Suspicion

CW: Non-graphic depictions of violence, death, torture, and threat of rape (no rape actually occurs).

We were halfway through downloading the Korma outpost database when the first shots were fired.

Seska, Sean and I ducked behind the console we had been working at and pulled out our disruptors. We exchanged fire with Cardassian soldiers across the room, surges of deadly energy screeching back and forth. Between the loud sounds, I heard one of their soldiers seal the doors, trapping us inside. I could only presume that the silence beyond meant our guard team was dead.

Peeking over the ledge of the console, I counted ten soldiers. One by one, we took them out. At some point, Sean got hit in the head with a blast. He was killed immediately. I landed a shot squarely on his killer's chest.

The console exploded in our faces, throwing us to the deck. I lost my distuptor, so I grabbed my knife.

Before I could get to my feet, a Cardassian soldier jumped over the console and pinned me to the floor. I forced my blade through the side of his cuirass and buried it to hilt, penetrating his heart. The soldier's grey eyes widened as I slapped a hand over his mouth to silence his yell. With any luck, his comrades were merely standing guard, waiting for him to claim me as his trophy. I twisted the blade and yanked it out.

The soldier's body collapsed on me, soaking me in his blood.

I glanced over at Seska, who had been knocked unconscious from the blast. She was burned, but still breathing. Rolling the dead soldier under me, I grabbed the distuptor from his belt and checked the power cell.

Dead.

Any spare cells he had were gone, perhaps given to his friends. They could attack at any moment. Glancing around at the debris littering the deck, I got an idea.

I grabbed the largest piece of bulkhead within reach, hoisted it over my head, and launched it at the last two soldiers. As it sailed through the air towards them, I cleared the console and lunged, hoping to snatch a disrupter from one of the men while they were distracted.

The smaller soldier cried out in pain as the bulkhead knocked him down, but the larger soldier dodged. He grabbed me by the hair and threw me to the deck. As he leaned over me, I kicked the disruptor from his hands, sending it flying across the room. He simply laughed, grabbed me by my neck, and dangled me in the air like a doll.

"Look at this tiny little thing," he gloated to his comrade. "She has spunk."

What he didn't realize was that I still had my blade in hand, concealed against my wrist.

Wrapping my legs around his waist, I locked my ankles behind his back and sliced open the artery in his arm, forcing him to let me go. With my next cut, I slashed his throat to the bone.

I dropped to the floor before he fell, clutching my neck as I coughed and gagged for air. When I looked for the other soldier, I found him on his feet about a meter away pointing a distuptor at me. He trembled slightly, already going into shock at the sight of me covered in his comrade's blood. As I looked into his eyes, the rage that had fueled me fell away.

The Cardassian standing before me was an adolescent boy. For all I knew, he'd just watched me brutally murder his father. Perhaps this post had been part of his training, but he was the only one left alive.

"Go," I rasped.

He looked at me with confusion. "What?"

"JUQ!" I yelled in Kardasi. "Get out of here before my comrades come and kill you!"

Although he seemed to briefly consider my offer, his expression hardened with determination. "No." His finger trembled on the trigger as he declared my death for his beloved state. "loxKardasia."

Just then, from beyond the doors that the soldiers had sealed when they attacked us, Chakotay's muffled voice shouted my name. This distracted the boy for just a moment, but it was all I needed. I whipped my knife at him. The blade sunk deep into his eye. He immediately dropped his distuptor, screaming and clawing at his face.

His hand had barely found the hilt of my blade when I shot him with his own discarded weapon.

I told myself that he would have been dead anyway as I watched him stagger and sink to the floor. I wrenched my knife from his skull, bringing his eye out with it. My stomach lurched. I fell to my hands and knees beside the boy, vomiting and heaving until my stomach was empty.

As I struggled to catch my breath, a large hand grabbed my shoulder. Before I could react, I was slammed onto my back. I gripped the hilt of my knife tightly and swung it forward, sitting up with a shout that I didn't think I had the air to make.

But my attacker wasn't there.

"Talia?" Harry's voice sounded panicked.

I panted as I took in my surroundings. I wasn't at a Cardassian outpost, pinned under a soldier who meant to torture me to death, but in bed next to a man who loved me. These were my quarters on Voyager.

