JMJ

Chapter Thirty-Five

Backing up a little

After a moment, Quark opened his eyes and smiled at the rest of his family.

They all seemed to take it as an invitation to have a Ferengi hug together. A little overwhelming, perhaps, and certainly an unused gesture among his family, but he supposed after what he put them through they deserved it. Besides, in the end he liked it. He liked it very much. Nog, Leeta and Arkos included. The only ones who didn't were the doctors who looked at each other.

Bashir beamed at Tenniel. He almost laughed, and Dr. Tenniel gave him a wry look back, though looked away strangely shyly before going to a computer to catalogue the information on their interesting patient. The patient deserved to be left in peace without the foreigners staring so.

Hardly had she turned, however when the door opened.

"Ah ha!" came the voice of Zek. "This is where they told me I'd find you!"

Tenniel spun around in surprise. "Oh!"

But Quark opened his eyes with ease.

"Oh, hey, Zek," said Quark.

Arkos laughed.

"I'm so sorry we left you behind, Zekky," said Ishka.

"Oh, don't worry about it, my dear! I can get around myself! That's what this big boy is for," said Zek patting his walking chair.

Then he turned to Quark. Quark could only grin as he awaited with uncertainty for whatever wisdom the ex-Nagus would endow him with now.

"I knew you'd be okay, my boy!" the old man said clasping his hands together and rubbing them with pleasure after motioning his chair forward. "Never doubted you for a second, isn't that right, my jewel!?"

"Of course!" said Ishka gently.

She was the only one who had not gotten onto the floor as she was too old for that sort of thing, despite her suppleness for her age. She had only hugged Quark's shoulders from behind. As she straightened now, she beamed over her family like the sagest of matriarchs.

"Your boys, dear!" Zek meanwhile went on. "Your boys are really something else! The very representation of what Ferengi should be, That's what I say."

"I couldn't agree more," said Ishka promptly.

"The prize of the Alliance, I say!" Zek went on. "And your whole family should be recognized for it!"

"Ah, but Zekky, remember!" cooed Ishka, and she patted Quark's head and Rom's in turn. "They're your boys too. Your family."

Zek laughed, a mysterious and very Ferengi sort of laugh.

"That's very true," he said tapping his nose. "So, you gunna get off the floor and give your old man a hug too, Quark?"

Quark looked at Sharzee, and Sharzee sneered back.

"Oh, bring her with if you can't part with her!" Zek laughed. "I know what being in love's like!"

The spouses obeyed their step-father and father-in-law. Quark hugged him quick on one side, and although Sharzee was hesitant she hugged the ex-Nagus too very delicately on the other side. Unfortunately, he pinched her cheek about it. He kissed it too.

Quark than motioned her to his side. She readily did, but as far as Quark could tell Zek was more sobered than he appeared by everything that had happened. He was not exactly certain how far everyone had been affected, really. Time would tell, he had to suppose.

"If you two kids don't have my lovely Ishka's next grandchildren before I die, I won't forgive you, you know," Zek warned. "But I do wonder what you were all doing on the floor. Can't afford to sit on a Federation ship?" He laughed. "Besides, there's still a lot to do."

He looked especially wry as he said this.

"Oh," said Ishka coming to Zek herself now. "You don't need to worry yourself over what's happening still."

"Why, what's he talking about?" asked Quark.

"Belongo, Lek, and Zof are going to be questioned about everything that's happened," Sharzee explained. "The Grand Nagus will be hearing on behalf of the Alliance, and for now, Capt. Sisko will be hearing on behalf of the Federation."

"You certainly don't have to worry yourself about it," Ishka said to Quark.

"I'm really not that hurt or ill," Quark said.

"Quark, listen to your mother," Zek said. "She's worried about you."

"I'm not—" Ishka started to protest.

"It's okay, Moogee," Quark interrupted putting his arm around her shoulders. "If you want me to rest, I will. I'm sure I'll hear about it eventually."

Ishka looked at Quark very hard for moment, but she sighed and nodded. "There is one thing you have to promise me, Quark, more than about this."

"Yes?" asked Quark without hesitation.

She put her hand on his cheek and looked wryly at him, despite her insides betraying a sort of humility that was most unusual in her.

"I want you to tell me what happened to you," said Ishka. "Everything that happened to you since Dr. Julian Bashir came to you until what just happened now."

Quark's eyes faltered.

