Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Nog's first impression of Terok Nor wasn't the way it sounded, like it was with most places. His father had stuffed un-milled Klingon cotton (cheap and efficient) in his ears for the whole journey to the station. They'd made the trip in the cargo hold of an Andorian freighter (cheap, but not quite efficient) and Andorian ships were notoriously noisy.

The rattling and clanking of the machinery that kept the engines running and the oxygen pumping and all the other systems functioning had echoed against the corrugated metal walls and the motley collection of strangely shaped shipping containers, creating an intricate and overwhelming cacophony. Rom had insisted Nog leave the cotton in his ears—their development was somewhat delayed and they weren't producing enough buffering wax to keep his most sensitive sense safe yet—and had led him around the ship by the hand when they needed to leave the cargo hold for food (included in the fare and nutritious enough for Ferengi, if not particularly palatable). Or, occasionally, just to look out a window. Watching the stars rushing past alleviated the dizzying effect of space travel a little bit.

So, Nog, at just barely eight years old, stumbled onto the station practically deaf—everything muffled through that thick padding of cotton Rom had checked fastidiously over the duration of the voyage—and blinking in the dull Cardassian lighting, waiting for his eyes to adjust after the brightness of the Andorian vessel.

He couldn't see anything. He couldn't hear anything. He was clutching the hem of his father's jacket with one hand, and dragging a bag behind him with the other. And he smelled something burning. He'd learn to recognize it later as the warning sign that some circuit or other was about to short out, that a wire somewhere had fried and another of the station's tenuous systems was about to cause mayhem, but then he'd never smelled anything like it before. It was sharp and acrid and it stung his nostrils. He felt his eyes watering.

As they walked through the station, stumbling toward Quark's bar—Nog still keeping a death grip on the back of Rom's jacket—the smell got more complex. It started to include the reek of unwashed and over-worked Bajorans, another smell he'd never encountered before. Musty, yeasty, and with a hint of something like the night-blooming flowers on Ferenginar. The Cardassians didn't seem to have a scent at all. There was the cloying sticky smell of machine oil, every gear in the station seemed to be drenched with it. And the hot, bright, metallic sheen on top of everything of the ore being processed, the minerals smelted out of it—that smelled like latinum, a smell that Nog already knew how to identify, even if he hadn't encountered it many times before.

Everything was still muffled when they turned into Quark's bar, the cotton in Nog's ears too carefully placed to be jostled loose by a stumbling, bumbling walk through Terok Nor. His eyes had finally adjusted though, and turning into Quark's was the first time he saw more than a splash or drip of color on the space station. It was still dull and muted, but the orange and red light display in the barroom's middle at least reminded Nog of home a little bit. It was patterned like the opulent banners wealthier Ferengi would drape from their homes to advertise their prosperity and convince others they worth soliciting for business opportunities and investments. Those banners were woven from threads that sparkled even more brightly when damp—Ferenginar's rain making them glimmer in the faint rays of sun that broke through the clouds. The muted red and orange lights in Quark's made Nog think of the flag his grandmother had been sewing before they left. It had been dry while she stitched it, and quite dull. Sometimes she would joke around, wrapping it about herself like a garment and parading across the room. She would proclaim that she was wearing clothes and wink at Nog.

Nog's grandmother had mostly intimidated him, but suddenly he missed her fiercely. He wasn't getting back to Frenginar any time soon. She wasn't going to around to nuzzle her nose against his after he woke shrieking from a nightmare or recite the Rules to him while sharpening his teeth. And even if she'd scared him, this place scared him more. He didn't want to be here.

“You're late!” Quark had pushed his way through the crowd in the bar and was standing in front of them.

Nog peered up at his uncle. He didn't recognize him, but he remembered his voice; its sharp, biting tone. Dropping the hem of his father's coat, he immediately made the Ferengi position of supplication, hands cupped, knees bent.

His father did the same. “Sorry, Brother. You know how those Andorian freighters can be. No sense of punctuality. And falling apart half the time. I had to rebuild the ship's main--”

“I don't care,” Quark waved a hand and Rom stopped talking immediately.