"Talia," Harry said carefully, "please put down the knife."

I nodded and loosened my grip, allowing him to take it from me. He set the knife on his nightstand and turned back to me, rubbing circles on my back. My muscles were so tight.

"Must have been some bad dream," he said, trying to sound calm and only somewhat succeeding.

"I'm sorry," I panted. My throat stung, still sore from the choking grip of the Cardassian's big hand. "I haven't had one of those in almost a year."

"You've had it before?"

I nodded, satisfied that I was unhurt and dropping my hands into my lap. "Flashbacks to the war. I used to have them nightly when I first came to Voyager. I had to be treated for PTSD. Only Chakotay, Captain Janeway, and Dr. Schmullis knew."

"I'm sorry you had to go through that. I had no idea."

"It wasn't something I wanted to talk about." Closing my eyes, I took in one deep breath after another, not even counting the cycles or paying attention to the passage of time. Eventually, my adrenaline dropped off and was replaced by dull aches all over my body. I folded over myself and moaned quietly.

"Here, let's get you to sickbay," Harry said.

I shook my head. "No need. Schmullis gave me a mild analgesic to keep here for this sort of thing. But could you get me a glass of water, please?"

He nodded and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Yeah, of course."

While he went to the replicator in the other room, I fumbled through the drawer of my nightstand. Pulling out a hypospray, I programmed the dose and pressed it to my neck. Almost as soon as the drug hit my bloodstream, the aching subsided.

Harry returned and handed me the water before climbing back into bed. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I drained the glass and set it on my nightstand. "I promise you, this is one story you don't want to hear."

He put a hand on my shoulder. "Yes, I do."

"No, you don't understand. I killed people, Harry. Lots of people. And they—" I gulped, phantom aches arising in the scars on my hands. "—they hurt me. It was brutal. Inhuman. Nobody should ever have to learn about the horrible things people can do to each other."

"I don't care, Talia. You need to talk. I'll listen." He pressed his palm against my cheek. "I won't run away, and I won't love you any less."

I wanted to tell him. Baring my pagh to him piece by piece had been such a healing experience thus far. After a long moment, I proceeded to tell him about my dream.

"Who grabbed you?" he asked after I stopped talking.

"One of the soldiers who had been shot before the console exploded. I guess he'd only been stunned. He caught me completely off guard. Kicked my knife out of my hand and pulled one of his own. He could have grabbed a disruptor from the floor, but he knew who I was. He wanted me to suffer."

I shuddered and wrung my hands as I remembered how hard it had been to breathe with the officer's weight pressing down on me. He knew exactly where to cut me to extract the most possible pain, and he took pleasure in making me scream. And he reveled in the fact that my lover was right outside the door.

My insides twisted at the memory of what he'd promised to do. Thankfully, he never got that far. Sometimes, in my dreams, he did.

Every muscle in Harry's body tensed as he heard my story, trembling with a rare but powerful anger. I hadn't meant to tell him everything, but it slipped out like a thorn that had worked its own way out of my foot. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me tightly against his chest. I sighed with relief at having finally spoken the whole truth aloud.

After taking several deep breaths to soothe his rage, he prodded me on. "What happened?"

I strained to speak against the ache in my throat. "Seska came to and shot him from behind. Pulled his body off of me and spat on it. Then she... she dragged me out of there herself."

"Is that why you had that dream? Because of Seska?"

"Maybe," I whispered.

He swallowed hard. "I had no idea it was like that. I'm so sorry."

"Aren't you disgusted with me?" I asked, my breath condensing into tiny droplets of moisture on his skin. "I killed men and women with families who loved them. I murdered a boy who wasn't even old enough to buy his own kanar, and I didn't have to think about it. It was just a reflex. Isn't that repulsive to you?"

He pulled back and put a hand under my chin, looking me squarely in the eyes. "What's repulsive to me is what that man did to you, and what he would have done if Seska hadn't stopped him."

A sob caught in my throat.

"Listen to me, Talia. I love you. I love that you fight for what you believe is right, and I love that you never do anything halfway. It's easy for the Federation to judge others when all they've ever known is peace on Earth, but nobody can stay innocent when they're fighting for their life."

