Wrongs Righted

 


 

            In at least one or two universes, the simple fact of Meru’s being captured, right along with Kira, to be taken to Terok Nor as a “comfort woman,” told the latter all that she felt that she needed to know in order to confirm that Dukat must have been telling the truth about him and her mother having been lovers. So, even as she was dragged away, Kira vowed to herself to prevent the “inevitable,” and break up the two lovers before they could become so. And she only knew of one way in which to do that. Dukat had been pursuing Kira for all of the years that he had known her, so she knew that he found her attractive. She had been just as steadily resisting him, but she now realized with a heavy sigh that her only chance of preserving her parents’ marriage was to seduce Dukat herself before he could set his sights on her mother. She had to get his attention first.

            So as she stood in the lineup with Dukat prowling aggressively back and forth, lecturing the women on the virtues of Cardassian kindness, Kira mustered all of her courage and favored Dukat with her most dazzling smile. When his predatory gaze swung toward her in response, in all of its ferocious reptilian glory, she forced aside a shiver, and gasped in breathy contralto, “It’s true! You are even handsomer in person! How can it be!”

            A guard stepped forward, to chastise her for speaking out of turn, but Dukat waved him away, and moved in on her, actually falling for the hackneyed line, as she’d known, with his ego, that he would. The rest was inevitable.

            Somehow, Kira survived what she would think of for the rest of her life, with heavy irony, as their “wedding night.” The next morning, she went in urgent search of Meru, hoping desperately that her mother had not been paired yet. She hadn’t. In tremendous relief, Kira hastened back to Dukat, to implore of him just one “little” favor, in his “great magnanimity”: to allow her “dear friend” to be returned to her husband and children. In his haze of “morning after” good will and generosity, he consented.

            Having derailed “history,” Kira was promptly whisked back by the Prophets to her own time.

            She dreaded her next encounter with Dukat.

            When it came, he eyed her ruefully, and said, “Well, you always manage to get your way, don’t you?”

            Without missing a beat, she replied, “Actually, that was what I was going to say to you.”

            “You wanted to break up your mother and me, and you did.”

            “You always wanted to get me into bed, and you did.”

            Watching and listening attentively, Damar and Garak both smirked.

            “Seems like you both came out all right,” Damar suggested affably.

            “The question now is, what’s next?” Garak couldn’t help but wonder.

            Without warning, Dukat seized Kira, and kissed her hard. She didn’t fight, but as soon as he released her, she turned on her heal and marched away from the three.

            Still, she had to admit to herself later that the real reason for which she’d fled had been to keep the three from seeing in her eyes that she hadn’t really minded either this kiss, or the long ago “wedding night” after all.

             


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