The Past Comes Back

Mariana settled into her job at the xenobiology clinic. Her duties were, at first, restricted to the section for Terran patients. As she caught up on her xenobiology she was allowed to attend, little by little, a few of the other races that spanned the Empire.

At the end of her first week there, she was on her way out of a patient's room when she heard a familiar voice. Her stomach jumped and her head turned. She saw a Vulcan doctor talking to someone in a lab coat. All she saw was the back of the other person's head. But she would know him anywhere, even if he wasn't facing her full-on. What was he doing here?

At that moment, he turned and she saw the unmistakable face of a Cardassian, one that she knew too well. Recognition dawned in his eyes and then his face almost hardened with determination. Her eyes then grew angry. Neither of them said a thing to the other. She simply turned on her heel and walked away.

####

Dana took advantage of her day off. She really didn't want to do this, but she felt she had to. She made her way to Sarek and Amanda's. If Amanda stayed angry with her for too long after hearing what she'd done, she didn't know how she was going to live that down.

Amanda knew something was wrong the moment she opened the door for Dana. "Hey, come inside," she said as welcoming as she could. Dana walked into the Common Room and she looked as if she were about to start crying. Amanda was even more alarmed since she knew that Dana would never shed tears in front of anyone. "Dana. What's wrong?" she asked as tears almost came to her own eyes. She'd become so sensitive lately!

Dana sat down hard on the couch. She sighed once, hard, and launched into speaking, "Amanda, if you never spoke to me again after what I have to tell you I couldn't blame you."

The other woman swallowed as she sat down opposite her friend. "What's wrong?"

Dana looked away from her, a lump in her throat. How was she supposed to tell her this? Then Sarek entered the room and she felt even worse. "Oh, please, no," she whispered.

"Dana, what has occurred?" asked Sarek, equally as troubled as Amanda since he knew Dana was not one given to such emotion.

Even so, she was still stringently keeping her tears in. "Please, don't hate me," she whispered as she tried lift her gaze but found she was unable to meet their eyes.

"What is it?" asked Amanda as her stomach dropped out from beneath her.

"My uncle," she said with one disgusted laugh. "Cassie's father, he threatened to go to the media and say that Sarek had something to do with Cassie's death."

Amanda gasped as her mouth flew open. "What?"

"Knowing him, he would have put a very scandalous spin on those accusations; made things out as they most certainly were not, dragged the ambassador's name through the mud in the worse ways possible. By the time the court of public opinion was done with him-" Dana sniffled, but still the tears were being held in. "I—I was given an ultimatum. Give up the books so that Cassie can be cleared of her Thought Crime posthumously. He wants to bury her with the family, in the family plot. She'll probably get her own mausoleum." She finally turned her eyes up to Amanda. "I couldn't let him…" She then looked up at Sarek. "I couldn't let your image be tarnished for a lie. Not like that."

"What are you saying, Dana?" asked Amanda.

She looked down at her hands rubbing nervously at her thighs. "It just came down to those books for a man's reputation. The media would have had a field day with it, and not just the Terran media, either." She paused again. "Please don't hate me," spilled from her lips again.

"Are you saying-" Amanda couldn't ask.

"She has given them up for the sake of my reputation, Amanda," Sarek filled in the thoughts she was refusing to give voice to.

Dana looked away as she completely lost face. One fat tear of grief spilled down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly. "I'm so sorry I betrayed you like this. I know how you felt about them…how we all felt about them. They were something pure and noble…something from before the Empire rose. Something we all agreed should survive no matter what. But I just couldn't let him do that to Sarek. So I betrayed everything I stand for and I caved and…" She looked exhausted, like she could no longer go on. She nodded and shrugged. "I know I'm no better than Cassie."

Amanda stood and went to Dana, knelt down in front of her. Her friend still refused to meet her eyes. "How could I see it that way, Dana?"

The stunning blonde turned her eyes down to her friend as realization dawned. "What?"

"How could I be angry with you for protecting my husband from a damaging scandal?"

"But we all agreed that we wouldn't give them up, no matter what. I was the one that knew how to get them back and I gave them to the Empire. The Empire! And now they're going to burn them, dispose of them for good. No one will ever have a chance to benefit from them. But Cassie will get her honorable burial! And I'm just like her now!"

Amanda grabbed Dana's hands. "No, Dana. No."

"You are to be trusted above so many others, Dana," said Sarek. "You have honor. And you have done something at great pain to yourself to protect the honor of not only myself, but of my house and my clan. And that is honor many people in our Empire will never possess, even amongst my own people."

Dana pulled her hands away from Amanda and buried her face in them as she nearly split herself apart on the inside keeping her tears contained. Amanda knew that Dana would be mortified for someone to see her, even like that, and turned to look at her husband. Leave now, Sarek. She can't take the humiliation of you being in the room while she's like this.

He oddly understood and departed with haste as his wife sat next to her friend and hugged her.

####

Mariana left the clinic that day. She knew what was about to happen, but she walked into it anyway. It was time she confronted this.

Jhuleem was standing outside, waiting for her. "So this is where you've been hiding," the Cardassian nearly taunted as he walked up to her.

She looked up into his face and the familiar butterflies of the past were in her stomach. "I haven't been hiding, Jhuleem. I've been living my life out in the open."

"So you haven't been hiding from me?" he asked with semi-angry eyes.