"You don't know... if you saw the things I've done—"

He shook his head. "Don't do this to yourself. Don't. Anyone else would've done the same in your place. You're no worse than the rest of us. In fact," he smiled and stroked my cheek, "in my opinion, you're the very best of us."

"Why?" I asked, my voice breaking as tears fell from my eyes. "Why are you so good? How can anyone be so kind and wonderful as you?"

Harry shook his head. "Don't you know that not a day goes by when I don't think the exact same thing about you?"

For the first week of Seska's neurological treatments, I left her alone, simply letting her rest while I kept on eye on Kes' reports. Once Kes informed me that Seska had finally spoken to her, I decided it was time to stop by. As I stepped into the surgical bay, I nodded at the security officer who was at the console. He activated a privacy force field, giving us a solid wall instead of a transparent one.

"Hello, Seska," I said, taking a seat in the chair facing the head of her bed.

She sat up and narrowed her eyes at me, simply staring for several seconds before speaking "How much do you know?"

"I know your real name is Iliana Ghemor. Your father is Legate Tekeny Ghemor. You are a deep cover agent of the Obsidian Order. You've had extensive procedures done to make you a Bajoran—cosmetic surgery, genetic resequencing, memory alterations. I know that your memories as Iliana resurfaced unexpectedly when we were brought to this quadrant by the Caretaker, and that you now have the memories of two different identities with no way to get the false ones purged. I know that most of Cardassia believes you went missing and were likely killed during your time undercover on Bajor. But, here you are, with a different face, planted in the cell of the second most important member of the Maquis."

"Ha! Yes, you must be dying to know why I joined his cell and not the general's. Well, Eelo'chali, I can only guess, but I wouldn't tell you even if I could."

"I didn't expect you would. But, that's not why I'm here."

"No, you just want me to tell you about my feelings, right? Well, I'm not going to kill myself, I'm not going to run off after the Nistrim, and I'm not going to talk about my son, either, so you might as well just leave."

I shook my head. "I'm not here to counsel you."

"Then why are you here?"

"Just checking up on you," I said calmly. "Making sure your treatments are going well."

"Somehow I doubt you're very concerned about my well-being," she replied skeptically. "I am the enemy, after all."

"Are you really, though? Even out here? I'd think the best way for you to serve Cardassia is to help us get back to the Alpha Quadrant. Our interests should be aligned, yet you created enmity between yourself and this crew. Do you serve Cardassia, or yourself?"

Her nostrils flared. "I serve Cardassia," she said with conviction.

"By allying with the Kazon-Nistrim? Attacking a Federation vessel? Impregnating yourself with the DNA of a Maquis rebel?"

"You couldn't possibly understand, Terran," she sneered.

I leaned forward. "Try me."

"No, I don't think so. Either way, I'll be sitting in the brig for the next seventy years, no thanks to your fool of a captain. You're wasting your time with me, Eelo'chali. Why spend any more of it with someone you hate?"

"You're right. I did hate you. But ever since I found out that you weren't lying to us all that time, that you genuinely didn't remember who you were until the Caretaker scanned us, I've found it much harder to hate you. Not impossible, but harder."

She laughed. "You know, I've always liked your honesty. You must have gotten that from your father."

"Why do you say that?"

"No reason," she purred, studying me closely. "Well, if you're not going to leave, then you might as well tell me something interesting. Who's been fucking who lately?"

I snorted.

"Hm, so not you and Chakotay. Good to know. What about Tom and Megan?"

I watched her carefully. "No. She and Jenny both have steady partners now."

"Ah," she said, looking back at me with equal intensity. "Well, you'd better keep your eye on them. They're tricky, those Delaney sisters. I always thought that they had… other interests."

"Like you?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Or you. But who could blame them? You and I are very interesting people."

"I'm not as interesting as you think," I said carefully.

"I can think of a few people who would disagree. Like Megan and Jenny. Or Tuvok and Janeway." She paused briefly and quirked her mouth. "You certainly managed to steal Chakotay's attention, but I don't think he ever could put his finger on why."

