Archive of Our Own ^beta

Grafted

“It’s wrong to do this to them!” A man protested with a hiss, in the depths of his memory, and the agent couldn’t remember who he was, even if he remembered what happened to prompt the outburst. He was led into a room and he looked over at the man for… reassurance? Permission, he convinced himself, later on. He’d never relied on anyone before, he wouldn’t believe that he’d relied on some nervous man he couldn’t even remember.

“You told the director this group was the best, that Students 10 and 17-”

“This is too risky! If they die because of this we’ll have wasted a whole group of potential agents-”

“This is an order straight from the Director, Gul.”

“Very well,” the man’s voice hardened. “I obey.”

His memory of the procedure was shaky at best, but he’d gone in with a daemon he had long forgotten and then emerged, the lone survivor. His eyes sparkled with flecks of dust and every so often the tips of his fingers would begin to fade into gold while he was hooked up to wires and injected with medication and chemicals that made everything a blur.

Then, he woke up, a strange machine being pulled away from where it was positioned over his face. The small dots where needles had pierced his skin were healed by a medic sworn to secrecy, and he was given a few days rest.

The man he couldn’t remember had stayed with him those days, and they’d talked about what must have been meaningless things while playing kotra together. The man’s daemon had curled up on his lap, chittering comforting things, and the medic returned every few hours to check his vitals and give him more injections. Finally, the dust on him went away, and he was put in a room with another child.

“This is disgusting,” a female agent said, as he looked over the details of the mission they would be going on for a few days. A test for a new procedure. “I can see why humans won’t touch each other’s daemons.”

Human daemons took years to settle, he’d been told. Cardassian daemons were already settled as soon as they manifested a week from birth, and never changed species.

“Director’s orders, ma’am.”

His second daemon was a miniature riding hound. The agent averted her eyes as the creature was split from its master and grafted onto him like a new limb. After some cosmetic surgery and a few hours alone, it was as if he had been born with it. It whole-heartedly believed he was its master, and his mannerisms and speech patterns were steadily replaced with those of the daemon’s true master.

In his head, he’d started to think of a plan to get what he wanted most, for Cardassia.

-

“Don’t be naughty, Căz.” Mila blocked the daemon’s head as it tried to snatch a padd from her hand with its mouth. It hissed at her, coiling up. Mila dropped the padd as it lunged at her, fangs bared. Her daemon hissed back, and she had to hold him before he could try attacking the tiny creature. “Marett, no!” Her daemon could easily kill Căz, and she didn’t feel like getting eliminated by the Obsidian Order due to Marett being overprotective.

“Căz, come.” The little daemon bit onto the padd and struggled to drag it to its master. Enabran reached down to pick up the padd. Căz hung on tight, making a pathetic sound as its master made no motion to let it ride on his shoulder or tuck into a fold of cloth. Enabran let it hang, turning on the padd and reading it right in the doorway as if to punish his daemon.

Mila stood up and continued cleaning his bedroom, glancing at the two of them every so often. Marett stayed on her shoulder, feathers ruffled. He didn’t trust their employer, insisting that they were in danger as long as they knew what they did.

Marett nipped her ear with his beak and she looked over in time to see Căz drop to the floor, landing with a sad little squeak and not moving. Enabran didn’t even flinch, though he should have been in pain from his daemon being injured.

Perhaps it didn’t work like that when the daemon you had wasn’t yours to begin with. She hated to think about what she’d seen, but the device he’d wrapped around Căz to keep it alive before killing its real master, the dust she’d seen in his eyes as he interrogated her, Căz limp on his shoulder…

Frowning, Enabran nudged his daemon with his boot until the tiny snake stirred. “Căz, you know I detest it when you act so childish.”

It couldn’t respond, hadn’t since it was forced onto the Obsidian Order agent who’d stolen it. Standard procedure for a man of his station, he’d told her. Daemons could be a liability, tricked into revealing information in order to save their masters. Removing their ability to speak was a safety precaution, but the method was a closely guarded secret of the Order. All the poor thing could do was squeak, hiss, and keen.

“Why don’t you keep Miss Garak company while I work, Căz?”

A reward for fetching the padd, despite the punishment for trying to catch an easy ride up to his shoulder. Marett quickly flew over and picked up the other daemon without any prompting from her. If they waited too long, Enabran might change his mind and give Căz another task. She took the daemon in her hand when Marett brought it back, and Enabran gave her a small nod and left. Căz wheezed, looking up at her with its large, silver eyes. She ran a finger down its side and could feel some broken ribs.

It was easy enough to heal the daemon’s ribs with a tool from the first aid kit hidden in the bedroom. She placed it on its master’s bed, but it began fussing, following her hand. “Căz, you need to rest,” she told it, voice firm.

Căz cried, curling up and looking every bit like a miserable hatchling fresh from its egg. Marett nuzzled it with his beak. “I can keep you company, little one.”

“Marett. Remember what we talked about?” Her daemon hesitated, but then crawled over to her. Căz cried again, a tiny keen almost too quiet to hear. It was a heart-breaking sound, but she couldn’t trust it. The daemon had been rude and cruel when its real master was alive, and though there was a chance that it was traumatized and hurting from whatever had been done to it to attach it to the Enabran that existed now, it could also have adapted to its new master. Become just as deceitful as he was. If his daemon couldn’t be used to hurt him, why not exploit that?

Căz could very well just have been spying on her, waiting for the perfect opportunity to get rid of her and Marett.

