#Iliana Ghemor

[cuterefaction]

Trektober Day 7 - Academy Era. Not everything needs to be Starfleet - sometimes, it can be murder lizards! I know they wouldn't've trained at the same time, but I like the idea of all these disasters being stuck in a teen movie together with an increasingly miserable Tain as principal.

[cocodavie]

(Dukat and Kira swap species)

ref

[searchingforserendipity25]

naturally kira nerys being kira nerys is the most fascinating and fulfilling possibility for 'second skin', and i love her so much.

however.

iliana ghemor sleeper-agent kira nerys slowly starting to remember snippets of a life as an obsidian order agent and legate's daughter in cardassia prime, and reintegrating that information into her current inner life?

there is something very interesting about that possibility. for what it means about choice and self-determination, about bajoran spirituality and faith - taking what the prophet's show you, and following their path in courage.

a great deal of possibilities, also. how much are the memories iliana's, how much from the surgeries and brainwashing etrek put her through?

whether she remembers it all, or only instants. perhaps if it is only that she feels the cold more keenly. her hands remember how to sculp bone, now, as jadzia remembered how to play after making peace with her murderous past life.

does it make a difference? it is up for her to decide what does make a difference. regardless of what she decides to believe, the strain is the same, a continuation of what every bajoran has known for fifty years - the oppressed being impressed upon by the memory of the oppressor.

kira nerys had a maybe-real mother who painted idols for the temple - she sculpts them, now, and the hopes and wishes and intent she puts into the work are her own, between her and the prophets.

iliana ghemor was loved and artistic and brilliant, and she is dead, she has been dead for ten years.

the world is better for it.

kira nerys? major kira as liberation to live for, and friends aplenty, and a duty roster to re-organize.

[the-last-dillpickle]

hmm Kira/Iliana...? 🤔

[ofhouseadama]

sometimes i like to toy with the concept of garak's biological mother being the lost scion of a prestigious political family (ie an iliana ghemor type, just fifty years in the past) and just rotate that in my mind along with the idea of post-war cardassia being out of legitimate living heirs for these late, great houses and deciding to mandate (or heavily suggest) that the population all contribute to one big open cardassianancestryDNA. garak is huffy but does it so he can hit back to his opponents in the press that he is a bastard AND an orphan, thank you very much, but then his mom comes up as essentially the grand duchess anastasia who disappeared mysteriously on cardassia iii six months before he was theoretically born

[boreal-sea]

Speaking of DS9 "Second Skin", Entek actually gives Kira the clue she needs to solve the puzzle. He'd probably have been able to fully confuse her and have her truly doubt her identity, but he asked her:

"If you're not my operative, if you're not who I say you are, why would I be playing this game?"

He thought this would serve to further confuse her, but it ended up being the key Kira needed. It's what Kira remembers later, talking to Tekeny. Why would the Obsidian Order be playing this game? Entek knows she's not actually Iliana, so what is is real motivation?

Trapping Tekeny Ghemor, Iliana's father.

Now, I'll wager that convincing Kira she actually was Cardassian and getting all her secrets was probably on the table as a possibility, but taking down Tekeny was the primary goal. It's interesting to postulate what would have happened if Tekeny hadn't decided to try to smuggle Kira off Cardassia, and had just waited. Kira was on her way to breaking at that point. Would the Obsidian Order have given up on their attempt to reveal Tekeny as a resistance operative, or would they have just shifted to using Kira in a different way to reveal his involvement?

[quietwings-fics]

Who was she?

Rating: General Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Ship: Gen Additional Tags: POV Kira Nerys, Episode: s03e05 Second Skin, Angst, Coda, Identity Issues Wordcount: 243 Summary:

They showed Kira a body to prove that she replaced the real Kira, but that, like everything else, turned out not to be true. But then, where did they get that body?

It’s only much later, lying in her quarters, that the thought crosses Kira’s mind. She plays absently with the bracelet Ghemor gave her, touching each of the metal segments in turn. They are pieces of a family she has been drawn in the middle of by chance: a dead mother, a hopeful father, a lost daughter.

