A View Of A Life

Posted on Tue Dec 1st, 2015 @ 10:13pm by Indra Nyyar & Eldren Tohr
Edited on on Tue Dec 1st, 2015 @ 10:22pm

Mission: Further Challenges
Location: Cardassia
Timeline: Three Weeks Ago

* Note - See Post: Kaela - http://starbase900.info/index.php/sim/viewpost/644


* Indra Nyyar: Cardassia - Three Weeks Ago *

The vase held twenty-two stones. It was clear glass and as she watched, it caught a ray of sun slanting in through the window that broke up into red and yellow as it splashed across her dressing table. The stones were varying shades of pink, a native stone that dotted the banks of a river on Bajor. Each year on this same date she'd picked one, then spent the next year polishing it a little every day until it was smooth and was added to the vase. Then it was time to choose another and start the whole process over again.

Twenty-three years. It had been twenty-three years since she had been taken from the village of Talàhl, on the banks of the Tal river on Bajor. She had been just fifteen that summer, spending the long days outside, sometimes stealing away after dark to stand by the river and dream of the stars.* Despite the Occupation, her small village was usually left alone. The Cardassians were busy with more important areas than a small collection of homes that seemed to serve no useful purpose. Her grandfather had considered it a blessing. "Nya," he'd said many times, "if they don't really see you, you will survive."

A bitter laugh escaped her as she sat there by the window, seeing the past instead of the Cardassian city spread out below this grand house on the hill. He had been right and wrong at the same time. They had seen her and yet she still survived. She survived but was not living. Shouts and weapons fire filled her head as that day replayed in great detail. It was her habit, on this day, to linger over each moment, reliving the day she had last seen her grandfather and the village, the day the Cardassians had come to round up workers for a new mine.

She had done her best to fade into the crowd but that had been impossible. Her light blonde hair had caught the attention of one of the soldiers and he had grabbed her immediately, herding her along with the rest. She understood enough Cardassian to figure out that they had other plans for her besides the mines. As the transport shuttle cruised along, the soldier had come to stroke her light hair, commenting on what a curiosity it was for his people. He stayed close that trip, keeping the rest away. She had thought he was being generous but as it turned out, he'd been protecting his investment. She learned later that he had been paid a fortune for her and earned a promotion in the process.

When the transport landed, she was taken off first and soon they arrived at Elemspur - a hellhole designed to break Bajoran prisoners who might have important information on the military and the Resistance. They had escorted her through the cell blocks and by the time they reached the main office, she had been too terrified to speak. The man behind the desk was big and stern and she recognized his uniform insignia - a Gul. He looked back at her and asked her name but she couldn't answer. He'd sent the soldiers away and then offered her food, which she hadn't been able to choke down. He'd given her a chair in the corner and at the end of the day the man, who said his name was Zikar, had taken her along to his quarters.

Despite his harsh behavior all through the day, he'd been gentle as he tried to get her to eat, then showed her to a room where she could sleep. Alone. He hadn't touched her at all. She didn’t sleep much that night and she knew he had looked in on her more than once, though only from the door. When she finally emerged the next morning, he had already departed for the day's business but a woman had come in to make her breakfast and bring clothes. Nyyar had wondered at being left alone but when the door opened to admit the woman, she'd seen a guard posted outside. She had also noticed the lack of sharp objects in the kitchen and elsewhere in the rooms. The woman stayed for the day, cleaning and busying herself with little things, but Nyyar knew she was there to watch.

The sun outside had crossed over into late afternoon when the doors opened once more and Zikar had returned. He dismissed the woman and once she was gone, he pulled his hand from behind his back. In it was a bouquet of sunny yellow flowers. "They reminded me of your hair," he'd said. Dinner had been eaten in silence on her part, but he shared parts of his day, funny anecdotes from the soldiers, events happening in the city. It had been utterly surreal. It was also the course every day would take for the next several days. And always flowers.

It took him a week to coax her name from her and it was the first thing she said to him. It had pleased him and he'd said it several times, smiling back at her. Nyyar had heard stories of how loving, gentle, and passionate Cardassians were where family was concerned, but she had never believed it. Now she began to wonder. That next day he had brought her a bracelet of latinum inlaid with blue stones that matched her eyes, he said, and told her never to take it off. It was lovely and she was touched by the gesture, but she also knew it served to identify her to all as Zikar's property.

He never raised his voice to her or tried to force his affections on her. Days turned to weeks and then to months. In the end, his kindness and generosity had been the most effective tool of all. As the weeks and months passed, she had begun to open up, to interact with him and share bits about herself. He told her of his life, his hopes, his ambitions, his dreams. He had a marvelous sense of humour too. He never came home without flowers or some other small treasure he thought would please her. He took her outside the prison walls on his days off. Six months after her arrival, she had left her small room and moved into his.

