To The Journey
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This is an AU story.
Chapter Forty-Two: The Next Step
Tasha had been watching the moving crowds with dispassionate interest, but that all changed when she saw one particular figure in one of the beam-down parties. Skin pale beyond even that which could be caused by the sight of what was left of the city, hair immaculate as always. She didn't even bother to excuse herself from the conversation with Damar before she turned and ran towards him as fast as her legs could carry her. He saw her a few seconds later and ran as well, meeting her halfway.
She flew into his arms, his lips crashing down on hers in a kiss so forceful it almost hurt. He had lifted her clear off the ground, and they clung to each other and cried and kissed over and over. No one bothered them. Spontaneous displays of emotion were par for the course after a battle like that.
She realized suddenly that she was exhausted beyond all reason and slumped in Data's arms. He seemed to realize this and lifted her more completely into his arms. "Captain, with your permission, I need to take my wife back to the ship."
"Of course, Mr. Data." He reached out and gently touched the blonde woman's hair. "Natasha, that was some battle. Well done."
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Tasha felt like she'd barely fallen asleep before Data was waking her, telling her Admiral Ross wanted her present while he talked with the Cardassians. Twenty minutes later she was standing in the conference room on Deep Space Nine.
Damar nodded and smiled just a little when he saw her. She saw Ross, Sisko, Martok, Garak, and Kira sitting there, and a few more Admirals were on the viewscreen.
"The documents detailing the terms of surrender by the Dominion have been signed," Ross told the assembled crowd. "We are here now to discuss the situation on Cardassia."
"How bad is it?" a voice asked from the viewscreen, and Tasha felt a sudden jolt as she recognized Admiral Paris' voice. She hadn't even looked at the viewscreen long enough to notice him. There was just too much going on around her in that moment.
"It's bad," Ross said soberly. "Several cities completely leveled. Civilian casualty reports are close to three million and still being revised upward. It would have been even worse if Odo hadn't convinced the Dominion to stand down when he did." He glanced at Damar a little apologetically before he said the next part. "I think they intended to level the planet one city at a time."
Tasha flinched a little, but if anyone noticed they declined to comment. Paris spoke then, and there was a distance, almost a hostility, in his voice. "What are the Cardassians asking for?"
It didn't escape Tasha's notice that he had spoken as though Damar wasn't there to listen, and she suspected it hadn't slipped by the Cardassian leader either, but he showed no signs that he'd noticed it when he replied. "Whatever you can give us. We know, of course, that many of your own worlds have been devastated by this war, and we're not asking you to pull resources from Betazed or Earth or anywhere else. But millions of our citizens are dead, and many of our resources were taken by the Dominion while they controlled our world. I only want enough to take what is left and build a new Cardassia out of it."
But Paris wasn't satisfied. "We tried this before, didn't we? Seven years ago we tried this, and look where we are right now."
"With all due respect, Admiral," Damar replied without even raising his voice, "the situation just isn't the same, and not just because of what happened on Cardassia yesterday. Before that self-serving -" he seemed to be searching for a word he couldn't come up with, gave up, and started the sentence over. "Before Gul Dukat joined Cardassia with the Dominion, the military government had already been overthrown and the civilian government had taken power. The loss of the Obsidian Order changed the culture on Cardassia, and while I didn't realize it at the time, it was a change for the better. We could not return to where we were even if we wanted to, and I don't believe there are many on Cardassia after all that's happened that would want to. We have civilians we need to care for on our planet now, we're not going to be thinking about other worlds for a long while."
"But -"
"No," Tasha spoke up for the first time. "Listen to me, what Damar is asking, it's something we have to give. A planet in the state Cardassia is in now is only going to fall apart further."
"Commander," Paris began.
"No," she said again. "Listen to me. I know you don't particularly like the Cardassians. Until today I would have said the same. But I don't care who they are or what they've done to our people, there are hundreds of thousands of civilian people on that planet who had nothing to do with anything some Cardassian soldiers might have done to any of us. I watched one society tear itself apart from the inside, and as long as I live, I will never stand by and watch something like that happen again."
"Commander -" Ross began.
"No, she's right," Paris said suddenly. "I know a lot of us have stories from the Cardassian war that will haunt us the rest of our lives, myself included. But it's true that the civilians had little to do with anything that happened, and it's also true that a lot of us saw the results of something similar on one of our own worlds, even if it's something the Federation would rather not acknowledge ever happened." There was a definate undertone in that to suggest his displeasure with that situation. "If we let that happen when we have the power to stop it, we're no better than everything we condemn."
"All right," Ross said a little resignedly. "We'll give you the help you need."
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"Commander."
