Work Text:
He means to ask Leeta to wind up his mechanism before leaving the station. In between the break-up, the symposium's deadline and a bad outbreak of flu, he forgets.
It's fine. The conference will only take three days. He can go that long without problems. He isn't worried.
Getting captured by the Dominion puts a wrench in his plans, but it's fine. He can survive until the crew comes for him. He has gotten through worse, he's fine.
Five days in, and his joints start to ache. He can feel the slow grinding of gears that aren't running as smoothly as they should. He can still function, so he swallows his fear and does nothing.
On the seventh day, he wakes with a dull but persistent throb in his temple that refuses to abate. The hidden key itches, even if he knows he can't reach the mechanism by himself. He ignores it.
By the ninth, he nearly walks into one of the Jem'Hadar because his right eye refuses to focus. Another day and his fingers won't stop twitching. He sees the looks his cellmates give him. The time for willful ignorance is ending.
The Defiant is not coming. Not in time. In this place of certain enemies and dubious allies, paralysis means death. But who to trust?
Not the Breen. Not the Romulan officer, either.
Never Tain, even if the old spy almost certainly knows what he is. The old man would own him, if he cedes here.
The neutral major whose only goal is survival? Or the honorable general who's nominally his enemy? One has little use for him. The other risks his life daily in the battle ring.
"General Martok?" He rasps on the twelfth day through vocal chords almost too taut to speak. "I need your help."