Did Ghemor see my body? she thinks, and she corrects herself harshly a second later, the body, a body, not hers. Kira Nerys is alive. That was only a trick to break her, exhibit S 1983. As she’d assumed, a clone, a hologram, a lie.

But then, the video was not. Iliana was a real woman, whose eyes happened to match the shape of Kira’s, whose mouth could make the same smile.

They put her through surgery to make her look like a Bajoran. She could be anyone.

But they gave Kira the same surgery in reverse, and through the Cardassian scales and ridges, she had still looked like herself. That was the whole point. If she hadn’t, Ghemor never would have seen his daughter in her face.

And now she lies there, clutching the bracelet close, and trying to remember. Did she touch the body? Did she feel the cold that haunted its skin? Did she make sure it was real?

Whose body was that? Whose face was that?

She has the sinking feeling that no matter how much Ghemor searches, he’ll never find his daughter.

(Enjoyed it? Any interaction is welcomed. You can even support me on Ko-Fi <3)

[jimintomystery]

DS9: "Second Skin"

Major Kira is abducted by the Obsidian Order and surgically altered to look like Iliana Ghemor, a Cardassian sleeper agent who allegedly replaced the real Kira ten years ago.

The writer of this story, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, originally wanted it to be about Chief O'Brien, which accounts for all the "O'Brien Must Suffer" DNA in the plot. Either way, he wanted to leave open the idea that the sleeper agent stuff was true, with no way to prove the main character wasn't originally Cardassian. It's a provocative idea, but incompatible with the finished episode. From the start, it's awfully suspicious when Kira has the first seed of doubt planted in her mind, and the Order already has an operative lurking on the station. (Well, one more operative than usual. You know what I mean.)

Since the 1960s, Star Trek has been having fun with the idea that future doctors can disguise humans as an alien as easily as 20th century make-up artists. Well, it's one thing to stick pointy ears on Captain Kirk and call him a Romulan. It's quite another to saw off a Cardassian's neck ridges and that forehead thing, and somehow make these massive anatomical changes undetectable by the enemy for ten years. It'd be tolerable if they just did it once, for a story like this where it's worth it. But they just keep coming back to it, until it's as big a cliche as the holodeck.

Hell, let's talk about the holodeck. One of the big moments in this episode is when Entek has the "real" Kira's corpse beamed into the room to "prove" she's been dead for years. Unfortunately that gets blunted right away when Kira decides "For all I know, this whole place is a holosuite." Entek's whole point is that nothing he's claiming is impossible for the Obsidian Order, but that means nothing when literally anyone in Quark's bar could fake all this in a simulation.

So it's a good thing the story looks past that to Kira's real dilemma, because whether this is real or not she's still trapped by people trying to gaslight her. The triumph of this episode is pivoting from "is Kira actually Iliana Ghemor?" to "this is all a trick to expose Iliana's father as a dissident." Once we go there, the situation feels more tangible and relevant--the sci-fi spy stuff becomes a vehicle for genuine human drama, instead of existing for its own sake.

I really, really like how Kira has A Moment with Legate Ghemor at the end, and he offers some fatherly advice which turns out to be "Garak is trash, 0/10 would not recommend."

[dykebeckett]

Thinking once again about my very favorite zero screentime star trek character iliana ghemor

[asexyattorney]

If I were allowed to go back and change one random detail of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I would say that everything in Second Skin was actually true. Kira's real identity really is Iliana Ghemor. She was a Cardassian agent from the Obsidian order surgically altered to look Bajoran. At some point in the episode, she regains some of her memories from before, but she also remembers everything from her fake life as if it were real, plus all the real memories she made since living as Kira. In the end, she decided to continue to live as a Bajoran and returns to the station.

