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WAR OF AWKWARDNESS

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…Then there was the no-Ziyal universe in which Dukat remained in charge of the Cardassian branch of the Dominion forces, Damar alone became disenchanted with the Dominion, Garak and Kira plotted with him in Mila’s basement, and the three conspirators planned to sneak into Dominion Headquarters during Weyoun’s and the Founder’s absence to extract strategic battle plans from the enemy’s main computer.

 

            “Someone’s going to have to distract Dukat.” Damar bluntly directed his remark to Kira. Garak’s eyes automatically fell on her as well, and remained there.

“Why are you both looking at me?!”

Reasonably, Damar replied, “Garak’s the computer expert, and I’m the one who knows his way around the building. Our roles are already obvious.”

Garak put in, “I would be Dukat’s briefest possible distraction: he’d gleefully shoot me on sight and my usefulness would be ended right there.”

“And he undoubtedly considers me a traitor by now; I would have at most a few seconds longer than Garak, due perhaps to a slight hesitation on Dukat’s part in light of our long term friendship, before my fate would be exactly the same,” Damar said. “You, on the other hand, could potentially intrigue him at least an hour’s worth.” His meaning was glaringly clear.

“You’re asking way too much! This crosses the line!” Kira’s face reddened hotly.

Damar stepped closer. “Do you want this revolution to succeed or not?”

“You have no right to ask this of me!”

Garak moved nearer as well, intentionally psychologically ganging up on her. “People are dying by the millions each day for this cause. Is your ‘Cardassian-virginity’ worth that much??”

“How dare you?!”

“You’re the only one of us with any chance at all of keeping him occupied. You know very well that he’d be completely absorbed in you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, Garak!”

“Afraid?” Damar deliberately attempted to shame her. “Do you think that you can’t handle it?” His tone was calculatedly skeptical, using her transparent Bajoran pride against her.

She was instantly, predictably defiant. “Of course I can handle it, but…!”

“Then do so,” Garak instructed succinctly.

She glared at both of them resentfully, fully aware that her own arrogance had ensnared her.

Once again coolly pragmatic, Damar said, “As soon as Garak and I have completed our task, we’ll use the Dominion’s own transporters to return us here. I know how to scramble their systems so that they’ll be unable to trace us. Getting back out again will be a lot easier than getting in, believe me.”

“While you’re at it, why don’t you just destroy their computers?” Kira’s belligerent tone had not abated.

Damar regarded her with exaggerated patience. “That wouldn’t slow them down for long; they’d have unknown numbers of backups. The point is to conceal the fact that we’ve been there, so that we can anticipate their plans and sabotage them, just as they’ve been doing to the Federation for so long.” Observing her continued hostility, his lip quirked slightly. “And here I thought that you and I had been getting along so much better lately.”

“We were,” she emphasized pointedly.

Both men had to work to suppress their inevitable amusement. Damar said, “Try not to worry; there’s at least a chance that we’ll get you beamed out of there in time.”

“You’d better!” Her mood was not helped by seeing both men clearly trying not to smile.

“Garak!” she fussed peevishly. “What about the time that you told Dukat and me that I had too much class to ever be interested in him?”

He sobered somewhat. “We weren’t at war then.”

“No one’s suggesting that you fall in love with him, Kira; just fake it.” Damar spoke more somberly as well.

“Just pose as a cheap whore!”

“No, he’d see through that.” Damar remained patient. “Convince him that you’ve genuinely changed your mind about him.”

Kira’s resulting vivid, livid comment and gutter-grade snort brought rueful stares from both, and then were studiously ignored. She was coldly silent during the rest of the discussion of their detailed plans, but when the time came to depart, she almost pleaded in despair, “You just make sure that you beam me out of there…in time.”

Damar favored her with a slanted smile. “No matter what your condition?” He obviously meant even if she were nude.

But she still answered softly, fervently, “No matter what my condition.” Even if it meant being nude in front of the two of them, she would obviously still find it preferable. “And I presume that I can trust you two to behave gentlemanly?”

Each granted her a slight nod. Garak elaborated, “We’ll keep our hands off of you, though I can’t guarantee the same for our eyes.” Damar’s expression echoed the sentiment.

