Chapter Text
Prologue: The Night Before
Every Cardassian learns two words for goodbye.
The first is learned early in life, and it is the goodbye he and Elim will say tonight. They’ll have drinks, and Elim will pack, and then, with fingers interlaced, he will lean in and say “thIjek, Kelas” as they press cheeks together gently. It’s the same goodbye they say each morning, hurried, on the way out the door. Or at the end of a comm, through a smile. It’s the goodbye that really says I’ll see you soon.
But each time they go through this ritual—each time Elim leaves for some new round of off-world politicking—the other goodbye lurks, a heavy anchor tied to the bobbing lightness of thIjek. Kelas says it to himself, silent but with feeling. Vridan, Elim.
It’s the goodbye Father whispered when he left for war. It was the only goodbye anyone used for years after the Fire. An Inquirator once told him it had begun as a high-form used for stylized leave-taking in epic, but that, as with most things high and sacred, the Cardassian people had put it to more practical use.
Vridan is the goodbye that really says farewell. It is the goodbye learned through loss.
And while the constant white noise of loss had quieted in the thirteen years since the Fire, Kelas heard its rattle in these partings. Politics, among its many charmless aspects, was both dangerous and uncertain, especially now, with the Bajoran war crime trials beginning. People stirred up bad feeling on both sides like children poking at a hive of blue-backed stingers. Some condemned the horrors of the past and those who perpetrated them. Others defended the sons and fathers, daughters and mothers who had but followed orders, serving Cardassia as they were taught and told.
And his dear castellan made an ideal target from all sides.
He glanced over at Elim, who was weighing a book in one hand, clearly trying to decide if it was worth its weight in his pack. If he felt any of the same trepidation, it didn’t show.
“Is that the newest Mar? I heard it was rather dull.”
“I heard the same.” Elim sighed and tossed it aside. “And I’m quite certain a summit on the regulation of quadrant mining operations won’t require any additional dullness.” He held up a hand as if to preempt the objection. “I know, I know....our integration into quadrant policy development is in its infancy, and we must show that we take the role seriously...Timel has given me the speech already.”
“I’m glad. Someone has to remind you that being castellan is about more than looking dapper and giving rousing speeches on the ‘casts.”
A small smile. “If only someone had warned me.”
That small smile still had a way with him. Still wormed its way in and through and touched an affection the years had smoothed but not diminished. “I wasn’t planning on lecturing you, at any rate. I was going to recommend that poet I bought for you last cycle—Prinat Kijal. You’ll enjoy her. It reminds me of Len’s early stuff, but without all those doleful paeans to the state…”
“I fail to see the value of Len’s work without those paeans.”
“Well, then, let’s broaden your horizons.” He reached over to the side table and shuffled through several volumes until he found it, still pristine, spine uncracked. “It would be good to know it. She’s rather popular with the Fire generation at the moment.”
That got his attention. “Kelas Parmak—are you advising me on matters of my public image now? Should I clear a spot on my staff? Just say the word, my dear.”
He tossed the book across the bed with a huff. “I couldn’t possibly handle you with the patience of those saints. You’d sack me within an octal.”
Their eyes met, and, while Elim smiled, he saw past it to something unsaid. Something Elim was trying to form into the perfect words…
Kelas gave it time and space to form, allowed the other man to pick up the book and set in his case, move across the room for a drink.
Outside, the shrill call-and-response of night-locusts stretched past the open window. For the last few years, the locusts’ song had begun, in tentative strains, to sound again, numbers rebounding from near extinction. Before the Fire, they’d been pests—an interminable night noise the highest ranks in Coranum had paid good money to banish from their trees. As a boy, crushing night-locusts under the heel had been a schoolyard pastime, though not one he’d ever cared for.
Now, no one dared kill a night-locust. Everyone wanted to hear them sing again.
“Kelas, I…have a favor to ask.” The bed rolled slightly as Elim sat, facing away.
He doesn’t want to look at me when he asks. He braced himself. “I’m listening.”
“I’ll be gone for a full octal.”
It was unlike Elim to hesitate. He was more than adept at spinning words around uncomfortable somethings: he was a politician, after all. “Yes, I saw the schedule.”
“It would give me great peace of mind if I knew someone was looking in on…”
The name itself went unspoken, traced by the thin sound of locusts and filled in with night air.
Bashir.
He could feel Elim turn towards him, those eyes searching for his.
His weren’t ready just yet. “Perhaps we could ask Larria to stay a few extra hours. Or someone on your staff…?”
“I don’t need someone to check his blood pressure or wash his blankets, Kelas.”
Of course he knew that. Elim knew he did. “You want me to read to him?”
“Read. Or talk. Or…whatever you feel is best.”
Whatever I feel. What he felt, at least at first, was something utterly unbecoming, and he was glad Elim couldn’t see his face.
Often he and Elim didn’t see one another for nights at a time. They tried for kotra and kanar, but the realities of the castellanship and his own uneven schedule made it difficult.
For the last four cycles, however, Elim had carved one block of time without fail. Every intern on staff knew. Kelas knew. One hour of each evening was absolutely fixed, not to be scheduled over. If the castellan was anywhere in the system, he would spend that hour with the human.
He let the jealousy rise and fall with his breath, watched it burn bright for a moment before fading, as it usually did.
Of course, he had encouraged Elim to do it, and the deeper, steadier part of him knew it was what Elim needed. And likely Bashir, too.
That human is lost in the dark, and I won’t deny him a lantern. Such selfishness was unworthy of him and of Elim and of what they had built. They had long ago learned to love the messy truths of one another, past and all. And that human was a part of Elim, past and present.
So he was a part of them, too.
Reminding himself of this several times, he finally turned to meet the blue eyes that waited, patient, for his.
“Of course I will, Elim.” The look on the other man’s face, soft and grateful, quelled whatever sting remained. “He’ll be well looked after, I promise.”
Palm found palm.
Outside the night-locusts’ song had turned as sweet as a bow across strings. They called to each other, and, joyfully, finally, they were answered.