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A MOMENT OF MERCY

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She was visibly quaking as she entered the tailor’s shop.

At first, Garak declined to notice, and merely plastered on his professional smile and blandly asked, “May I help you?”

But as her fingers desperately twisted about each other in anxiety, and as her quivering voice asked faintly if anyone else was in his shop, including in the dressing rooms, he dropped the feigned nonchalance for a combined look of concern and wariness. She had the distinct impression that he was tempted to reach for a weapon that he undoubtedly possessed.

She nearly sobbed, “Please help me; I’m in trouble! Please, may I speak with you alone, sir? No one must hear us!”

After a brief instant of consideration, he said, “It’s practically closing time anyway. I’ll lock the door. We can talk in the back room.” He never totally took his eyes from her as he proceeded.

Once they were seated in complete privacy, Garak demanded, “And now, my dear, with whom are you in trouble?”

“With your people!!” she confessed as though that were the most frightening kind of trouble in the universe, and to her, it clearly was. “With Cardassians!! Oh, god!!!” She buried her face in her hands.

He sought clarification, “Which Cardassians, specifically?”

“The three who just arrived on the station! Three famous…infamous… notorious…! They’re frequently featured in the Federation News Service!”

He straightened guardedly. “Then you know their names.” His hint was only too clear.

She gasped in terror, “Gul Dukat! His right-hand man, Legate Damar!” She hesitated, and whispered with far more primal fear, “Tain!!” She shuddered. “Oh god I’m dead!”

“Interesting that they are traveling together.” He said it mildly, but she sensed that there was a world of meaning behind that simple comment.

She went on hesitantly, “Sir, you have a…dubious, contradictory reputation as well. I realize that it may be foolish for me to come to you. But I just don’t know what else to do!!”

His brow ridges quirked slightly at her first sentence, but he betrayed no further reaction.

She broke down utterly. “Oh please don’t let them hurt me!!! I didn’t do anything wrong on purpose!!!”

Garak didn’t bother to suppress a heavy sigh. “Exactly what did you do?”

Tears leaked constantly as she explained haltingly, “I’m just…a tourist…from Earth. This is my…first trip…into space.” She closed her eyes and muttered bitterly, fervently, “And my last, if I get out of this alive; I’m never leaving Earth again!!” She tried to gather herself and continued, “I was just…walking down a corridor in the habitat ring here on the station…minding my own business…when I saw…an object…. I didn’t know what it was. It was…kind of…in a shadowed corner. I…picked it up…and….”

“Why?” He was obviously bewildered that she had done so.

She spread her hands helplessly. “On Earth, that would be the most natural thing in the world to do! To help reunite an owner and his possession! You have only to take it to the nearest ‘lost and found’….”

Garak rolled his eyes. “Earth! One of the few possible places in the quadrant where one may mind someone else’s business with impunity, and then perhaps might even be praised for it.” His disapproval was plain. “And it didn’t occur to you that the object itself, or its owner, could be dangerous?”

She slowly shook her head.

He barely suppressed his sigh this time. “You are the victim of a soft culture, my dear. Anyway, continue.”

She mumbled, “Just so I don’t become the victim of a harsh one!” She took a deep breath. “I went to Quark’s Bar, had a drink, and asked him if he had a ‘lost and found’. He doesn’t.”

“And this object was still on your person during this time?”

She nodded mutely.

Garak’s expression conveyed astonishment at her naïveté. “And it didn’t occur to you that you could be implicated as a thief at the very least?”

“No.” Her voice was small and childlike.

He shook his head in near disbelief. “Did you tell Quark why you were asking? Did he ask why?”

She silently shook her head at both questions. “He was very busy. He probably assumed that I had lost something; and he didn’t have time to bother to try to help me with it.”

“Good, Quark is not involved; proceed.”

“And then…they…came into the bar!” She shivered.

He didn’t need to ask.

“They sat at the table right behind me!” Her tears started to flow more freely. “I wasn’t trying to listen!” she whined. “I couldn’t help it! They were speaking at natural volume!”

He nodded just a bit impatiently.

“They were searching for something! Something missing! Something important!”