Her uncharacteristic submission was almost more overpowering than her domineeringness. It was more powerful, because it was one hundred percent purposeful on her part. The only thing he could compare it to in his mind was a mighty Klingon warrior submitting himself to someone who had in fairness outdid him, despite being larger and stronger and more experienced. It was a rather humbling experience for Quark himself somehow. For years he had desired her submission to him as head of the family, but now that it was happening he felt unworthy of it, except that he knew that it was still his responsibility. After all, she was almost a decade older now than when she first began her crusade, and now as if crowned by the queen herself, he was initiated back.

But instead of bowing he only nodded affectionately to her request.

"And in return," said Ishka; smiling broader and more powerful still, she bowed her head nearly into a perfectly humbled subordinate crouch to a superior according to Ferengi tradition, but she certainly lost no dignity doing it. "I will tell you everything. Not just what will be spoken about at this interrogation, but everything about the reign of the Shadow Nagus and how she was involved in this."

"Moogee," said Quark with full honesty, "you don't have to tell me anything that makes you uncomfortable."

"It won't," Ishka asserted truer to her stubborn nature. "It's millions of small facts of information, all in the universes of our knowing with too much of one and not enough of the other."

"Then I'll go with Rule of Acquisition Number 17," Quark teased.

"I'd be more worried about Rule of Acquisition Number 79, 'Beware the Vulcan greed for knowledge,'" retorted Zek with a sneer.

Quark shrugged.

Zek only laughed, but the laugh was cut short as Ishka warned as she turned to Zek, "But that still doesn't give you a reason to go."

"My dear, I love you," said Zek with a very toothy grin, and he took her hand to kiss it to prove it. "But it is interesting how despite how wise and perfect you are and I worship you for it, I do have a long life before we met that you sometimes, sometimes, my dear, forget about— or at least it doesn't seem to occur to you that anything from that past would be of importance to me."

"That's exactly why I think it best if you don't," said Ishka contrarily.

"But, Ishka, I do have to be there," said Zek very soberly, more soberly than Quark thought he had heard him speak in a very long time, and never had he heard him speak that way to his mother.

Ishka accepted it; though with a little impatience.

"My son Krax may not have been a very good son, but he was my son, and everything linked to him is my family," said Zek. "This may come as a surprise to everyone, but after all that's been said and done in this espiègling empire of ours that I've had the honor of ruling for many long years, I have not always been perfect."

Ishka smiled despite herself.

"I want Rom to know especially about this."

"Me?" gasped Rom most uncomfortably.

"You think you were fooled by Prinadora, do you?"

"Well, I didn't even know you knew anything about that," Rom admitted.

Zek went on as if the current Nagus had said nothing at all, "Why, before I was Grand Nagus, I was afraid that one day the secret of where Krax came from would be the death of me. I was fooled by a wife-seller, same as you."

"Really?" gulped Rom tingling from head to foot as though with a line of electric current.

"Really!" insisted Zek. "She was a wily one too. I hear she hoodwinked everything out of her brother after the woman's rights came full swing. Like father like daughter, I always say. Even at the time she was the one who broke the news that it had all been a ruse with fine print and everything and that she'd had no intention of going further anymore than her father had after the five years were up. She was tactfully cold about it too. I was heartbroken as you can imagine after how much she had faked adoring me."

"Oh, Zekky…" cooed Ishka.

"Oh, that part's in the past, love!" Zek assured her, "But Krax, never forgot it. I could have lied to him and said his mother died or something, but at the time I saw no reason to risk such a lie. It affected Krax far more than it affected me, but then I had two very devoted parents. When I became Nagus, Krax was absolutely determined to make something of himself more than before. He worshiped me in the best minion-like fashion while listening for weaknesses the whole time he obliged me, and he knew I was on to him. In fact, we listened to each other so well that he knew when I was beginning to have my ear out for Belongo after his father's demise. He just knew it! Even before my test with Quark as the butt. Especially with that particular incident fresh on my mind, it did not take me long to figure out who had tricked Belongo into prison not too long after that. Belongo was not good enough anyway if he could be tricked by Krax so easily.

"So! When it came to Ishka, well… I knew I had him. She was smarter than him, wiser than him, better than him in every way. The Shadow Nagus was originally my idea!"

"Moogee?" Rom gasped.

Ishka did not deny it.