He crouched down briefly to look Nog in the eye. Nog shrank from his gaze. “Is this your son? He's barely grown at all. Is mother not softening his food for him?”

“You know how she hates to do that,” Rom said. He wasn't making the official position of supplication any more, but he was still cowering. Nog could feel him doing it more than he could see it and it embarrassed Nog. Though, at only eight, he wouldn't have been able to explain why.

“Well, is he strong enough to carry a tray at least?”

Quark put them to work immediately, bags stored in the stockroom till closing. He started Nog out as a busboy, as this took minimal instruction and Nog's small frame allowed him to sidle up to tables almost unnoticed. He could clear them before their occupants had even noticed it was happening. This was a skill Nog would hone. Quark would make him practice it because, according to him, more than half the time the drinkers just wanted to play with their glasses. If they had something to keep their hands busy they wouldn't think to order another drink. But they couldn't complain about an empty glass being cleared, it was just a reminder it was empty. A blank spot on the table needed to be filled.

That first day, though, Nog didn't try anything nearly so advanced. It wasn't even till two hours in that Rom remembered the cotton deafening his son and removed the plugs.

The bar wasn't as loud as the Andorian freighter had been, but it was loud. When Rom pulled out the cotton Nog recoiled at first, curling his spine and hunching his shoulders around his chest.

Rom tilted his head. “Only 67 decibels. Should be alright. And you've got to start getting your lobes used to this station.” Then he scurried off, tucking the cotton into some recess of his jacket that Nog didn't see.

He looked around, the conversation and laughter having suddenly gone from a patter to a thunderstorm. Before Quark could catch him standing still, he jogged up the spiral staircase to the second level to check if there were any empty plates or glasses up there. That's when he saw the Bajoran.

Nog couldn't tell if the child was a boy or a girl (though he did know that Bajorans, and Cardassians too, came in boy and girl varieties, and boy and girl varieties only. Rom had explained that much to him. They all wore clothes and had tiny ears though, tinier than his grandmother's, so Nog didn't know how he was supposed to tell one from the other.) The Bajoran was huddled under a table in one of the darkest corners, near the back entrance, and scraping the remaining food on a plate hurriedly into a wide mouth with strangely blunt teeth.

“Hey!” Nog said, grabbing the plate out of the child's hands, “Give me that! Did you pay for it?”

The child stared up at Nog, already large brown eyes even larger, crouched, ready to dart in any direction, but unmoving. The child smelled musty and yeasty like the other Bajorans Nog had sensed on his way from the airlock to the bar. It felt like forever since Nog had seen a humanoid smaller than himself. There was a burning at the back of his own eyes that Nog usually associated with pain or an unpleasant sensory experiences—like his father's shrieking or having his lobes pinched. He didn't know why he was responding this way to the unblinking stare of the Bajoran crouched in front of him.

“Well, don't let me catch you stealing food again!” he snapped, trying to sound like his uncle. He was already sure that if he was going to survive here he'd have to imitate his uncle and not his father.

He cleared as many more dishes as he could fit into an armload, but he left two unfinished meals behind, worried he'd break the dishes (cheap and flimsy) if he tried to add them to his pile.

Nog hadn't known what time it was when they'd arrived on the station. And he didn't know what time it was when his uncle finally grabbed the broom he'd been pushing listlessly around the bar out of his hands.

“Alright,” his uncle said. “Day's profits are counted, and I'm obviously not going to get anything useful out of the two of you till you've had some sleep. Come on. Follow me. I'll show you where my quarters are.”

“Thank you, Brother,” Rom said, scrambling out from behind the bar where he'd been stacking mugs and falling just one step behind Quark. He nudged Nog with his elbow.

Nog rubbed his eyes blearily and looked up, trying to figure out what his father wanted. Rom gestured at Quark's back emphatically with his eye ridge, and then with his whole head.

“Oh, thank you,” Nog mumbled, making the position of supplication, even though his uncle was facing the opposite direction, and then jogging two steps to catch up.

Everything they passed as they followed Quark to the turbolifts was dark and shuttered, though Quark gestured at the occasional sign or doorway and mentioned what that establishment was, what sort of threat it posed to the bar.