Of course, in classic Star Trek fashion, this would be a completely life-altering, traumatic and crazy plot twist to happen only to be imididiatly forgotten about after (like they did with all of O'brien's storylines). Characters would bring it up every once in a while, like "remember that time Kira found out she was a Cardassian spy? That was weird huh?" But otherwise it wouldn't much impact her character at all. Just some thing that happened once. You know, some people will get mentally tortured for 20 years but it was all in their head. Some people will cross the transwarp threshold and have lizard babies with their boss. Some people are secretly cardassian spies who had their body and memories altered for a mission. You know how it is.

[cuterefaction]

What is your fav DS9 (or ST in general) headcanon you have ecountered out in the wild?

My personal headcanons that I'm the most attached to are as follows:

The timelines are maybe a bit fuzzy, the paperwork is likely to be inaccurate and the people involved had incentives to lie: what if Tora Naprem was actually Kira Meru following an ID change to stop anyone from her old family looking for her and make her boyfriend look less predatory?

Iliana Ghemor had a happier ending irl than beta canon has it; I like to believe that there is another Kira Nerys out there starting all the barfights in the known universe and just waiting to get discovered and folded into the found family.

The Romulans were actually in on the assassination of Senator Vreenak. They must've done the math, they knew the Dominion was a long-term threat to them, and his being stated to be the co-chair of the Tal Shiar implies that he was likely power sharing with multiple high ranking murderous schemers who, given his personality and conciliation position on the war, probably hated his guts. I like to think that there were behind the scenes meetings between representatives of the alpha quadrant intelligence agencies where the other co-chair was agreeing it was in everyone's best interests for the RSE to join the war but her sodding work partner kept on undermining that at every turn and goodness the diplomatic shuttles they were using nowadays had SO many security flaws and were SO easy to blow up and wouldn't it be a TERRIBLE SHAME if something was to happen to one of them whilst carrying so INCONVENIENT a person etc etc etc. Get a couple of profoundly self-sacrificing volunteers (or a couple of other idiots you'd be glad to see the back of) to pilot and guard the thing, and you're golden.

Any episode of DS9 where it would make sense for Garak to be in the plot but is distinctly lacking in plain simple tailoring (eg the Section 31 stuff, any time where background knowledge of Cardassians would be relevant) has an easy explanation: in ASIT he states that he learned from cute lil' desert lizards to be functionally invisible to the point where it scared the shit out of his compatriots. He's actually in every one of those episodes, sitting placidly in the corner and working on some embroidery whilst taking mental notes/sending communiques/arranging for unpleasant things to happen to people (or, alternatively, being an utter fairytale gremlin and going 'a ha, I shall assist these plebians if they can see through my cloak of invisibility and answer my riddles three!'; possibly the wire makes the difference here).

More generally in Trek, I like any headcanon that makes the aliens just a bit more... alien? The spots go all the way down, Klingons are a foot taller and have ridges and plating all over, Gorn have to lick their eyeballs clean like geckos, Cardassians are mesothermic and need to bask, Ferengi can use their hearing to echolocate and therefore can be crazy physically accurate, more claws, more fur, more weird sensory doodads, little things like that that diversify the worldbuilding.

[oldschoolfic-ds9]

Character and ship tags:

E - K (Kahless)

Character and ship tags navigation:

directory

A - B

C - D (Ezri Dax)

D (Jadzia Dax) - D (Dukat)

E - K (Kahless)

K (Lenara Kahn) - L (Lauren)

L (Leeta) - O (Kirayoshi O'Brien)

O (Miles O'Brien) - Q (Q)

Q (Quark) - S (Benjamin Sisko)

S (Jake Sisko) - T

V - Z

Notes: For each character, we've listed a character tag as well as all ship tags that involve that character (sometimes none). Characters are alphabetized by surname, when known. Ships for a given character are alphabetized by the surnames of the other character(s) in the ship. A tag for the character's "miscellaneous" ships (that is, character/non-ds9 character ships, character/OC ships, and ships which only have one fic) is always given at the top of the list of ships for that character.