"I'd banished Krax, anyway," Zek went on further, "long before, of course, but now he had no way to make a comeback. He did not have a way with words like Quark or Brunt did. He was cut out entirely. I must admit I felt pretty good about myself for getting back at him almost as much as I felt good about being in love with someone after so many years and someone who truly loved me back!

"I expected him to try something! But I never would have suspected him of betraying the whole Alliance to get back at me, with or without Ishka, apparently, since it started before we met, and as for what he did to Belongo's son, that's just the jelly in the gree worm, you know."

"But if you already know all this stuff," asked Rom cautiously, "why do you want to go to the meeting?"

"To find out anything I missed," retorted Zek. "Besides, if there is one thing I have come to appreciate about the Hidden Profiters it is a sense of duty to family, and I feel it my responsibility, you could say, to be for Belongo what Belongo has decided to do for his granddaughter. My great, grand niece! Can you believe that?! And what my grand nephew did because of my son's brainwashing him and taking his father away from him… I knew that the Rules of Acquisition have always implied the act of keeping out of such affairs, but this is beyond anything, because Krax, like the fool he was, almost destroyed everything we've ever cared about no matter what kind of Ferengi we are. He was no good for the Alliance as future Nagus, and he was no good now in the agreement with the Keeoopii. I'm going to be there, my love, whether you like it or not then you can go back to being my dear queen all you desire afterwards."

Ishka huffed. "Zek. I don't want to be your queen."

"You don't?" demanded Zek rather disappointed.

"Not unless you're my king," retorted Ishka with an old shimmer of laughter than had been missing from her for quite some time.

Zek nodded quite sagely and his good-humor returned with a chuckle of his own. "Then we'll go together, hmm?"

"Of course!" said Ishka.

And with that, they strode out with Maihar'du who had been watching with care by the door and quite thoughtfully; for, naturally, he had heard all this before. He had probably had first-hand experience with some it, and had been Zek's confident in it all.

"Well," said Rom after a moment of silence digesting all that they had heard. "Um… I guess, I should go too, Leeta. I am Grand Nagus, after all… I think. Unless Moogee's really taking her place as Grand Nagus instead…"

"Rom," said Quark coming up to his brother with full seriousness. "I think you're more Grand Nagus now than you ever were. Moogee knows she's not strong enough for the position anymore even if she was before. She's old, you know? So... go out there for us Ferengi, O Nagus."

Without irony and with more honor than ever before, Quark bowed his head.

Sadly and blinking, Rom simply looked at Quark for a moment. Quark could almost hear him say that he would rather Quark be Nagus than him. He was so close to saying something of the sort, and Quark loved him dearly for not saying it out loud. Instead, slowly Rom turned to Leeta's encouraging smile. Then he looked at his sons Nog and Arkos standing side-by-side. Straightening himself firmly, he gave a sharp nod.

"Yes!" he said. "Nog! Let's go."

"Right!" said Nog, and he left with him.

Leeta stayed with her son. Besides, she would have to check on Nissa now who was surely nearly finished with her nap even if a babysitter had stayed with her. She was leaving the room too now, but she stopped once more to look at Quark. She looked at him very hard.

"Are you alright, Leeta?"

"You're one unique man, Quark," she said, and she paused. "Thank you."

"For what?" Quark demanded shaking his head.

"For everything, I guess." She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before she ushered Arkos away who waved to his aunt and uncle.

Quark and Sharzee waved back.

As soon as the door shut, Quark rubbed the back of his neck.

"I'm not sure what just happened, really," he admitted.

"You gave up your life for them," Sharzee told him simply. "Just like you wanted."

Quark smiled. He felt a choke. Though he knew it was fruitless to try to hide it, he turned away from Sharzee and swallowed hard.

"Quark?"

Quickly Quark shook his head. "I'm okay, I'm just… so okay, I don't know what to do."

"Then just relax like you mother said," said Sharzee gently.

"Right. Thank you, Sharzee. You don't what you've done for me. You don't. I want you to know that. I never could have done this without you. No matter the technical reason why we're together in this situation, you were a gift, alright?"

Sharzee stared, but she did not agree or consent to what he said.

So after a moment, Quark looked at Bashir. Bashir thankfully understood, and quietly, he motioned for Dr. Tenniel to leave for a moment. Tenniel did nothing to protest. Sharlezeed listened to them go and stifled a tear, as she straightened herself. She closed her eyes but did not move until the doctors were quite out of the room.

"Sharlezeed," said Quark firmly.

Sharzee bowed her head, her earlaces tinkling as she held her fists together under her chin.