Even if it was darker and a little quieter, the smell was still strong. Nog wondered how long he'd been awake. Nog wondered what there was to eat on this station. Nog wondered if he was going to spend the rest of his life feeling like his skin was dry and flaking. It had been raining when they left Ferenginar. It was always raining on Ferenginar. And Nog hadn't even thought about it, hadn't even noticed it, but now after so many days in still, dry air he felt like every part of him itched.

There was a shuffling sound off to the right, and Nog looked over. His father was holding his hand, trailing just behind Quark, nodding at everything Quark said. Nog was trailing even farther behind, tripping over his own feet every few steps.

A pair of eyes glowed at him from where the shuffling noise had come from. They were huge and brown like the eyes of the Bajoran child that had been stealing food in Quark's earlier. As soon as Nog saw them they blinked closed and there were more shuffling noises, disappearing into a vent or a crawlspace—Nog could hear a muffled metallic clang as the figure slipped away.

“Uncle,” Nog said.

“Hm?” Quark interrupted his own monologue to look back over his shoulder at Nog.

“Do Bajorans ever eat at your bar?”

“Ha! My establishment will serve anyone who can pay, but I've never seen a Bajoran with enough latinum for a fried vole tail, never mind a drink or a meal.”

No one asked Nog why he'd brought it up, so he didn't bother explaining. He'd learn the usefulness of silence quite quickly on Terok Nor.

To say that Nog fell into a routine would suggest that being on this hot, dry, dark station floating in the middle of space started to feel normal. It never did. He did start to know what he was doing every day, though. His shift—like his uncle's and his father's—lasted basically as long as the bar was open. He spent most of that time cleaning and stocking and busing tables, and any other thing he was told to do. On occasion, if they were short-staffed, he would take on the role of waiter for a bit. At the end of the day, he'd walk back with his father to the quarters they shared. In the morning, they'd wake up and do it again.

That was all he saw of the station. His uncle's bar, his father's quarters, the corridors in between, his uncle's bar, his father's quarters, the corridors in between. Rom wouldn't let him spend time anywhere else. Not like there was anywhere else to spend time. Just about every aspect of the station seemed threatening in one way or another. From the clanging, banging, accident-prone ore processors to the neurocine gas stored in the bulkheads just waiting for an excuse to leak out (Rom had stumbled across that booby trap trying to repair a replicator) there was nowhere designed for a child to be, or even a place that was tangentially safe or welcoming to one.

At night, Nog would fall asleep to the sounds of his father rattling around in their quarters' bulkheads making minor adjustments and repairs, by-passing certain safeguards and systems. When Rom finally stopped to get whatever few hours of sleep he enjoyed, the silence would wake Nog up and he would lie in bed, sure that he could feel the station spinning. Sure that it was spinning faster and faster. He'd grip the bed under him and hope the station didn't start turning so fast it slammed him against the wall. In the silence and the spinning he'd get dizzy. His whole sense of balance had been off since they'd left Ferenginar. His inner ear hated space. The gravity was fake. The sounds were fake. Both of them by turns too strong or too weak so that he couldn't ever settle into anything.

When he told his father about the station's spinning and how he thought it might crush him, Rom explained that Ferenginar had spun, too. Nog didn't quite believe him. It felt different. The sensation wasn't as strong closer to the center of the station, so on quiet days Nog would find the darkest corners of the bar he could to curl up in, hands over his ears, and sleep until Quark found him and shook him awake, with a list of tasks at least ten items long that needed doing—and that he'd better remember, because if he came back to ask what one of the tasks had been later, he'd just end up with five more to do as well.

Nog didn’t know about the times when the bar was a little slower and there were fewer glasses to be cleared and his uncle would see him curled tight as a tube grub and smile, maybe, just a little bit, and turn back to his own business. Nog got to sleep through those times.

It was during one of these brief, stolen naps that he saw the Bajoran child again. His hands were over his ears, but the rustling and scraping were enough to wake him up anyway. They were different enough from the sounds he'd been ignoring so he could sleep that a part of his brain jolted him awake. When his eyes popped open the Bajoran child was staring at him. Nog wondered whether the child had noticed him before this moment, or whether the child had just sought out the darkest corner to scarf food in as well and was surprised by the sudden movement.