I kept my face neutral. "Do you find me interesting, Iliana?"

"Only as interesting as you make yourself, Eelo'chali."

"I see. But, Chakotay was always of interest to you."

She smiled devilishly. "I've been interested in him in more ways than one. That's never been a secret."

"What was it that reinvigorated your interest in him last year?"

Seska shrugged. "Didn't the doctor tell you? I went crazy."

"I thought agents got special training to prevent that."

"Agent? Don't be ridiculous. No, I'm just a plain, simple engineer."

I raised my eyebrows slightly. "Ah, I see. And why would a plain, simple engineer take such an interest in a former-Maquis-turned-Starfleet-commander?"

"I thought you said you weren't here to ask questions."

I smiled. "Now why would I be questioning just a plain, simple engineer? That would seem to be a pointless exercise, don't you think?"

"Yes, it would be," she agreed, pulling her legs back up onto the biobed and turning to lay down with her back towards me.

Slowly, I stood, stretched my back, and tapped my combadge. "Eelo to sickbay, you may release the force field." Seconds later, the force field dropped, and I made my way straight to the sickbay doors.

In the corridor, I paused in front of Tuvok, Lon, and Kes, who all stood outside, waiting for me. I raised my eyebrows at them. "Well?"

They glanced at each other, then back at me. Tuvok was the only one to speak. "We must meet with Captain Janeway immediately."

"Was the bridging successful?" Janeway asked Tuvok as the five of us sat down in the briefing room. Unknown to Seska, the force field had been a one-way, allowing us to be seen and heard from the other side. Once the field was activated, Lon and Kes took their positions outside of it where Lon could see Seska's eyes, and Tuvok initiated a Vulcan 'bridging of the minds' between them, allowing them to share each other's psionic abilities.

"It was very successful, Captain," Tuvok replied.

Kes nodded. "Yes, I could see Seska as Lon saw her, and I was able to enhance his empathetic abilities to better probe her mind."

Janeway looked at Lon. "What did you find out, Mister Suder?"

He returned her gaze with intensity, still feeling the effects of the meld. "She is both Iliana Ghemor and Seska Paqu. She remembers both lives. She has coped with the conflicting memories, and recognizes Seska's memories as the false ones, so in that way she embraces Iliana and rejects Seska. Yet, she is conflicted by the opposing personalities of them both, and struggles to separate the two."

"Yes," Kes agreed. "I felt that, too. There's a lot of conflict between the personalities, and they're very hard to control. I felt a great deal of frustration from Iliana about this, like she felt she should be able to control herself and she is upset that she can't."

"Seska is very impulsive and hedonistic," Lon observed. "Iliana can't control her."

Janeway leaned forward slightly. "Did she give any reason for why she defected to the Kazon-Nistrim, or why she would want to have Chakotay's child?"

"I asked her about that, Captain," I interjected. "She insisted that I couldn't possibly understand, but that she, of course, served Cardassia."

"When she told you that you wouldn't understand," Lon said, "I saw her own confusion. She projected it onto you, of course, but she doesn't herself understand why she did those things."

"I think she's in love with Commander Chakotay," Kes surmised. "Although, it didn't feel like love in a healthy sense. It's more one-sided, like—"

"Limerence," Lon finished.

"Yes," she agreed. "It's an obsession, like she needs to maintain a hold on him. But even that seems conflicted. I sense that Iliana is very displeased with Seska's desire for him, but she doesn't know how to control that, either."

I pushed forward. "There was a point in our talk when she was probing me for information about the crew. She disguised it as simple gossip about her old friends' sex lives, but it was clear to me that the meat of our conversation was underneath the actual words we were using."

"What do you mean?" Janeway asked.

"She really fixated on Megan and Jenny Delaney. She suspected there was more to them than simply being Starfleet officers, but that wasn't the weird part. She admitted that they had been suspicious of her, but she heavily implied that they were even more interested in me."

Janeway's eyebrows jumped. "You?"

Lon nodded coolly. "Very perceptive, Commander. I saw that, too."

"What else did you see, Mister Suder?" Tuvok prodded, unconsciously rubbing his hands together the way Lon often did.