Each year on the anniversary of her arrival they had gone out together to find her stone. He thought it was her ritual in memory of her grandfather, who had died not long after she was taken, and she was content to let him think so. She had no other family now, except Zikar. The thought of him as her family was something she really didn't want to consider because she knew it was true and it said something about her that she was not ready to face - that she had become a traitor.

There was one stone in the vase when he first told her he loved her, and two by the time they realized that there would be no children. The fault was hers, so the doctor said. Zikar had never held that against her, though he'd been devastated by the news. It changed nothing, he had assured her. That day he brought her a huge bouquet of Bajoran lilacs and took her to the river Tal. They spent the day out on a boat and he had done his best to make her laugh. It was when they returned home in the afternoon that the news came. The Occupation was ending and Zikar would return to Cardassia as a member of the Obsidian Order, which would later become the Cardassian Intelligence Bureau. In the moments when Nyyar was honest with herself, she admitted to relief at leaving Bajor. She would be a curiosity on Cardassia but would escape the shame she faced at home of having given in to the enemy .

Their two years together had been pleasant ones and Zikar never stopped vowing his love for her. She had discovered soon after their arrival on Cardassia that Zikar had gone out and hunted down a bag full of the pink stones before they left Bajor so she would never be without them. There were enough to last her even if she lived past one hundred. She had been so overwhelmed that day that she had cried in front of him for the first time. She realized that somewhere along the way, she had grown to love him and now, away from home, he was her only lifeline. Twenty stones were added to the vase as the years passed all too quickly and they were happy. Until one year ago, the day he'd wanted her to meet him for lunch.

She never went to the CIB compound but had agreed to come to his office that day. She arrived to hear screams from inside. She hesitated but the guard insisted Zikar wanted her to be admitted immediately. As she entered, her eyes were drawn to the floor where a young man lay sprawled there, unconscious. His long sandy hair was damp with sweat and she could see a sprinkling of faint, tiny red dots on his temple. She did not recognize his race. Zikar, without even acknowledging the incident or the prone figure, had simply stepped over the man and whisked her away for a pleasant afternoon strolling through the city. She knew, however, what had been happening in his office before she arrived, though they never spoke of it. There were twenty-two stones in the vase by that time, the day everything changed.

The sun shifted and the light fell across Nyyar, warming her arms. She pulled herself out of her reverie and with the customary curse on the Cardassian race, she dropped in another stone. Twenty-three. It would be the last. Zikar emerged from the bathroom, dressed and ready for his day. Seeing her at the window, he crossed over and touched her hair.

"The sun turns it to gold, my love." He leaned down to kiss her gently. "You make me wish I could take the day off, but it's the last day before our holiday. I'll be home early, however, and then we will go. No business, just us for the next week. The hours today will be too long till I am back here." He kissed her once more, then he was gone.

Nyyar sat unmoving for an hour, just in case he'd forgotten something and might return. Finally, she rose, moved to the bed, and bent down to pull out a small bag. There were a few items of clothing and a small flat box. It held a flower from that first bouquet that she had preserved in a cube of clear coracite. She slipped off the bracelet she had worn every day for the last twenty-three years, then the ring he'd given her in year three when they had been legally joined. She dropped them into the bag and closed it, then hoisted the strap onto her shoulder. Crossing to her dressing table she reached out and tipped over the vase, letting the pink stones scatter across the tabletop. It was a message for Zikar and he would know perfectly well what it meant - she had run away.

She hurried through the house and out the side door. A small transport, piloted by another displaced Bajoran she had met in a chance encounter weeks ago, was just arriving. She and the man, whose name was Amoja Paz, had become friends, only in the platonic sense, and slowly come up with a plan for getting her away and back home. He had his own reasons for leaving Cardassia, though he was a free man here. The transport settled in at the edge of the lawn and she ran across the grass towards it. The hatch opened and as she reached it, she heard a voice that now terrified her.

"Nya? Nya! Wait! Where are you going?? Come back! Please!" She looked back to see Zikar bounding across the lawn towards them. "Don't do this!" The last was said not in pleading but as an unmistakable threat. "You cannot leave me! I will find you!"

She scrambled to close the hatch and lock it down. "Go! Go!"

Moments later they lifted off, only seconds shy of Zikar reaching them. As she looked down from the portal, she could see him speaking into his comm badge and warned Paz. She knew Zikar would soon be in pursuit and this time, there would be no flowers if he reached her.

**********

Indra Nyyar
Gul Zikar
Cardassia Prime