Standard Disclaimer: Paramount owns the universe, the characters, and holds the keys to the fabulous playground. I am merely a humble writer of fanfic and meant no infringement of the most sacred copyright law. I cannot publish it for gold, however, and without my permission, neither can you. You're free to download, print and archive for your personal use though. I wrote this story, not for profit, but for the joy of discovering things that will not fit in one hour a week of television and I will put everything back the way I found it when I leave the holosuite. This story is rated "g", the only two characters are Dukat and Ziyal, so it couldn't really be any other way.....

Darkness. Comforting, concealing, it had become his only friend. In the time between, when those infernally bright lights were out, Dukat had time to think without interruptions. He was beginning to hate the sight of the medical staff, mainly Terran, with their flat, smooth faces, their cloying compassion and their constant intrusive questions. More than once, he had longed to take one of them by the throat and tell them that it was none of their concern how he felt, what he thought.

In his first days here, he had been content just to sit, unresponsive, letting the questions wash over him. When food was put in front of him, he ate, not from hunger, but because it was easier. As the days passed, though, he began to come back to himself and his surroundings. Now his days had a monotonous rhythm, sleep, wake, eat, see the Starfleet doctor who laughably thought he was helping him. It was all so pointless. A little exercise in the afternoon, then, at last, the awful yellowish lights would go out.

Every time he closed his eyes he saw her, she was in his dreams and nightmares. Sometimes he woke with the knowledge that she was happy, that she had the sort of life that he had been unable to give her. Waking was easier then. He had long since stopped telling Doctor Cox about the nightmares. The most the Federation doctor had been able to give Dukat was time, though he did not know it. The techniques he had been taught from childhood were far more effective in helping him sort out the chaos in his mind, once he had gained back enough will to use them. Cardassian order was beginning to reassert itself at last, and with it, Cardassian guile and the instinct for survival. It was childishly easy to give the doctor what he wanted, to manufacture the sort of recovery he expected. His every question showed the way clearly. He had never met a Cardassian before, much less one of Dukat's caliber. But he held the keys to freedom, of a sort, and so Dukat endured his incessant questions and allowed him to think that he held the keys to sanity as well.

So he was surprised when he awoke and saw her standing beside his bed. Without thinking, he pushed back the blankets and stood up, gathering her in his arms- or trying to. His hands passed right through the phantom and he was left with nothing. Again. The smile faded from her face then- was it a trick of the dim security night lighting, or was she standing in front of him again? He closed his eyes, shook his head, but when he opened them, she was still there.

"Father?"

He felt himself slipping, the chaos opening to swallow him whole. He whipped around to look at where he had been lying, but the bed was empty. He was not asleep. The only other alternative was awful to contemplate. He stepped forward again and passed a hand through Ziyal, wondering if there was anything at all there he could still touch. A slight coldness, and a slight blurring of his flesh as it passed through the apparition. That was all.

"Father, it's all right".

*I'm seeing dead people and she says it's all right.* Dukat sat heavily on the bed with a sigh. "All right", he spread his hands. "Why are you here?"

"I wanted to see you."

"Why" Dukat asked calmly, wondering why all this felt so normal. Probably just another aspect of his state of mind. "An urgent message from the Prophets, telling me to mend my evil ways? Or perhaps you came to confirm the good Doctor's opinion of my sanity?" The look he gave her was guarded, questioning. If this were indeed proof of his madness, it was certainly more pleasant than the nightmares had been. He instantly regretted his words. The apparition looked stricken.

"I wanted you to understand why I helped them- and I wanted you to stop punishing yourself."

She looked so like Ziyal. "I already do understand." he said sadly. "You chose friends over family and paid the price. You didn't allow me to help you, and I didn't see what was in front of my eyes the whole time. I forgot who I was, who you were, and now it is too late."

Not surprisingly, the apparition began to cry. The sound tore at Dukat's heart. "It isn't your fault- it's mine- Ziyal, don't cry, please!"