“And you began to realize that it was the object that you had appropriated.”

She looked wounded at the term. He ignored it.

“My first instinct was to hand it to them and run! But I didn’t!”

“Good!” Clearly, in his mind, she had finally done something right.

“They would wonder…why I had it…why I had been listening to them…why I ran…!”

“All of the above.” Garak nodded.

“My second impulse was to take it back to the corridor and leave it exactly where I’d found it, but I knew that that was hopeless!”

He was still nodding.

She stated the inevitable, “My human DNA traces would be all over it; I could never hope to wipe off all of that evidence. They’d still have those same questions, and if they wanted to, they’d find me! Or I’d spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, and jumping at every sound! If they wanted to get me, I know that there’d be nowhere safe, not even on Earth!” She sniffled in despair.

“So what is it that you are asking of me?”

“Give it to them, sir,” she implored meekly, suddenly producing the gadget from an unnoticed fold in her clothing and laying it upon the table between them. “Please!!!”

“And exactly what am I to say to them in explanation?”

“Tell them I’m sorry! Tell them that I’m harmless! And I didn’t mess with it…press any of the buttons. Tell them what I told you, please, sir.” Her tone was plaintive, beseeching, her face red with crying.

“And they will still have those same questions, and with no reason to believe what I would tell them. First of all, if we are so…notorious…then you are aware that my credibility with these individuals is not at its peak. Secondly, even if I had ideal influence with them, just because I was convinced of your veracity would not mean that they would be.”

Her eyes winced closed, and tears ran. “What am I going to do???”

He thought for a moment. “My advice….”

“Yes?” Her hands worked each other restlessly.

“I believe that your best chance, perhaps your only chance, is to convince them as you have convinced me.”

She appeared to shrivel before his gaze.

He was blunt. “I cannot possibly convey your utter naïveté. Only you can do that.”

“Oh god how can I ever face them???” It all came out in a blur.

“I do not see that you have much choice. And mind you, there are no guarantees as to their response. But if you can manage to replay your little drama, as you’ve expressed it to me….”

“I couldn’t do it any other way! I’ll be even more terrified…far more terrified!”

“I can summon them here. But I had better not defend you too vigorously. That could actually harm your chances,” he admitted ruefully. “I’m not terribly popular with Dukat or Tain at the moment.” He rummaged into a drawer beneath the table and pulled out a small communications device. “Ordinarily, I might say, ‘Pull yourself together,’ or some such calming suggestion, but in this particular case, you’d better do the precise opposite, and be your most melodramatic self.”

“Now??? You’re going to call them here now????” Her voice rose into hysteria.

Garak blinked at her. “What possible reason is there for delay?”

“I don’t know!” she whimpered miserably. “I’m so afraid!!!”

“I’m fully aware of that. In fact, you appear to be more frightened than anyone I’ve ever seen, even in a torture chamber.”

She unleashed a wordless cry of anguish at the term.

He rolled his eyes, and then said, “Now do be quiet please, while I contact them.”

Desperate to exhibit obedience, she clamped both hands over her own lips preventively.

Garak couldn’t quite suppress a smile at that.

 

When she saw Dukat, Damar, and the brutal Tain walk into Garak’s shop, she sank into herself, and collapsed, sobbing on the table.

As the three took seats around it with Garak and her, the “tailor” said with exaggerated patience, “You need to sit up now, and face up to this.”

She complied, dread and terror etched into her features. As she told her tale as before, she saw a business-like attitude from Damar, seductively solicitous pseudo-sympathy from Dukat, and narrow-eyed suspicion and ruthlessness from Tain. A horrified chill ran down her spine at the realization that, just from Garak’s presenting her to Tain in this way, and just from the sight of her own guilty tears, the latter was ready to suspect her of anything, and all too ready to kill her, just on principle; he’d had that look before she’d even begun her story.

When she finished revealing her misery in all of its anguished detail just as before, Garak pulled the object back out of the drawer into which he’d briefly secreted it, in order to let her tell her story without the object itself providing a distraction.