It would be easier to figure that out if the daemon could talk. She prided herself on being able to figure out when Enabran was lying to her, she was certain she’d be able to tell the same of his daemon.

“Mila…” Marett shifted on his feet, glancing back at Căz. “Can’t it just come along with us? I’ll make sure it doesn’t try to hurt you.”

Marett rubbed against her face as she tucked Căz into her pocket. “Alright. But we can’t let anyone see us walking around with another person’s daemon.”

-

“What do you think, Căz?” Enabran asked his daemon as it came back to him holding a recording device in its mouth. It dropped the device in front of him, squeaking. “Good work,” he praised it, rubbing under its chin with a finger. It flopped down happily, wriggling. “Where should we put this?”

It looked at the floor plan on the padd next to it. It touched its nose to a spot in the wall.

“Come to the entryway when you’re done. Miss Garak’s fiancé will be arriving soon.”

Ever obedient, Căz picked up the device again. He put it on the floor, and it slithered off to a small hole only it could access. From there it could get to the basement apartment and hide the device.

It would be important to monitor the conversations Mila had with her brother. He couldn’t risk the man exposing this new weakness of his, this raw evidence of sentiment. “Căz?”

The daemon peeked out of the hole, giving a questioning squeak.

He turned in his seat to look at it. “...Do you doubt me, now?”

Instead of making a noise or bobbing its head in response, Căz dropped the device and slithered back to him. With some struggle, it crawled up the leg of his chair. Reaching him, it locked its jaws around the grip of his disruptor and strained, trying to pull it out. He pulled the weapon out for it and placed the two on his desk. Căz released the weapon and coiled up next to it, staring at him.

“Ah.” His longest-lasting daemon even agreed with him that he was making a mistake. “It would be easy, wouldn’t it?”

Căz nudged the weapon with its head.

No one would miss the siblings if he got rid of them, got rid of the whole issue, as he should have the moment he found out about the child

And yet…

As he put the disrupter back at his hip, his daemon hissed at him. He put the snake back down on the floor. “Don’t be late to greet Mr. Garak, Căz.”

It didn’t move, snarling.

“I won’t let this ruin anything. We will get what we want.”

-

In all the years Elim had known Enabran, he’d only seen his daemon a handful of times. The first time he remembered seeing it, he was almost five and the tiny creature had peeked out of the man’s sleeve to look at him as they walked home, hand in hand. Even then, he’d known better than to ask what the daemon’s name was, or to look at it for too long.

He’d glimpsed the daemon again going into Enabran’s shirt as he was informed that he had been accepted into the Bamarren Institute, the tip of its thin, black tail.

Elim had quickly figured out that it was best to keep his own daemon hidden. It helped that his regnar could camouflage herself, but she couldn’t help coming up to whisper in his ear whenever she overheard or saw something amusing. That stopped the next time he saw Tain, and for the first time, saw the whole of his mentor’s daemon.

“You like to talk to your regnar, don’t you?”

“Occasionally.”

“Elim, I thought I taught you better than that. Don’t you know how dangerous a daemon can be? If you want to be an agent, you must learn that.” She’d curled up on his lap, afraid. Tain had waited, and then his daemon slithered out of his sleeve and into his hand. It couldn’t have been more than ten inches long and was thinner than any of his fingers. Its silver eyes were oversized for its head and seemed to be staring off into space. A pale gray-blue, its tail gradually faded to a deep black.

It made no sound, said nothing.

“I’ve arranged for your daemon to undergo a certain procedure. A parting gift before you go off on your first mission.”

“A procedure?”

“Yes. Căz received the same operation when I was around your age. Your daemon won’t be such a risk to you. I’ll show you.” He opened his daemon’s mouth with a finger and held it out. It had no real tongue, and there were golden scars lining the back of its throat. “It’s painless. You won’t be affected.”

After that, his daemon couldn’t speak, and seemed more lifeless than usual. Where she’d once loved to scurry up and down him when they were alone, she preferred to hide in his clothes, and only moved quickly when she had to.

Căz, he thought to himself, after Tolan told him the truth on his deathbed, his avian daemon fading into dust beside him. His biological father’s daemon had a number for a name. He wondered if he touched the little snake if a bond would bloom between them. Would his lifeless regnar perk up with a new familial daemon to touch?

“Mother, have you ever seen his daemon?”

She knew who he was talking about, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yes. Căz and Marett used to play together, a long time ago. It would ride in my pocket when it wasn’t feeling well?”

“It? Not her?”

“A very long time ago, she was. Then she changed.”

“After the procedure?”

“Yes,” his mother lied to him. “After it was muted. It used to go by a different name, as well.”

The next time he saw Căz, his father was dying in a Jem’Hadar prison camp, and the daemon was trying its hardest to get away, mustering up the last of its energy to fall off of the cot. Elim picked it up, and there was no bond between them. Căz squeaked, and Elim didn’t put it back onto the cot, holding it close to his chest. It nuzzled against him, seeking out warmth before it faded into dust as they spoke.

But his father was still alive, despite the death of his daemon. A cold feeling gripped him as he realized the real reason why Căz was kept hidden all those years. “It lasted a lot longer than expected,” his father mumbled, mostly to himself.

“Căz wasn’t yours?”

“No. I don’t remember my real daemon. We were split when I was young. Căz was grafted onto me, and then muted.” He was grateful that Julian could keep silent. Even he felt distressed by the idea of stealing someone’s daemon. “Pitiful little thing. It always knew I wasn’t its master.”

“Father…”

“Elim, do you remember that day in the country? You must have been almost five…”