Tasha should have known Ross wasn't going to let things slide as easily as he had acted like he would with everyone watching. "I did what I thought was right. I'd do it again."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
"I was afraid you'd deny the Cardassians what they need. Like I said, I couldn't let that happen."
"And airing the Federation's own dirty laundry? In front of a Cardassian, no less? Did it never occur to you to use a little discretion?"
"It occurred to me that what the Cardassians are facing is similar to a critical moment on a Federation planet that went the wrong way. I wasn't telling Damar anything he didn't already know."
"He mentioned it to you?"
"No, I mentioned it to him when we spoke down on the planet."
"Which brings us back to my question, Commander. Why would you tell him about that?"
"Because this dirty laundry, as you call it, is my past. Why do you think I got so sick seeing what was left of the capitol city? I lived that 'dirty laundry'. I told him because I wanted him to know that one damn person in the entire Federation had some sense of what he was feeling, because I've had more than a few times in my life where I wasn't sure that was true. He's a person, and he's probably the only reason we came out of this without twice as many casualties as we had. All I did was talk to him like one."
He stared at her for a long moment; she had the sense he was sizing her up with his eyes. "You're a hell of a tactical officer, Commander, but you have a lot to learn about diplomacy."
"It worked, didn't it?" she countered.
"On him? Or me?"
She smiled ever so slightly. "As I said, it worked."
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"It's going to be different on the station, that's for sure."
It was now a full two days after the final battle, and Kira Nerys was right about one thing. It was going to be a different station.
While most of the same personnel were on the station as had been there before the Dominion War started, the end of the war for most of them had been the end of their stay on the station. Worf had been asked by Martok, the new Klingon chancellor, to become his ambassador to the Federation, and it was a foregone conclusion that Jadzia would be going with him. This also meant that for the second time in five years, Tasha would be losing her second in command to the station, but she couldn't begrudge Jenna the chance to take a posting on the same station as her boyfriend, especially when that came with a promotion. Miles O'Brien was going back to Earth to teach at the Academy. That news had come as a shock, but then considering how much he'd had to be apart from his family during the war, it made sense that he'd want to go somewhere safe. He'd handed his position off to a young Ferengi, the nephew of the resident barkeeper who had decided to foreswear a life of profiteering to go to Starfleet Academy, the first of his species ever to do so. Odo had returned to his homeworld to heal the Founders of their illness, though Tasha hoped that Data, to whom the shapeshifter had taken, had managed to persuade him not to make that a permanent state of affairs. Garak had taken up permanent residence on Cardassia, and it was quite clear that Damar, the new leader of Cardassia, intended to make the man who had been with him through everything an important part of the ruling body.
Sisko - now, that was the real surprise. What exactly had happened no one seemed to know, only that he had suddenly run out of a victory celebration, taken a runabout to Bajor, and had yet to be seen again, except by his newly-pregnant wife Kassidy, who swore that he had appeared to her and promised to return "maybe in a year, maybe yesterday". Tasha knew Kassidy had always been skeptical of the powers of the wormhole aliens the Bajorans called Prophets, and so she believed that if Kassidy said something had happened, then something had happened. Not to mention their was no other explanation. Federation patrols had tracked Sisko as far as Bajor's sacred Fire Caves, where they had found the bodies of the Bajoran spiritual leader and - Tasha had almost wept in sheer relief when she had heard - Gul Dukat. They had said it was clear a third person had been involved in a fight with the two deceased, but they had found neither a body nor any sign that anyone had left the caves through any means they could identify.
The Enterprise would be returning to Earth for a few months, and the crew was being given leave, as were nearly all the survivors of the final battle. Deanna would be going straight to Betazed, now released from Dominion rule. Tasha thought that that first call from Betazed was probably the first time anyone had truly been grateful to hear from Mrs. Troi.
Tasha, meanwhile, had another idea. It was high time to finish a project that had been sidetracked by the war. And she had an idea of just how to do it, and who could do it with her.
She stepped up behind the tall young man staring out a Promenade window. He turned over to look at her and smiled a little. "Hey. Tasha, right?"
"Yes."
"Do me a favor and don't say you're sorry about my dad," he pleaded. "I believe he's coming back, and besides, if I have to listen to that again I think I'll scream."
She grinned. "Don't worry, Jake, I didn't intend to. Actually, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about."
"What?"
"Your dad told me you were a writer, that you're interested in writing news articles."
"Yes."
"How'd you like to help me break a major story? Maybe one of the biggest stories of the decade?"
Now he smiled for real. "What do I have to do?"
I am so sorry this took forever. Chapters like this are impossible to write because I never know what I want to do with them.
This chapter contains references to the DS9 episode What You Leave Behind.
No prizes for guessing what story she wants him to break!
Please review.