Nog was already unsure of exactly how long he'd been on Terok Nor, but it felt like a long time. He no longer felt the same proprietary fervor about his uncle's bar as he had the day he arrived. He wanted to be a good Ferengi, but that meant making allies (potential business partners) more than it did remaining loyal to family that was treating him as unpaid labor. (Supposedly Nog earned a slip of latinum every week, but that was just added to Rom's salary, and Nog was already starting to wonder how carefully his father counted his pay.) So Nog didn't snap at the cowering Bajoran, who was still staring at Nog, waiting for him to make the first move.

“Are you a boy or a girl?” Nog asked.

“Boy,” the Bajoran said and shoveled another handful of food into his mouth. “You?”

“I'm a boy.” And then he said, pulling his hands away from his ears and into his lap, “My lobes are still going to grow a lot more.”

“Oh.” The child looked from Nog to a table nearby that had an unfinished appetizer on it and back to Nog. Then he darted over to the table, grabbed the plate from it and crouched underneath. He quickly cleared the plate of food, watching Nog the whole time.

“Why do you eat leftovers?” Nog asked.

“Cardassians don't give us enough to eat. I eat here, my mom and grandfather can have my rations. Besides, tastes better than rations. Well,” and he made a face that almost exaggerated the ridges on his nose enough to make him look a little bit like a Ferengi for a moment, “most of it does.”

“How do you get in?” Nog asked. He sat up and watched the quick, jerky movements of the Bajoran's hands—they reminded him a bit of his father's gestures.

“I just walk in. People don't usually pay that much attention to me.”

“That's not true.” Nog said. “My uncle would never let you in here.”

The boy shrugged, spotted another half-eaten meal, scurried over to grab it, and then, turning back to Nog, said, “Fine. Not going to tell you how I get in, though. You'll seal it up.”

“I won't.” Nog shook his head.

“Don't trust you.”

“Wait here,” Nog said, and scampered downstairs to fetch some of the field rations (cost effective and imperishable) he knew his uncle was hoarding—although he didn't know why. But when he made it back to the dark corner of the bar there was no sign of the Bajoran child. Nog stuffed the ration pack in his pocket.

He didn't know how long he carried that ration packet around. Time really was meaningless on this station, but he kept it there, ready for the child's next appearance. Nog knew that having a way to sneak in and out of his uncle's bar undetected could be extremely useful, and he was determined to convince the Bajoran boy to tell him where it was.

The next time he saw the boy wasn't in the bar, though. He was just a step behind his father, who he knew was listening to his every footfall to make sure he didn't wander off, as they walked to their quarters after a shift. There was that fencing that created a barricade to keep the Bajorans caged close to the ore processing machinery. There were always lots of them huddled on the other side, sleeping, groaning, holding each other. Nog tried not to look at them as he passed, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor in front of him. But a loud crash made him jump and he glanced around, eyes wide, ready to flee in any direction.

It was only the gate closing. Before Nog could fix his eyes on the ground again they skated over a small Bajoran form, whose nose ridges he recognized. The boy saw him, too, and they stared at each other through the fence for a moment. Nog squeezed the ration packet in his pocket, glanced at his father, and then darted over to the fence to shove the packet through.

The boy looked from it to Nog and back again, but he didn't take it.

“Come on,” Nog pleaded, shaking the packet.

“Nog?” His father had turned around and was going to spot him any second.

“Take it!” Nog said desperately, but the boy only continued to look at him suspiciously. Nog could hear one of the Cardassian guards shifting from foot to foot and his father walking toward him. He grunted in exasperation and said, “Fine!” dropping the ration packet on the ground on the other side of the fence. As he turned away to scurry back toward his father he saw the Bajoran boy pick the packet up and shove it into some fold of his clothing.

Rom pinched the upper curve of Nog's ear and yanked him back in the direction of their quarters. “What do you think you're doing?” he demanded, eyes darting around to see who might be watching them.