Kira sighed heavily. “I guess that I’ll have to be satisfied with that.”

Both Cardassian pairs of brow ridges rose at her unintentional double-entendre, eliciting her unavoidable huff in return.

 

Damar was true to his word, but he moved more slowly than she would’ve liked to drape a blanket around her shoulders, some time later. Kira hastily drew it protectively around her to close off the view that all were appreciating. Even worse than her shame, however, was her shock at seeing that Dukat had been transported along with her.

“Why did you bring him here?!”

Dukat struggled valiantly to contain his disappointment at Kira, his outrage at Damar, and his enraged shock at seeing Garak holding a disruptor on him.

“This time, I tend to agree with you, Colonel.” Garak aimed the weapon unwaveringly.

“Listen to me, Dukat.” Damar spoke quietly, intently. “Via the Dominion computers, we learned that, once the Alpha Quadrant is secured, the Dominion intends to subdue and enslave the Cardassian people as well, and that after executing its leaders. Meaning you.”

“You among others,” Garak clarified. “It seems that the Founders consider us to be completely untrustworthy allies. They were just using you.”

“As we thought that we were using them,” Damar continued softly. “I still consider you my friend. I could not leave you to face betrayal and death at their hands.”

Dukat nodded slowly, reluctantly. He was being asked to change his basic core views dizzyingly fast, but then again Cardassians in general and Dukat in particular had always been eminently adaptable. In short order, he gave Damar his word and his loyalty.

“You may put down the gun, Garak,” Damar instructed. “He won’t betray us.”

“I’m sorry, Damar. But I’ll need a little longer in order to be convinced.” Garak refused to budge, physically or verbally.

“Have it your own way,” Dukat remarked uncaringly, and sat down tiredly. “Oh well, I never enjoyed having that weaselly Weyoun for an ally anyway.” Expression irked and tone slightly sarcastic, he said, “So, Major. You’re working for our underground now. Adorable. What’ll you do next: help the Dominion underground after it’s conquered and occupied by the entire Alpha Quadrant?” He could indeed switch sides and expectations amazingly quickly.

Kira was not impressed. “First of all, it’s ‘Colonel’ now, not ‘Major.’ Second of all, the Dominion will deserve whatever the quadrant sees fit to do to it, and I won’t lift a finger to stop it.”

“Ah, but that’s what you originally said about us, was it not?”

She cast him a rueful, disgusted look.

“I do find it somewhat annoying that you wouldn’t join our underground movement when I asked you to, aboard our captured Klingon ship, yet you’ve done so now, without my involvement.”

“Let’s get something straight, Dukat: I’m doing this for Bajor, for the Federation, and for the Alpha Quadrant.”

“And in that order, I suppose. How nauseatingly predictable you are, Kira.”

“What are you grinning at, Damar?!” the humiliatedly vulnerable Bajoran snarled.

“Among our people, quarreling between two people of opposite genders is considered seductive.”

“Yeah, I know, Chief O’Brien learned that the hard way some time ago.” Briefly, she related the engineer’s embarrassing misunderstanding with a Cardassian woman of the same profession years earlier, doubtlessly in an effort to change the subject, even at the absent human’s expense, and despite Garak’s being so obviously tickled to hear about “the hero of Setlek 3” having been thusly, lustily approached by a “Cardie.”

However, her attempt backfired on her, as an unsavorily-smiling Dukat reminded her and Damar of their own formerly constant quarrels, especially since – instead of denying any interest in her on his part – Damar looked thoughtful, as if seriously contemplating Dukat’s implication.

“There is a pattern here,” Garak remarked, a wicked glint in his eyes as well. “My friend Dr. Bashir told me some time ago of her quarrelsome flirtation with my duplicate in a parallel universe.” He then proceeded to narrate the titillating tale of how his sadistic doppelganger had provocatively caressed Kira’s upper-chest, blown her a kiss, and told her to save a dance for him at the party.

“That was his doing, not mine!” the outnumbered female retorted defensively.

Conveniently ignoring that, Garak speculated, “Perhaps I should be taking another look at our dear Colonel Kira, as well. Maybe my alternate was onto something that I’ve been overlooking.”

Kira was clearly brewing an emotional snowstorm in rebuttal, but before she could deluge the others with it, Dukat launched his next zinger.

