(Untitled)

[col_kira_nerys]

What is good and what is evil?There was a time when I had a very simple answer to this question. Bajorans were good, Cardassians were evil. My parents were good, anyone called "legate" or "gul" was evil. The Prophets were good, the Pah-Wraiths were evil. Things were terrible, but that much, at least, made sense

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[legate_damar]

At what point did you come to this realization? Was there a major turning point or was someone your catalyst? Or perhaps this took time and you came to this mindset through experience?

[col_kira_nerys]

If I had to pick a turning point, it would be the moment Marritza was murdered, by a Bajoran whose response to being told that Marritza had not been Gul Darhe'el was, "He's a Cardassian! That's reason enough." And I knew that it was not. Marritza was never my enemy; he was a good man, or he would have been a good man had he had the same courage in his youth as he had on the day he died. Once I understood that, I understood that I could see the good in other Cardassians...even Dukat.

And then learning the truth about my mother, whom I had always regarded as a martyr...she was the very last person in my life I kept on a pedestal. I knew then that the Kai was fallible, that Opaka had made compromises like the rest of us, that Shakaar was just a man trying to do his best...and then my own mother, the longtime lover of my bitterest enemy...how could I not then question all I had been told?

[legate_damar]

He goes silent remembering hearing about the event through Gul Dukat who used the example to prove the point that Bajorans would never see them as nothing more then "spoonheads". Having never heard this side of the story he always held it against them feeling as though they all felt the same way. Deep down he knew otherwise but it was hard to look beyond that point when all of his experiences with them were negative until lately.

The fact that she was admitting to this causes him to pause wondering if perhaps this contributed to her agreeing to help his resistance. Its a shame that he will never be able to thank this book keeper for his role in the current events.

I never realized. That must have been hard for you to come to terms with. Its so much easier to see things in black and white that when the shades of grey become evident its always hard to accept at first.

I know when I finally accepted the fact that Gul Dukat was losing his senses and that Ziyal was truly innocent, I tried so hard to run away from it. The truth was too

[col_kira_nerys]

That was the most difficult week of my life, the week Marritza was on the station pretending to be Darhe'el, where I had only his word versus Dukat's word to determine who he was, and he was challenging me with every word spoken...I mourned for him for a long time, bitterly, because he was still Darhe'el's file clerk and did nothing when he might have killed Darhe'el in his sleep and saved countless Bajoran lives. And yet he told me the truth, and for that I knew I owed him my gratitude.

No one deserves what the Dominion did to your people, no more than the Bajorans deserved what was done to us. It means a lot to me that you can acknowledge it.