“Please!!! I don’t even know what the gizmo is! And I don’t want to know!!” she added hastily, waving away nonexistent words in the air, as if the men had been about to tell her. “It’s none of my business, and I do mind my own business! I only picked it up because I was trying to do someone a favor, do my good deed for the day.”

All four stared at her in near disbelief at that phrasing.

“Someone stole our device in the first place. If that someone was not you, then there will be another DNA trace on it besides yours and Garak’s,” Tain said.

“Oh please let my dress not have wiped off that other trace!” she murmured bleakly.

“Unlikely,” Damar said, not unkindly.

“Yridian,” Dukat pronounced presently, gazing at his tricorder.

Tain nodded. “And it would have been far easier for an Yridian to have stolen it from us – as they are usually our allies and so have some access – than a pathetic human girl. Especially this one.”

She was so relieved to hear his acceptance of the evidence of her innocence that she didn’t even take offense at his blatant insult.

“But now the obvious question is, what do we do with you?” Tain speculated coldly.

“Oh no, I was afraid that you were going to get to that!” she moaned, and regarded all four Cardassians in utter dread, wordlessly pleading for pity with her eyes.

“Well, we can’t have your people talking about this item, after all.” He eyed her nearly predatorily.

She was instantly shaking uncontrollably. “If you kill me, you’ll invite attention! It wouldn’t be the way for you to keep this quiet, like you seem to need!”

Dukat agreed grudgingly. “That’s true. Odo can be quite dogged about murder investigations. Killing her would create a stir.”

Tain said speculatively, clearly testing her, “But if we leave you alive, maybe you will feel obligated to report this device. Perhaps you’ll wonder if it’s part of some new sort of weapon, that your Starfleet would like to know about.”

“That’s their problem,” she blurted automatically, decisively.

Brow ridges rose all around the table.

“I’m not a spy! Or a soldier! I don’t get involved in that sort of intrigue!”

“What about loyalty to your Federation?” Dukat prompted.

Now she eyed him skeptically. “Sir, when you’re a coward like me, loyalty goes right out the window when threats loom. Please, I just want to go home!!” She dissolved again into tears.

Tain was relentless. “But the Starfleet officers might question you, whether you go to them or not.”

Damar agreed, “Yes, if they are aware that you’ve been in here with us all of this time, they will be quite likely to do so.”

“Who cares? I wouldn’t dare tell anything! I know what you-all would do if I did! The worst that Starfleet can do is to lock me up! Well, they can go right ahead! Being locked into a nice, cozy cell sounds wonderful, compared to what I fear from you!” She regarded Tain beseechingly. “Sir, please understand: I can handle my own people! They don’t scare me! In the Federation, I have rights. They can’t do anything to me. What I can’t bear is the thought of having to fear for the rest of my life that you-all will come after me!! And I know that you would if I were foolish enough to tell on you!”

“Even so,” urged Dukat, “what will you say about being in here so long with us? You’ll have to say something.”

“I…came in here to look at Mr. Garak’s dresses for sale. When…you three came in, I was scared and started to leave, but you three told me not to go on your account, so I obeyed you out of fright. Mr. Garak, maybe I should buy one of your dresses just to make it appear more legitimate.” Her tone was far more matter-of-fact, demonstrating her confidence in her ability to deal with her own kind.

Tain commented dispassionately, “Still, I always consider it far tidier not to leave loose ends wandering around.”

Her eyes begged all of them for mercy. “You don’t know what it’s like to be afraid of you like this!” she whimpered.

“Now why do you say that?” Tain’s eyes narrowed curiously.

She was bewildered. “Well, …whom would you-all ever be afraid of???” Her eyes cast about the desk as if seeking the answer there. Then she mumbled, “The Borg, maybe, but that’s probably about it.”

Dukat and Damar smirked at each other in obvious pride.

“There is only one realistic possibility that would include letting you live,” Tain announced flatly.

“What?” she asked in a tiny voice, clearly desperately hopeful that she would find it bearable.

“We’ll inject you with this.” He produced a hypo.

She eyed it as if it were a dangerous predator itself. “What is it?”