"No! I have better things to do than to hide from you," she said with attitude.

"Oh, I see. So did you think I would just disappear into the darkness?"

"Why not? You're good at that!" she charged.

"Mariana!" he said, his feelings openly hurt. "You didn't defend me to your family. You listened to what they told you to do and just walked away from me. You didn't fight for us. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to handle that all on my own? It takes two to make something work, not just one!"

She was deflated then. She knew he was right. "I'm sorry," she whispered with a downcast shrug.

"Is that all you have to say?" he asked, angry all over again.

Two Vulcans walked past them. They delivered the best example of non-condemnatory looks of stark disapproval at such a public display of emotion without showing a thing on their faces. "Come with me," he suddenly said to her.

She stood there for second, paused. She wanted to go with him, so badly, and then again she did not. "What am I doing?" she whispered to herself. She then saw him extend his hand to her and his deep eyes, the pleading in them, melted her insides. She took his hand, followed him to his shuttle.

The two of them entered his shuttle and she saw it was a small four-seater. Even so, there was room even for his tall frame to stand fully upright. She let herself heave down into one of the seats and sighed tiredly. When the chickens come home to roost they sometimes fry themselves she thought to herself.

He sat down directly across from her. "I've wondered for so long what I did that was so wrong?" he began. "You just- you just let them separate us. What did I do that was so wrong that you gave me up so quickly?"

She looked down into her lap, ashamed. A feeling was creeping up from her belly, like she was eight years old again. What did he do wrong? He wasn't Terran. That's what was 'wrong'. And her family couldn't handle it. And like the good little girl she was, the seventh child of a family with five sons, she'd buckled under the pressure. "No. The question is, what did I do wrong?" she admitted in a low voice.

"That night, I wanted so badly to come in there and take you away from them. But I knew I wouldn't be able to do that if that's not what you wanted," he said. "So I stayed away and waited for you to call me. But you never did."

She could hear the emotion in his voice and it almost undid her. She still loved him. She knew she loved him within days of meeting him. But she knew they could never be. They'd never even made it to an official relationship status. Her family inserted themselves all up into things when they got wind of how she felt about the man that worked in the lab as an exchange scientist to the hospital she worked at. It wasn't just the ER she'd run from. She was also running from him.

"I did run from you," she admitted as she finally looked over at him. She swallowed back her tears as she looked into the warm eyes she never thought she would see again. "I loved you so much and I never even told you. I was so worried about everyone else's opinion. And then there's that law on Terra Prime. I kept thinking about that and how I didn't want you to be hurt just for being with me. I didn't want you to get killed or for you to go to jail. The police could have killed you, no questions asked, for just touching a Terran female. So I decided you would never touch me. I would never let me be the reason you died."

He was across the shuttle instantly, next to her, searching her eyes and face. "Mariana, do you mean it? Is that the reason you just disappeared on me?"

She nodded. "I don't know who you're with now, but I owe you the truth for making you so miserable. I could never talk to anyone else without thinking about you, ever since then. It was always you. No one else measured up. No matter how I tried to forget, you were always there in my mind."

"So you never found another Terran to hold a candle to me?" he said with a slight smile.

"No," she said as she laughed. "Does that make you feel better that I've been just as miserable without you?"

He nodded. "Yes."

And they both laughed. She looked down at her hands. Finally, this part of her life would be resolved. Maybe she could feel a lot less guilty and move on. But she looked up at his face and fell into the dark comfort of his eyes. She would always want him. She reached up tentatively and touched his skin. It was so much softer than it looked. His eyes closed as she touched his face. He took her hand, gently kissed her palm. "Do you still love me?" he asked as his eyes opened and met hers.

She swallowed. She knew she was opening herself up to be hurt by him. But if that's what he did she felt it was what she probably deserved. "Yes," she admitted.

"And I've never forgotten you, either," he said. "I came here to try and get as far away from you as possible to run into you again here," he laughed. His face was close to hers then. "But I still love you," he whispered.

She always wondered what it would be like to kiss him. At one time it was a fascination, a question of what would it be like to kiss a Cardassian? And then one day it wasn't about kissing a Cardassian, it was about kissing Jhuleem. But she'd never found that out. She wasn't on Terra Prime anymore. And she didn't have to worry about him being arrested for touching her or being seen touching her. She reached up and tentatively brushed her lips against his.

He wouldn't let her pull away so easily, though. He took her face in both of his hands, pulled her lips back to his gently, kissed her the way he'd been wanting to since the day they had met. "Yes, I still love you," he whispered. "And I don't belong to anyone else but you, still."

She rubbed her face against his, saw what it was like to finally be this close to him. How was she going to walk away from him now? "I can't leave you again," she answered her own question.

"I'm not asking you to," he whispered. "Please don't leave me again," he begged.

She put her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. It was the most the two had ever done in the past, hugged. He'd smelled so good back then and he still did now. No, she wasn't letting him go again. She didn't care what anyone else thought this time, either. "I'm not leaving you. This time I'm not strong enough to walk away."

"And this time I won't let you walk away," he promised.

I'm feeling much better now! Since I had to restrain myself from writing for this story so much, I've gone on a real writing stretch since I've started feeling so much better. I'm looking at possibly updating several more times this week, but only if anyone else is even interested in having that many updates at a time. I'm also sorry this chapter is so short, but it felt right to end it here. - J.S.