"You don't understand at all- I'm not a child any more- What you were doing was wrong. It will destroy Cardassia in the end. I thought you knew better, that you understood what you did on Bajor before. You were going to start it all again and I couldn't let you." Ziyal sniffed, and drew her sleeve across her face.

Dukat looked directly into her eyes. "What I did was indeed wrong. I should never have sent you and your mother away. I should have taken you to Leseppia myself. It isn't your fault, you had no guidance, no proper education that might have allowed you to understand the situation more fully. You only see the small injustices, not the larger picture-"

"You are the one who doesn't see, Father" Ziyal broke in. "I don't need an education to know a hopeless situation when I see one, and I thought you understood that killing people just to maintain control over them is wrong! What makes you think that you can use the Dominion and then just walk away when they no longer fit your plan?"

Dukat shook his head. "This is pointless. I should never have let Major Kira take you to that station. I should have kept you with me, where you belong!"

"I was with you when I died, Father."

Dukat covered his face with his hands, desperately fighting back tears. Now it was Ziyal's turn to wish her words away. "Father- I'm sorry, it wasn't your fault, can't you see that? You couldn't have saved me then, and you can't decide the destiny of whole planets. You have no right, and you don't have the power!"

Dukat looked up, the tears on his cheeks forgotten. "You really don't see, do you? Destiny is not something you decide- it isn't something I decide. It simply is, and you accept it, or you spend your life in a hopeless attempt to escape it."

Ziyal's ethereal eyes widened. "Was that what you were going to teach me- that there is no such thing as free will? How do you explain me, then? Was I part of your destiny?" Her eyes hardened.

"Yes! No! You were an expression of my rebellion, and the true child of my heart!" Dukat was on his feet again, reaching out to his daughter. "You could have shown all Cardassia that we had grown too inflexible, that our destiny as a race is bound up with the fate of the quadrant. We are a powerful force for change- that isn't vanity, it is fact! Bajor would never have become the power it is now without us, and without us to guide them, they will never achieve their highest potential!"

Ziyal's eyes now glimmered with tears. "And Cardassia will lead us all to glory, Father?"

Dukat shook his head. "Not now. Perhaps not ever. I stumbled at precisely the wrong moment, and now Cardassia lies headless. My destiny has led me to this, and my irresponsibility- with you, with Bajor, has altered our fate."

"You're right, Father. I will never understand that. I will never believe it because too many people have changed their lives, including me. You were going to kill me, in that Breen mine, but you didn't. I was going to stay with you, but Kira brought me to Deep Space Nine instead. What if I had followed those other paths? What would have happened to my "destiny" to change Cardassia then?"

Dukat sighed. "Can't you see? All that was part of your path- You taught me something in that mine, you showed me that you understood the family bond, and that you had the mind and heart of a Cardassian. Later you taught me that you were something more, that your Bajoran blood had a gift to give Cardassia the equal of that which we gave to them. You could at last show us that other races were not to be feared by the strong- and our own isolation is rooted in fear. That was the first misstep, and I was not able to correct it in time." His eyes bored into hers, willing her to understand.

Ziyal's eyes were glistening again. "No matter what I say, you won't see, will you?"

Dukat's eyes mirrored her pain. "I cannot change what I know, not even for you."

Why the Dominion?" Ziyal asked suddenly. "What will Cardassia gain from them? Their idea of order won't leave much room for this destiny of yours."

"That, at least, was a situation I had well in hand", Dukat answered. "The Dominion's understanding of us is very limited, and their slave races are no match for us. I admit, the Vorta are cunning, but without the Jem 'Hadar, they are nothing, and without the White, they die. Can you see, at least, what a house of cards their control of this space is? Cut off the White, seal the wormhole again, and the Alpha Quadrant could have been Cardassia's."

"Cardassia doesn't deserve the Alpha Quadrant! After what happened on Bajor, you would give them control of all those people?"

Dukat smiled benevolently. "It wouldn't have been that way, Ziyal, I would have been in control this time, not Central Command. I would never have allowed the situation to deteriorate to the point that it did on Bajor."