"Don't be proud," Quark said. "Please. For your sake."

"I know I was. That's what's overwhelming about it," said Sharzee. "The River carried me for your sake, but my intentions were only selfish."

"Only some of them."

"You… know?" asked Sharzee.

Quark shrugged.

"You said so yourself," he admitted warmly, "you allowed yourself to feel like a victim as a Hidden Profiter. You suspected that your brother was going to do something against the New Course which was your oppressor. You loved me because I was for the Hidden Profiters… a savior for your victimhood."

"But I really do love—" Sharzee started to say.

"I know."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Sharzee demanded.

"I did. Don't you remember me saying that I didn't trust you?"

"And I said I didn't believe you."

"That's because I did still trust you in the sense that I felt you were there for a reason, and I couldn't help myself, anyway. I loved you, but not as much as I love you now."

Quark took her again into his arms, and Sharzee did not protest.

"Why do you think I didn't want to let you out of my sight?" Quark asked. "It was a difficult time for everyone, and I needed the support. I needed you and I didn't want to lose you. There was nothing I could have said, though. I know you strong, mentally powerful women too well. I was raised by one, you know."

"I was a hypocrite," said Sharzee. "I wasn't a real Hidden Profiter. I was…"

"You felt hurt. I know. I understand."

"But when you were hurt because of your beliefs out in the stars, they were the beliefs of—"

"It doesn't matter. Whether you use the truth or a lie, you can always make yourself a victim."

"But you're more of a Hidden Profiter now than I ever was," Sharzee said.

Quark sighed. "I only took your advice, Sharzee."

"It wasn't my advice, it was the truths of what we believe."

"Then it was good advice," said Quark simply.

"'Good advice is seldom cheap,'" Sharzee sighed.

"I was perfectly cognoscente of that and did not leave it out of my calculations, but it was all still worth it," Quark insisted. "And now you have to let it go. It's over. You hurting yourself over it now is not going to make me feel any better, now is it?"

"No, but I should have warned you all more about my brother's involvement. I mean, looking back, I think that he may have been even…"

"Merged?" asked Quark.

"Oh, not of his own will, I'm sure."

"I'm sure," said Quark. "But he was more of a victim than you, I understand."

"I don't know about that…"

"You're being hard on yourself."

"I know."

"You have to forgive yourself too," Quark said. "You saw my mother. Be like her. She said her say. She's sorry. Now it's over."

"I don't think I could ever be like your mother, Quark," Sharzee said sullenly, but Quark could hear the slight amusement in her that she could not hide.

"Oh, you already are," Quark sneered. "Why do you think I love you so much? A man always falls for the woman that's most like his mother."

"Where'd you hear that?" Sharzee laughed despite herself.

"It's an ancient Human maxim."

"Ah."

"I'm surprised you haven't heard of it," said Quark. "There's more truth in that than in some of the Rules of Acquisition."

Sharzee closed her eyes, but she was fully smiling now.

"Have you eaten?" asked Quark.

Sharzee lifted one eye open. "No."

"Then let's get something to eat. I'm starving," said Quark knowingly. "It'll be replicator food, but…"

"Oh, replicator food with you would be better than fresh food from a volcanic paradise without you," Sharzee assured him.

"Good! Now, let's just forget about all that, hmm? And focus on now. We're starting over fresh, and it's going to be that way from now on. I don't want you to worry about the past. We should be keeping our promise to Zek about the future."

Sharzee flushed, and then she gushed as she leapt on him back.

"A family?" she squeaked.

"A family," Quark agreed. "With the little time we have left for that sort of thing, getting started so late."

But Sharzee paused once more as a sudden thought struck her.

"What about Ferenginar?"

"I can't worry about Ferenginar right now," Quark said solemnly.

Sharzee stared at him searching him with her hot amber orbs. "You know, don't you?"

"I know it's not destroyed," said Quark simply. "And it'll be more than it was before eventually."

Sharzee continued studying him intently for a moment, but Quark was determined not to let her do that for too long. She suspected rightly enough that more than the physical miracles had occurred to him, and Quark was not about to let the conversation dwell on that just yet. Later, of course, but not just yet. His duty was all laid out for him in that, naturally, but right now he felt he could focus on this little part. This was the part where he would bond closer with his wife. A tiny pair of ears would be listening in on them within the coming months too. If he was not mistaken, in the silence of this room, he could hear that conception had already begun to spring new life.