Sentiment

By Laura Schiller

Based on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Copyright: Paramount

Hot. Dark. Narrow. Control panels wink and blur beneath his eyes in the pitiful light. Air pours thick as rotten fish juice down his throat.

Breathe, Elim. Breathe!

There is no room to spread out his elbows, let alone his arms. Are the walls closing in? Don't be paranoid, Elim. Paranoia may save lives, but right now it's patently useless. That's what Tain would say. It figures – nothing brings up memories of that man quite as well as a panic attack. A disciplined mind, indeed! Surely it must be possible for him not to think of Tain right now, of all his training, all the pain he has inflicted and endured. Is it wrong that they feel the same in his nightmares, that he cannot tell which screams were his and which his subjects'? And yet in a properly lit room, with plenty of space around him, he feels no guilt whatsoever. Only a grim pride in serving Cardassia, whether she asked for it or not. Would Bashir and Ziyal be horrified by that? Or would they understand?

Bashir needs him. Just one panel away, curled up in his cell along with Worf, General Martok, a Romulan woman and a Breen, Bashir is counting on him for their escape.

But I can't count on you, can I? Tain mutters in his mind's ear. All you've done is to doom us both. Great Hebitia, for once that man had better not be right.

If only he could see what he was doing. If only he could be sure, really objectively sure, that he wouldn't use up all the oxygen in this shoebox of a space.

Shoebox. Shoes. Think of something pleasant. Last time he saw her, Ziyal was wearing blue satin shoes to match the dress he'd made for her. Last time he saw her, he promised to come back.

A lie, of course. One of his clumsier efforts, amateurish really. Even she, for all her Bajoran simplicity, must have seen through it. After her mother's death and six years in a labor camp, he knows almost as well as he does how futile such promises are. What posessed him to give it to her anyway?

When they press palms in greeting, her hand is so much warmer and softer than a Cardassian's should be. She paints and draws with the same delicate passion as his own hands move over cloth. Six years in a labor camp, and yet she still laughs like a child. She loves him and Dukat equally, which should be logically impossible. She calls him, of all people, kind.

None of these things should matter. So why is it that right now, squeezed in this coffin like a living corpse, it's thinking of her that finally lets him breathe?

A distraction, that's all. The efforts of a disciplined mind to escape anywhere but here.

Sentiment is a weakness, said Tain … Enabran … Father, all those years ago. And yet his shri'tal, his sacred deathbed confession, was a memory of his son. Was the old monster manipulating him even then? Or was it the weakness of sentiment that, after all these years, made him strong enough to face death?

On Deep Space Nine, Ziyal is standing by a viewport with her arms wrapped around her middle, watching the stars for his return. And just a few steps away, Bashir's low, accented voice is telling him to hold on, just a little longer, he will be all right.

Not much longer. Breathe, Elim. Just breathe.