Chapter Text
“Clearly, this is some kind of trap,” Kira said, rather unnecessarily, Damar thought. Of course it was a trap. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t run into it blindly with the vague hope that he could get Weyoun back.
“You said you saw Weyoun die,” Garak interjected, “so this is clearly a new one. The Dominion will have manipulated his genetics, perhaps even put some sort of tracking device in him. It’s what I would do.”
“Garak’s right. It’s not a risk we can take.”
Leave it to Garak and Kira to finally agree on something and have it be this.
“He died for me,” Damar said numbly, staring at the frozen comm screen depicting Weyoun’s face, fearful and fragile.
“Maybe Weyoun Eight died for you, but this one didn’t. Who knows what they did to him,” Kira said, and she was looking at him with an unreadable expression on her face, like she was trying to determine why Damar was so insistent upon saving Weyoun.
“The Founders’ ability to manipulate the morals, beliefs, and feelings of the Vorta is incredibly overstated,” Damar said after a long moment of silence. “They can control how the Vorta feel about them, but they can’t do anything about the rest of their emotions.” He knew that only because Weyoun had told him that.
“Weyoun Eight dying could have been just another step in the Founder’s plan. He gains your trust, even dies for you, and the Founders have another Weyoun waiting in the wings to manipulate you into revealing the location of the Cardassian rebels.”
Logically, Garak was probably right. But he didn’t know, and even if he did, he was too paranoid and mistrusting to ever understand. He wouldn’t understand the bond that Weyoun and Damar had, one that had been developed since he’d first met Weyoun Five, and only ever continued to strengthen. It couldn’t all be a lie, because their relationship predated Damar ever even thinking about rebelling against the Dominion.
The marks on Weyoun’s face, a result of the immense radiation of the planet he was hiding on, were painful even to look at, and Damar turned away from the comm system, burying his face in his hands.
“He’s going to die a slow, painful death, and we’re just supposed to sit here and let that happen?”
“What else can we do?” Kira asked, and rested a hand that was probably meant to be comforting on Damar’s shoulder.
“Save him. I can go to him and save him. I’ll go alone if you won’t come with me, but I will not leave him to die again.” He’d seen Weyoun die so many times, the transporter, the Klingon, the pain in Weyoun Six’s eyes when he’d been forced to activate his implant, and Damar hadn’t been able to be the one to hold him, to tell him he was going to be alright, he could only watch from so far away, and finally, Weyoun Eight being shot by a Jem’Hadar to allow Damar time to escape.
Every death was seared into his brain, coming to him in nightmares and day terrors, riddled with guilt and fear.
“Damar-” Kira began, and he didn’t bother listening to her objections, because he was already leaving, transporting up to one of their ships without a second thought. If it was a trap of some kind, then he supposed he would die, but if he didn’t do this he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
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“He won’t come,” Weyoun said, shifting his position to rest more comfortably against the rocks without irritating the lesions on his skin from the radiation. He stared down at his hands as he spoke, refusing to look at the Founder. “He won’t come,” he repeated, like he was trying to convince himself, and maybe he was. He hoped Damar wouldn’t take the bait the Founders had laid out for him, but to be frank, he didn’t know what he would do. Damar was predictable, but only to an extent. No matter how many times Weyoun would remind him that he was expendable, replaceable, and not even really a real person, Damar would insist the opposite. He treated Weyoun like he was real, but he didn’t know if that treatment would extend to risking the entire fate of Cardassia for him.
He hoped it wouldn’t.
“We will see,” The Founder responded, her voice laced with anger that made Weyoun flinch away.
He picked at a radiation spot on his skin, clenching his teeth to prevent crying out in pain as it flaked off without a struggle. He was going to die here, of that he was sure. The Founder had made the perfect plan, one that Weyoun was sure would result in his death no matter the outcome, it was only a matter of whether or not Damar would join him in that death.
Weyoun had never meant for this to happen, he’d only ever wanted to ensure Damar escaped successfully, and he hadn’t thought about himself because he never thought about himself. But then Weyoun Eight had been killed because a Jem’Hadar had discovered his and Damar’s plan, and this was the result. Weyoun Nine being forced to this planet, made to send a communication to Damar in hopes to lure him here to discover the location of all of his rebel bases and then leave them both here to die. It was a good plan, with, Weyoun hoped, one glaring problem.
Damar wouldn’t come.
He couldn’t. Because if he did, he would die and it would be Weyoun’s fault and he’d never be able to forgive himself.
They waited for what seemed like hours, but it was likely only minutes. Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl, and perhaps that was just because of the radiation rushing through Weyoun’s body and slowly killing him, the way his eyes watered from pain whenever he blinked. He wasn’t crying, not yet at least. And even if he was, there wouldn’t be anything he could do about it, the thick, toxic air made it hard for him to breathe, even if it did take longer to affect him than it would for most life forms, and an inability to breathe made it impossible to move. The Founder remained unaffected, or at least, he assumed she was, it was hard to determine if her appearance was due to her illness or the radiation, but he doubted she would have beamed down with Weyoun if she knew the radiation would have affected her.
“Our sensors indicate a ship approaching, Weyoun,” she said, and that last little bit of hope that had been living in Weyoun’s body finally dissipated.
“Founder-” he tried speaking, to appeal to her and perhaps let Damar live.
“Do not speak to me. You and the Cardassian betrayed the Dominion, and you betrayed me. You don’t even deserve to plead for your lives.”
He would have sobbed if he thought he was still capable of it, but his throat wasn’t working and he could barely move. If Damar beamed down, he would be unable to beam back up, the Founder had made sure it was impossible, just as impossible as it would be for Damar to beam Weyoun up without leaving his ship.
The buzz of the transporter was the most devastating noise Weyoun had ever heard, and he closed his eyes, tilting his head down. He couldn’t look at Damar, not like this. Not when he didn’t have a fragment of life left in him, and the Founder was going to let them both die.
He heard Damar speaking to him, his voice was far away and he couldn’t make out the words. The Founder said something, she was lying, Weyoun didn’t know what she was saying but he knew she was lying. He tried to say as much, but when he tried to speak, dark purple blood pooled in his mouth and he choked, spitting it out and leaning back against the rock.
Something touched him and he didn’t have the energy to see what it was, nor was he able to see what they were doing, but the Founder said something else, and he registered the noise of a transporter.
Damar’s voice echoed in his mind again, saying his name, over and over again, or maybe it was just once and Weyoun was traveling backwards and forwards in time, forever stuck in some sort of purgatory.
“I’m sorry,” Weyoun said quietly, and the pain it took for him to speak was too much to talk again, and he couldn’t ask why, why Damar had come to get him, why he cared enough about Weyoun to risk being caught in a trap.