“I, uh, I, thought I saw something shining over there,” Nog said in a rush, nearly tripping as he tried to keep up with his father's frantically quick stride. “It might've been some lost jewelry or something!”

“Do you see anyone here wearing jewelry?” Rom snapped.

“The, the Bajorans.”

“They'd never lose one of their earrings.”

“I guess not, Father.” Nog was trying to get his hands into the position of supplication without losing his balance, but Rom wasn't looking back to notice.

“This isn't a place for shiny things,” Rom said so quietly that even Nog barely heard him over the crashing and clamoring of the station around them. “We're not going to find anything pretty or valuable here.”

Nog didn't respond, unsure of whether he was even supposed to have heard at all, and continued jogging to keep up with his father, even after Rom released his ear.

“Psst!”

The noise sounded like the aggressive hissing sound Ferengi made to frighten off enemies or claim territory and Nog immediately shrank in response. Rounding his shoulders, bending his knees, dipping his head, curving his spine, everything he could do to make himself look smaller. Then he turned to look at the spot the hissing had come from.

The Bajoran child was behind him. His head was sticking out of a bulkhead. Nog didn't hear anyone else around, and he walked over to the bulkhead the Bajoran had disappeared back into, attempting to appear totally casual. He held the tray he was carrying with both hands so the glasses wouldn't wobble, even though he would've looked more at ease balancing it on one hand. The sound of wobbling glasses would draw more attention than the sight of him gripping it, knuckles going white.

Almost at the bulkhead, Nog set the tray on a table and quickly ducked down beneath the level of the tabletops. He made the rest of the way over to the hole in a crouch. The Bajoran child was far back in the tunnel that extended back behind the open spot, hidden in the darkness. If it weren't his earring catching the light that glanced over Nog's shoulder Nog probably wouldn't have been able to see him at all. Nog could hear him though. His breathing was shallow and careful and his heart was pounding, though when he spoke he tried to make it sound like he was perfectly calm.

“This hatch is loose.”

Nog just crouched there for a moment, stunned that his bribery had worked. He knew he shouldn't be surprised. A good Ferengi always knew when and how to apply a bribe. They were a vital part of business, but still, that was on Ferenginar. The rules here were different and no one had written them down in a numbered list and they seemed to change daily. That something as simple and foundational as a bribe had worked gave Nog a little bit of hope that maybe he'd figure this station out after all.

“Come on!” the boy hissed. “Get in! I'll show you how it works.”

Nog clambered into the conduit next to the boy. The two of them were small enough that they could hunch on hands and knees side-by-side, their shoulders just barely brushing the tunnel's walls.

The boy reached back out into the bar and grabbed the hatch he'd left leaning against the bulkhead. He slid it back into place, then, with one quick motion, pushed it down, angled it in just a little and snapped it up. There was a clicking noise. The conduit was completely dark—the station didn't recognize Ferengi or Bajoran life form as ones that should have the utility lighting turned on for them. The boy grabbed Nog's hand and guided it up to the top corner of the hatch.

“Feel that?” he asked, pressing Nog's hand against the bolt there. “Feel how it wiggles?”

“Yeah,” Nog breathed.

“Well,” and the boy seemed a little proud, sounded more like a child than he had since Nog had met him, “that makes it loose enough that you can lever it out, if you do it at the right angle. Down, out, up. Try it.”

Nog did. The panel rattled and didn't come loose, but Nog could hear what it was doing, and what he'd done wrong. He shuffled a little closer, the knees of his pants catching and tearing against the grating of the floor, and tried again. Down, out, up. This time the panel popped free, almost clattering to the ground before Nog managed to catch it.

The two boys breathed a sigh of relief in tandem.

It works the same way from the other side,” the Bajoran said, “just in reverse.”

Nog pulled the hatch flush against the wall again, and tried to slot it back into place. It took four tries this time, but he managed it.

Crouched in the dark Nog turned toward the boy and asked, “What's your name?”

“Leevan. Trell Leevan.”

“I'm Nog.”

And that was how Nog got access to Terok Nor's conduits and made his first friend on the station.