“A very convenient little nanoprobe-capsule combination.” Tain regarded it in open admiration. “It serves a dual purpose. The nanoprobe allows us to monitor you; we’ll know where you are at all times, and we’ll be able to hear what you say, and what is said to you, at any time that we choose to listen.”

She gulped and stared at it wide-eyed.

“The capsule contains a lethal poison, for which there is no known antidote. If I don’t like what you’re saying, all I need to do is to activate it remotely.”

She gasped dramatically.

“It’s either that, or we kill you now. Better to risk Odo’s ire and leave him with a mystery, than to have you remove all mystery of this situation, for Starfleet.”

She closed her eyes and sobbed once, and then reopened them, and whispered,  “Sir? Two questions, please?”

“Well?”

“You’ll…be able to…hear my entire life for as long as I live???”

Tain nearly smiled. She decided that that was almost as ghastly as his cruel look, and shivered inwardly. “No. It will deactivate at a certain point. But I’m not going to tell you when that is, or else you might trot right out to the authorities the moment that that time arrived.”

Seemingly incongruously, Dukat asked, “Are you married?”

She stared. “No, sir.”

“Planning to marry any time soon?”

Obviously wondering where this bizarre line of questioning was leading, she shook her head silently.

“Then you don’t really have to worry about Tain listening in on your wedding night.” He grinned wickedly at her.

She sagged at the abysmal thought.

Damar chuckled at Dukat’s cleverness.

Slightly impatiently, Tain prompted her, “Your other question?”

“Oh! Yes, sir. Umm, …as I’ve already said, I won’t betray you for anything, but….”

“Yes, yes, what is it?”

“If for any reason you were to decide to…trigger the poison capsule…is it…quick?” She was trembling violently.

Tain grinned humorlessly, ghoulishly. “Ordinarily, I would say, surely you know our people’s reputation for sadism better than that, but…in this particular case, yes, it is very quick, in order to prevent you from having time to tell anything that we don’t want you to tell.” He looked veritably disappointed at the necessity of that undesirable kindness.

She exhaled unsteadily in relief.

Garak, Dukat, and Damar were noticeably gently amused at both Tain and her, at that.

Once again strictly businesslike, Tain demanded, “All right, now that we’ve addressed your concerns, choose: death right now, or injection?”

Damar quipped ominously, “And if you choose death right now, we won’t need to be as mercifully quick as that poison would be.”

Her tears ran anew at what she considered Damar’s totally unnecessary meanness. Not quite trusting herself to speak after that, she pointed mutely at Tain’s hypo, with a hand that trembled dramatically.

 Unsurprised, he pitched it casually to Dukat, who was sitting nearer to her. She turned her face away as the gul injected her arm.

“Now we’ll have to test it, of course,” Tain instructed. “Walk to the other end of the store. Garak, go with her. Have a brief, whispered conversation. We’ll see if we can hear you.”

She hesitated in alarm.

“Now what?” Tain obviously felt that she was growing tiresome.

“You…won’t…test…the poison part???”

Tain’s expression warned her that, in her absurdity, she was definitely destroying what was left of his patience.

“Sorry.” She meekly followed Garak.

Once at their destination, she regarded him wistfully, gratefully. “How do you thank someone for saving your life?” she said very softly, tremulously.

Garak responded with a lopsided, rueful smile. “That’s not something that I get to do very often. Far more frequently, mine is the opposite task.”

She trembled visibly at the thought, but managed to offer him a weak smile of her own. “I’m still infinitely grateful for all of your help and advice.”

            The “tailor” seemed practically embarrassed.

“All right, get back here,” Tain commanded from across the room.

She scurried to obey. Garak followed in a dignified manner.

“Could you hear us, sirs?” Her anxiety was plain in the way that her eyes darted frantically from one man to another; she was still terrified that their plan would fail, and that she’d be horribly, monstrously killed right here and now.

Tain nodded shortly, but with obvious distaste. “Unfortunately, yes. You humans are sickeningly sentimental.”

Her eyes blurred with tears, as she worried whether he might be vindictive enough to impulsively kill her simply out of disgust.

“Go back to Earth and stay there,” Tain told her flatly. “You don’t belong out here; you can’t handle it.”

She nodded vigorous agreement.