Work Text:
- Truth
Author’s Notes: Companion piece to 15. Lies.
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The truth of it is that Kira hates every part of Dukat—the way he tries to paint himself in a better light, the way he acts as if he can redeem himself, the way he thinks that he and Kira have some unspoken dance that isn’t done yet…
What she hates most is that he’s right.
Kira can’t breathe; his weight is holding her up and her diaphragm is pressed against her lungs. That’s what she tells herself anyway, because there is no way she can start to see redemption on Dukat’s face.
Dukat stares at her as if she’s something new and precious, something to be tucked away, something that can never be dangerous.
She relieves him of that feeling by biting on the scale above the one that Cardassian woman normally color blue to show their availability. His hands come up to cup her shoulders once her teeth hit the rough skin.
“Major,” Dukat growls in warning.
Kira smirks against the bite, but then needs to desperately distance herself from the fact that she’s letting a Cardassian all but devour her. “And Ziyal?”
Dukat’s lips stop, and there’s a nip of teeth against her collar bone that Kira doesn’t exactly hate. “Now…” Dukat growls (it’s different than when he’s waxing and crooning poetic justice about how he wasn’t involved in the massacre of her people) “Nerys…”
Kira involuntarily chokes at the way his accent wraps around her name.
“Ziyal is alive,” Dukat whispers in what Kira could almost think of as emphatic and desperate if she didn’t know the man. “I made sure of it, I swear.”
Kira wants to feel the truth of his words, can feel the too-hot, almost reptilian whisper of cold-blooded breath against her neck. “I want to believe that,” she suddenly whispers out, as if it were the hardest secret she had ever told.
Dukat leans against her forehead, as if searching only the physical comfort of skin on skin, of lips on lips, of breath upon breath. His gray hand is wrapped securely around her neck, the other tracing idle patterns against her waist.
Kira freezes up immediately, backing away, scrabbling until she is a decent two feet away and her fingers scraping against the walls of the station.
Dukat simply stares, and for once, there’s a tired, weary look about him, as if he hadn’t expected that. “Nerys…” he starts, but her back goes ramrod straight against the wall. “Major,” he goes with instead, and her shoulders seem to relax imperceptibly, “Come find me when you do believe it.”
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Kira waits until he has gone from their little corridor to collapse in on herself, letting the gravity of everything pull her shoulders down until Jadzia finds her, an hour later, hunched against the wall and her arms wrapped around her legs.
Jadzia kneels beside of her, kind blue eyes and warm, comforting hands. “You okay?”
Kira wipes her face stubbornly before standing. “I need a day off, okay? Sometimes I come here for it.” She doesn’t care if Jadzia replies.
Her quarters are empty, quiet, and she meditates for hours before realizing that the Prophets won’t help in this matter. She has to be able to admit the real truth to herself.
Instead, she calls Shakaar, deciding on the spot she could use a trip to Bajor. She firmly insists to herself that Dukat is nothing more than a cardie, one who hadn’t made her feel like her body was on fire, one who hadn’t made her feel like her nerves were jangled and tumbled to one setting after another, like Dukat wasn’t—
Kira stumbles along towards the next shuttle for Bajor. She wouldn’t let her unsettled feelings about Dukat keep her from seeing her homeworld.
In the end, she does contact Shakaar briefly, but spends the majority of the time camping in the mountains of the Dahkur province.
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In the end, they end up on Rigel X, a planet notoriously known for its anonymity, and Kira lets Dukat mouth Cardassian words into her ribs and hips as Dukat lets her mouth the Bajoran translation into his chest and pelvis.
The truth is spoken against skin here, even as Kira’s fingers run against the reptilian ridges of Dukat’s neck, as Dukat’s fingers trace Kira’s ridged nose.
The only truth not spoken is that Dukat wants her even more, and Kira hates herself for the feelings igniting across her skin. She didn’t want tenderness; she didn’t want caution.
Kira pillows her head against her elbow and memorizes the way Dukat’s fingers drift and twitch over her hip bone. She only sleeps when his hand closes over her waist.
The lies are easy enough on her tongue; it’s the truth that allows her to sleep restlessly against Dukat’s shoulder.
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It’s only when Dukat is hanging in the quiet of the back alleys of Bajor that he sees Kira’s face alight during Re’au N’ak Tao. Something warms in his chest, makes him forget about redemption within the Order and makes him simply want to see Kira as happy and as alit with truth as he sees her now.
He doesn’t realize that he could let all of Cardassia go, simply for her.
xxFINxx