Ziyal shook her head. "What if those people didn't want to be part of your empire? What then?"

Dukat laughed. "I said before, you don't choose your destiny- it is there whether you recognize it or not. Fighting against it is futile. Fighting my destiny brought me here, after all."

Ziyal's head whipped up "How? I thought you were destined to rule Cardassia and the whole quadrant! Weren't you doing just that when the Federation attacked?"

Dukat nodded."Yes. But I neglected my duty to the State when I allowed you to assume primary importance. I was trying to repair our relationship, to be the man you thought I was when I should have been dealing with the situation at hand."

"Perhaps my destiny was to die then, and keep you from enslaving the whole quadrant" Ziyal said, a challenging tone in her voice. "And what is this? I'm dead now- is it destiny that brings me here?"

Dukat smiled wistfully. "Mercy, perhaps. You are dead and thus no longer bound by destiny. And your argument shows that you haven't understood any of this. I meant to give you a proper Cardassian education, so you would have the mental disciplines needed to grasp these concepts. All of this fits together- you cannot abandon one element without upsetting the balance between the others. Service to the State must be balanced by duty to Family, and obedience to Destiny- these are the three pillars Cardassian society rests on. You repudiated the State, and did not fully grasp the essence of Family. Is it any wonder that you lost your Destiny as well?"

Ziyal was silent a moment. When she spoke, her words were bitter. "How could I possibly have served a state that rejected me just for existing? Why should I have? Why should I have helped you to bring that sort of "order" to the Alpha Quadrant? As for family, well, you remember how that turned out." She looked up into her father's eyes again. "You and Mother were the only family I ever had. You both loved me just because I existed. That is family. I never saw anything on Cardassia to make me believe that most Cardassians understand that. Children like me were left behind simply because we existed-"

"That's precisely the problem!" Dukat broke in. "Service to the State has been allowed to outweigh the Family bond, and caused us to abandon our own children, and mishandle the Bajoran situation! Your Destiny was to bring the races together, you knew that before you died! Why else would you have been able to find a receptive ear on both planets for your art?" He began to pace, punctuating his argument unconsciously with the graceful gestures and telling looks of a trained Cardassian orator. Ziyal thought he had never looked more alien to her than he did now. "You had every right to be angry at a State that was too inflexible to give you a place in it", suddenly, he turned, and his eyes filled her, "But you were of my blood! You were well on your way to earning that place! You were given greater gifts, and you had a greater responsibility to use them. Together, we could have remade our world and brought true greatness to our people again-"

"You really believe all that, don't you?"

Dukat stopped in midstride, startled. "Of course I do! Cardassia needed you, and both of us failed in our duty- can't you see that?"

Ziyal shook her head. "I made my own life. I came to Cardassia to be with you. Not to serve the state" her mouth twisted at this, "or to bring change, I just wanted to be with my Father and see if there was a place for me on Cardassia. There wasn't. Service to the state and duty has destroyed you, Father, why would I want to spend my life trying to change what can't be changed?"

"You never really understood our deepest beliefs, did you?" Dukat answered quietly. "The essence of the individual finds its highest expression in Service to the State. True greatness lies in recognizing and fulfilling Destiny- it brings the individual into alignment with the Universe! I failed, I did not give you the benefits of Cardassian society from the beginning- I failed in my destiny, and made it impossible for you to do other than fail at yours because you did not have what you needed to succeed, to even understand what was expected of you. The ultimate beauty of how State, Family, and Destiny are intertwined-" Dukat's voice trailed off. She did not see. And there was not time or reason to make her understand. "Ziyal, it doesn't matter now- Your time is past, and if we are being granted such a gift as this time together, surely there are better ways to spend it?"

But she was gone. Suddenly, the room was empty and Dukat was alone again. He woke curled on his side, fighting to remain silent as the tears ran down his cheeks.

THE END

Copyright 1998
The Archivist