a murderer, a daughter, a girl, a woman, a Cardassian, a Bajoran, a lover. Only now did she realise what a strain that had been, what a heavy burden. With a few glasses of Kanar, with a single sip even, all that went away: she didn't have to struggle to find who she was, and she didn't have to leave anything behind to be able to live in peace either. She didn't need anyone or anything. She just was, and it was good. It was such a perfect certainty, such a beauty, that it made her want to scream.

Sometimes it also made her see things. Once she had a long conversation with her mother, and finally she could understand her, and love her for who she was, and tell her so. When she realised it was Damar she was hugging and kissing she was so disappointed she could have killed him, or herself, but he just handed her the bottle, and it went away. It all went away, that was the beauty of it.

And then there was the time she had run out of the room and into the nearest airlock. All she wanted was to just float out and be one with space. Surely she could do that? Wasn't she invincible, wasn't she the most perfect being every created? Before pressing the control to lock the access, she looked outside to see if anyone had followed her - Damar, her father, Kira… They wouldn't understand, they would try to stop her.

But she didn't see any of them. It was Garak standing there, and so she didn't press the control and asked: "Are you back?", and he answered: "I never left." He looked strange, very pale, his eyes very wide and very dark, he was breathing heavily, and his face looked moist, as if he was sweating. But he wasn't maimed like in the nightmares, his eyes were there, so were his hands. He just looked frightened, like a little boy who was lost and alone.

Ziyal wanted to be angry with him for interrupting her moment of joy and clarity, for making her feel sad and worried, but she couldn't help asking: "Are you all right?"

"It's very hot in here", he said, "and very dark. I'm afraid."

"Where are you?"

"Open the door."

"I can't. I have to go out, into space."

"Open the door, please."

"No. Come with me into space. We'll be together, would't you like that?"

"OPEN THE DOOR, ZIYAL!" Damar was pounding at the airlock access.

"Where's Garak?", Ziyal asked. When Damar finally realised the access wasn't locked, he ran in and punched Ziyal so hard she fell straight to the floor, like a bag of wet clothes.

"What are you doing, you stupid fool?"

"Where did he go? Did you see him? He was just here…"

Damar had dragged her back to his room and given her a shot of Kanar, in case the punch hadn't been enough to knock her out. When she woke up, he had given her an angry lecture - he loved lectures: if she couldn't control herself, and it was obvious she couldn't, if she was going to run around the station making a spectacle of herself, they would have to discontinue their relationship. Those were the actual words he used: "I see no other choice but to discontinue our relationship".

"What relationship?", she had sneered. "Coming here every night to get drunk and puke on each other? That's certainly a relationship I can do without. I should have *discontinued* it right from the start!"

She stormed out of the room and that same night, at the usual time, she was standing in front of his door, wearing next to nothing. He let her in and opened a bottle of Kanar; they didn't speak until they were halfway through it. Then he took her clothes off.

The first time they had sex, Ziyal expected to feel repulsed, like she had felt in the camp before she learned how to - dissuade her suitors, like she had felt when Lamar Toral had leaned on her and run his hand up her thigh. Oooh, I know you are going to love this. I know you want it. When Damar started kissing her, that first night she had gone with him to his quarters, she thought "maybe I won't be able to stand it and I'll kill him, just like Torel, like all the others".

But it was different with Damar: he was rough, and he clearly wasn't very interested in how she felt during the whole process, but there was a kind of innocence to him. There wasn't hate, or violence, nothing twisted or perverse, just pure unbridled lust. He probably hadn't had many women, and even less, if any, of the kind that didn't expect money in return for their time and body. He was just a big boy enjoying himself, and Ziyal found she was able to take her own joy in that.

The disgust came afterwards, when she was lying beside him. As he turned to her and smiled, putting a hand on her hip, possessive and stupidly proud, as if he'd just achieved a heroic feat, she looked into his eyes and saw - nothing. There wasn't a blank mirror that hid an unfathomable depth, like there had been with Garak, or a screen that only showed what it was programmed to show, like with her father and Kira. There was nothing in Damar's eyes because there was nothing inside Damar. Once his childish desires had been satisfied, when there were no phrases to declaim and no immediate duties or chores to perform, there was nothing more than the dull satisfaction of a senseless creature. For him, what they had done had implied no communication of any kind, no exchange of anything human - just the satisfaction of a physical necessity, like sleep or defecation.

What are you doing?

She knew it wasn't Garak, as surely as she knew he hadn't been standing on the other side of that airlock. It could not be Garak's voice she was hearing. Garak was dead.

What are you doing, my darling?

Also, Garak had never called her "darling". No one ever did that. No one except her father.

She went to the bathroom and leaned over the sink. Kneeling beside the toilet to throw up had always seemed absurd to her. As if the mere act of vomiting wasn't humiliating enough. When she was finished, she went back into the room and started to get dressed.

"Where are you going?"

He said that every time.

"To my quarters."

"Will I see you tonight."

She left without an answer. They both knew it meant "yes".