Chapter Text
Garak, just a quick note to say I’ve received your manuscript. More to follow. All the best, Dr Bashir
Sitting against the wall of his humble home—once Tolan Garak’s claustrophobic work shed, now his own personal scrap of Cardassia—looking out at the memorial gardens he’d built over the ruins of Tain’s house and Mila’s tomb, Garak contemplated the nature of change.
Or at least that’s what he told himself he was doing. He certainly wasn’t sitting here refreshing his messages like a fool.
He knew that his relationship with Julian Bashir was not what it once had been, or what he’d naively dreamed it could be. Garak had said as much in the manuscript. One final act of self flagellation before he released his guilt into the hands of the universe and the human he’d come to… no, even now he couldn’t finish that thought. He’d freed himself of so many regrets but that one remained nestled in his chest, a load bearing pain he couldn’t acknowledge for fear it might finally be the strike kill him.
Julian had told him about a human phrase once ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’. The telling had required an explanation of both Terran flora and fauna but Garak had been happy just to listen to him pontificate on any subject. The more he knew of Julian’s home world the more ammunition he had to challenge and rile that beautiful young man.
But there had been no ‘more’ in the weeks that followed the doctor’s curt and simple acknowledgement.
Garak had known not to expect anything, had noted Julian’s withdrawal and his long-wished-for romantic involvement with Ezri Dax, had spent so much time telling himself that the writing of his life story was the whole of his purpose.
No, he hadn’t expected anything, but he had hoped.
The sun was setting behind the towers of rubble, streaking the memorial garden with lines of darkness and gold. He’d once hoped to inherit Tain’s house as his acknowledged son. He’d once hoped to return to Cardassia and live out his days here with Mila, even if it was only as a tailor and the ‘son’ of a gardener.
So many hopes that had come to nothing.
Things change whether we want them to or not. Hope just eases the pain.
‘How very philosophical of you, Elim,’ he thought to himself as he dragged his aching bones up off the ground before the unpleasant chill of nightfall froze him there. ‘Are you aiming for yet another career change? Assassin, tailor, spy, gardener, bureaucrat, philosopher. Perhaps after that you could choose something with better prospects.’
He should stop hoping that Julian would reply, but in the dusty ruins of his world the possibility was all that kept him going some days.
In the dim quiet of his now rather lonely quarters, Julian let his dataPADD fall onto the couch cushions with a sigh.
‘All the best’.
What had he been thinking?
‘All the best, Dr Bashir.’
Doctor Bashir.
As if Garak was a patient. As if they were strangers. As if Garak’s manuscript had been something as banal as a weather report, not thirty years of his own personal history.
Of course, no one could ever fully trust information from Garak, even the things he said entirely of his own free will, but still…
Why hadn’t he at least signed off with ‘Julian’?
Five years ago he’d have at least ended the message with his first name, probably after some witty sign off that would have been a little more exciting and devil-may-care than ‘all the best’.
Julian sighed again. His head fell back against the couch cushions in a sad imitation of his dataPADD, the glow from which now lightly illuminated the curves and shadows of the Cardassian ceiling. Cardassian architecture had a lot in common with a certain Cardassian spy. How very metaphorical.
Once upon a time he might have found that thought amusing, but right now he felt as blank and empty as the screen of his PADD.
It was during evenings like this that he almost missed wearing the mask of the slightly foolish second-in-his-graduating-class Julian Bashir who had first arrived on Deep Space Nine.
The old naive Julian who hung on Garak’s every word wouldn’t have written such a terse message in response to receiving so many hints about his secrets.
No, that Julian would have grabbed the opportunity with an enthusiastic grin… and he certainly wouldn’t have left it three months to write the follow up message he’d promised.
He’d thought it’d be oh so clever to reread the manuscript in its original Cardassian form and in the process he’d torn apart his own reality.
How the hell could he respond to all that? How could he write a reply when he wanted to grab Garak by the shoulders and shake him. Instead Julian had spent every evening for weeks failing to write anything coherent.
“Computer,” Julian sighed. “Time?”
“The time is 25:07.”
He should go to bed.
This evening would be no more productive than others.
“Of course you can’t think of what to say to him! I mean, it’s hardly your fault,” Miles said over his shoulder as they climbed Quark’s spiral staircase towards the holosuites. “Cardassian communications are clear as mud! Remember that time they sent those scientists?”