E

Michael Eddington   |   #eddingtonfic

Sisko/Eddington   |   #siskoeddingtonfic

Kasidy Yates/Eddington   |   #kasidyeddingtonfic

Entek   |   #entekfic

Damar/Entek   |   #damarentekfic

Eris   |   #erisfic

Weyoun/Eris | #weyounerisfic

Eris (mirror)   |   #merisfic

Weyoun(mirror)/Eris(mirror)   |   #mweyounmeris

F

Felix   |   #felixfic

Vic Fontaine   |   #vicfontaine

Vic Fontaine/other   |   #vicmisc

Ezri Dax/Vic   |   #edaxvic

Quark/Vic | #quarkvic

Female Founder   |   #ffounder

Female Founder/other   |   #ffoundermisc

Female Founder/Weyoun   |   #ffounderweyoun

G

Elim Garak   |   #egarak

Garak/other   |   #garakmisc

Garak/Bareil   |   #bareilgarakfic

Garak/Bashir   |   #garakbashirfic

Garak/Bashir(mirror)   |   #garakmbashir

Garak/Bashir/Ezri Dax   |   #garakbashiredax

Garak/Bashir/Jadzia Dax   |   #garakbashirjdax

Garak/Bashir/Dukat   |   #garakbashirdukat

Garak/Bashir/other   |   #garakbashirmisc

Garak/Chalan Aroya   |   #garakaroyafic

Garak/Damar   |   #garakdamarfic

Ezri Dax/Garak   |   #edaxgarak

Garak/Jadzia Dax   |   #garakjdax

Garak/Dukat   |   #garakdukatfic

Garak/Garak(mirror)   |   #garakmgarak

Garak/Lenara Kahn   |   #garaklenara

Garak/Keevan   |   #garakkeevan

Garak/Kira   |   #garakkira

Garak/Lwaxana   |   #garaklwaxanafic

Garak/Naprem | #garaknapremfic

Garak/Nechayev | #garaknechayevfic

Garak/Nog   |   #garaknogfic

Garak/O’Brien  |   #garakobrienfic

Garak/O’Brien/Worf  |   #garakobrienworffic

Garak/Odo   |   #garakodo

Garak/Picard | #garakpicardfic

Garak/Q   |   #garakqfic

Garak/Quark   |   #garakquark

Sisko/Garak   |   #siskogarakfic

Garak/Jake Sisko   |   #garakjakefic

Garak/Tain   |   #garaktain

Garak/Worf   |   #garakworffic

Garak/Ziyal   |   #garakziyal

Garak (mirror)   |   #megarak

Garak(mirror)/other   |   #mgarakmisc

Garak(mirror)/Bashir   |   #mgarakbashir

Garak/Garak(mirror)   |   #garakmgarak

Garak(mirror)/Kira(mirror)   |   #mgarakintendant

Garak(mirror)/Kira   |   kiramgarak

Garak(mirror)/Sloan   |   #mgaraksloan

Garak(mirror)/Worf(mirror)   |   #mgarakmworf

Iliana Ghemor   |   #ilianaghemorfic

Tekeny Ghemor   |   #tekenyghemorfic

Grilka   |   #grilkafic

Grilka/other   |   #grilkamisc

Bashir/Grilka   |   #bashirgrilkafic

H

Commander Hilliard   |   #commanderhilliardfic

I

Ishka   |   #ishkafic

Ishka/other   |   #ishkamisc

Jadzia Dax/Ishka   |   #jdaxishkafic

Jadzia Dax/Ishka/Lwaxana   |   #jdaxishkalwaxana

Ishka/Lwaxana Troi   |   #ishkalwaxanafic

Ishka/Vash | #ishkavashfic

Ishka/Zek   |   #ishkazek

J

Jack   |   #jackfic

Cyrano Jones   |   #cyranojonesfic

K

Kahless   |   #kahlessfic

[transemh]

have you ever felt like someone you're not?

[the-last-dillpickle]

Thinking about that one fic that asks who was the body they showed Kira in the episode Second Skin and ends with suggesting that was the fate of the real Iliana Ghemor

[novakspector]

[boreal-sea]

I still can't get over the idea of an AU where Kira really IS Iliana Ghemor. I do love a good amnesia/secretly the enemy trope.