“Damar, couldn’t you have perhaps beamed us here ten minutes later?”

“Or ten minutes sooner?!” Kira retorted.

Dukat grinned crookedly at her. “You still would’ve returned without your uniform, ten minutes earlier.”

“But I wouldn’t’ve been touched intimately yet!” she hurled bitterly.

Unruffled, Dukat continued to bait her. “But now, ten minutes later, and I wouldn’t have to be sitting here so uncomfortably.”

She glared back venomously. “I hope you’ll be in agony for hours!”

“Now you sound like us.” Garak was enjoying their banter, but he still had not let down his guard with Dukat. “Isn’t that supposed to be our line? Or at least, our modus operandi?”

Focusing all of her rage on Dukat, Kira ignored Garak’s clever asides. “I can’t believe that you were actually going to leave on your uniform!”

“My dear, in the military, one must constantly be ready for any emergency.” Dukat grinned broadly. “But since I’m very suddenly off-duty, would you like me to remove it now??”

“No!!!” she bellowed, perhaps a bit too hastily; she chafed, undoubtedly realizing that doing so had made her look frightened, rather than repelled.

Dukat chuckled at the point that he had scored. He continued, “I must admit, it’s especially entertaining to see you and Damar as allies, or even as friends, seeing how gallantly he assisted you to cover your modesty.”

“Not that I wanted to cover her; I was just hoping to score points with her. We’ll probably be in here for a long time together.” Damar’s tone was filled with insinuation.

Kira looked alarmed and affronted at his unmistakable intent. “Now, wait a minute!”

Garak eyed her with a loaded look in turn. “And her wearing nothing but a flimsy blanket, open at the front. Admittedly, she’s holding it closed for now, but when she falls asleep…!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kira saw Dukat’s hand reaching in her direction. She whirled. “Don’t touch me!”

“That’s not what you said a little while ago.”

“Surely by now you realize that I was only there to distract you!”

Lecherously, Dukat replied, “Well, you did indeed prove to be quite a distraction.”

The proud Bajoran turned her back on all of them, folded her arms protectively across her chest, and muttered, “This is insufferable!”

Still, Dukat reached for her. Intentionally misunderstanding, he invited, “Are you suffering, Nerys? Here, let me help.”

When he tried to put his arms around her, she pulled away savagely. “Your people’s specialty is causing suffering, not curing it, remember?”

“If you still hate us that much, why are you here?”

“I’m beginning to ask that, myself!”

With an unhealthy grin, Garak offered, “Since you keep reminding us that we should be causing suffering, maybe you would be happier with a sado-masochistic seduction. I could expertly indulge you.”

Kira blinked at him and verbally fumbled for the first time.

“Now you’ve got her!” Damar was enjoying this. “I think that you’ve struck the right chord.”

Just then, Garak’s sharp, miss-nothing attentiveness had caught Kira’s furtive upward glance, and his disruptor instantly shifted from Dukat to her, all humor gone. “Don’t,” he ordered flatly.

“Don’t what??” She was startled.

“I suspect that you were about to scream for Mila, and I don’t want you alarming her like that.”

Flustered at her transparency, Kira said, “Well, I’m not going to just let you three attack me!”

Vaguely disappointed in her, Garak said, “We were only teasing you, Kira, all of us. We’re not going to hurt you. While it’s probably safe to say that any of the three of us would be pleased if you found us attractive, and would likely take you up on it, we’re not going to force you; it’s not our style; none of us is that desperate.”

Dukat and Damar provided solemn nods in his support.

Inexplicably terribly embarrassed, Kira said, “Look, it’s not very often that I feel quite this vulnerable.” She glanced down meaningfully at her nude-but-blanketed body, and then equally pointedly at each of the three men. “I’m not used to it. I guess I…overreacted.” She hesitated. “Still, you were going to shoot me?? For screaming???”

“Probably not,” he admitted. “But it was the best chance that I could think of to silence you abruptly. You’re too well disciplined to budge or shout with a weapon aimed at you. Even so, I seriously do not want you upsetting her that way.”

“I’m sorry,” Kira said, and meant it.

Garak’s features softened, and with a brief nod to the placid Dukat, he put away the disruptor.