Always running in the background of every situation, Julian’s enhanced intellect told him that this conversation must be a dream because he and Miles never talked about personal issues before a holoprogram. They saved that for afterwards, when they were both exhausted and several pints deep.
Besides, he hadn’t told Miles about Garak’s manuscript.
The Chief had barely tolerated the Cardassian, even when he was helping towards the war effort. There was no way he’d want to spend his leisure time talking about… whatever was going on in Julian’s head right now.
“Julian?”
Oh, yes. Miles had asked a question.
“Hmm?”
“I said ‘do you remember the time Cardassia sent those three scientists to the station?’,” Miles repeated.
“Oh, uh… yes! Only two scientists though - Gilora Rejal and Ulani Belor. The other was a spy - Nal Dejar. She was in one of Garak's Obsidian Order cells back in the day, before he was exiled.”
“He didn’t tell us that!” The outrage in Miles’ voice was palpable. “Why didn’t you tell us that?!”
“I didn’t know then!” Julian muttered defensively. “Anyway, you know Garak always made himself scarce when there were Cardassians on the station back then. And she was a good operative, she’d have stayed well out of his way.”
“Fine.”
“Why do you ask?” Julian prompted.
Surely they should have been at the holosuites by now. Had the spiral staircase always gone on for this long? Julian tried to peer down between the steps but the lights of Quark’s bar had vanished. All he could see was darkness. Oh yes, of course, this was a dream.
“Gilora thought I was coming on to her!” Miles laughed. “Because we were arguing so much!”
Looking up, Julian realised his friend was at least a turn ahead of him and rapidly disappearing into the shadows.
“What?” He almost had to shout as he hurried to catch up.
“Yep, she even suggested we could get married and she’d ‘give me many healthy children’. She was livid when I told her about Keiko.”
“I’m surprised she’d be so open to an interspecies marriage, Ziyal didn’t get much of a welcome.”
“Must have been my rugged good looks. Besides, I’m a human engineer, a senior one at that. Ziyal’s mother was Bajoran and a…” the metallic rhythm of Miles’ steps paused on the stairs for a moment as he tried to think of a polite word. He didn’t succeed. “Besides, Dukat was married at the time. That must have made a difference.”
“I suppose so.”
“Did you never think it was strange that Garak never really argued with Ziyal?”
There was a teasing smile in Miles’ voice but the darkness had completely swallowed him. The only things Julian could see now were the half-dozen stairs ahead of him and the railing beneath his fingers.
“He certainly tried to argue that she couldn’t love him. Or shouldn’t.” Julian replied, sadly remembering how devastated the Cardassian spy had been at her death.
Miles chuckled. “And yet he was always bickering with you!”
The next step vanished just as Julian put his weight on it, pitching him forward into the endless darkness.
‘It’s just a dream’ his intelligent mind tried to reassure his nervous system. He woke with a jolt all the same.
Staring at the ceiling, waiting for his heart rate to settle, Julian was half tempted to call Miles and disturb his sleep in revenge against his dream antics. But Miles wasn’t on the station any more. He was on Earth, teaching the next generation of engineers.
No more holosuite adventures for them. No more awkward personal conversations over pints of replicated beer. If Julian wanted to speak to his friend it’d have to be over a video call and those weren’t conducive to emotional connections.
Of course, it was doubtful whether the real Miles O’Brien would have tolerated this particular subject in any medium.
Ezri had struggled, and she was a trained counsellor… though he really shouldn’t have raised it with his current romantic partner.
Rolling onto his front Julian pressed his face into the pillow to muffle his groan of frustration at himself. They weren’t romantic partners anymore precisely because he had raised it with her. Or maybe it had been all those evenings that he’d spent staring at his PADD in frozen rumination that had driven her to suggest they take a break.
“The time is 06:00.” The computer intoned, breaking the unhelpful flow of his thoughts.
He still hadn’t changed the alarm back to his own preferences. He still slept on the left hand side of the bed because he’d given up his habitual side out of a gentlemanly sense of chivalry. His uniforms were still crammed into half the wardrobe to make way for things that were no longer there.
“The time is 06:00 and ten seconds.” The computer reminded him because Ezri had struggled to get out of bed in the mornings.
Something had to change.
Preferably something more substantial than his morning routine.