"Suspicion of something sinister behind the Delaneys' interest. She told Eelo to watch them for deceit. I couldn't see any deeper than that, but it was the same look I saw when she had suggested that Talia had inherited her honesty from her father. I think perhaps it has something to do with General Eelo."

"Yes, I felt that very strongly," Kes said, leaning over the table. "Iliana is suspicious that there is more to Talia's mother than a Bajoran-Maquis rebel. Like there's something bigger behind her actions that makes her more of a threat to Cardassia."

In my periphery, I saw the captain and Tuvok exchange glances. I frowned at Kes. "What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure. I couldn't tell."

"Agent Ghemor has a resistant mind," Tuvok interjected. "Seska, however, does not. Still, that did cause limitations in what Kes and Mister Suder were able to observe."

Kes continued. "I can tell you that Iliana thinks she may have been sent to Chakotay's cell in order to determine whether she should be suspicious of you, too."

"Is she?" I asked.

"No," Lon answered. "She looked at you as though you were ignorant in this. She seemed to think that you may know something important, but that perhaps you overlook it because you don't want to believe your mother would be hiding something from you. If anything, she wants you to be more suspicious, so you can find the truth."

Kes nodded. "I sensed that if you did investigate her claims further, then your interests might be more in line with hers, and she would be more willing to talk."

Janeway stroked her chin. "Whose side is she on here? Can she be trusted at all?"

Lon shifted his intense gaze to her. "Seska may be angry, but Iliana still believes in Cardassia above all else. You can trust in that."

After our meeting, I went straight to my quarters. "Computer, how long until Lieutenant Kim goes off duty?"

"Fifty-two minutes," the computer replied.

It wasn't much time, but I'd never be able to focus on dinner conversation if I didn't at least look. Unzipping my jacket partway, I reached inside and pulled out my knife as I walked into my bedroom. Opening my closet, I pushed aside my clothes, knelt to the floor, and jammed my knife into the seam between two wall panels. I worked the blade carefully around the panel until it popped loose and I could pull it away. Behind it was a metallic data storage bank, dented and worn from use.

Sheathing my knife, I took the data bank to my computer and pulled up Valjean's database, which I had downloaded onto it before I flew the old raider into a Kazon vessel. I typed in my mother's name and began skimming through her Maquis record, looking for any discrepancies or any important missions that I hadn't already known about—anything that might support Seska's suspicions about her.

Not finding anything of interest, I switched over to the other database I had—copies of the files I had stolen and translated for Maquis intelligence. I set the search parameters to include my mother's name as written in Standard, Bajoran, and Kardasi, and then began sifting through the files.

From what I could tell, the Cardassian Central Government had little suspicion that she was more than a Maquis rebel. Their bio was mostly what Starfleet and the Maquis already had, though they did note that she was initially a rogue volunteer whose main concern was the welfare of displaced Bajorans, not the Federation colonies. Neither Starfleet nor the Maquis ever seemed to want to admit that fact. I supposed it could be seen as suspicious that as soon as the armistice with Bajor was signed, she resigned from a life-long career in Starfleet and left her family behind to fight with what remained of the Bajoran Resistance. But, they didn't know her like I did, so of course it made less sense to them.

Yet, hadn't Lon said that Seska believed me to be overlooking what I knew because I didn't want to believe that my mother was keeping secrets from me? Did the Obsidian Order perhaps suspect her of being involved with some extremist, anti-Cardassian faction of the Bajoran Provisional Government? That wouldn't be an entirely illogical leap to make, though I strongly doubted its probability.

And what about the Delaney sisters? They were Starfleet science officers with no connections whatsoever to Bajor or the Maquis. What did they have to do with this? Why would they want to watch me? I supposed they could be Starfleet Intelligence agents assigned to Voyager to find out any connections my mother and I may have had with extremist Bajoran politics, but I didn't see how that was so sinister, especially now that we were so far removed from those conflicts.

Perhaps the most important question of all was this: Could I really trust a mentally unstable cloak-and-dagger agent who was devoted to the Cardassian Central Command? The obvious answer should have been a resounding no, but something inside of me insisted there was more going on here than I had been allowed to believe.