Everything Old... Part II

[dark_sinestra]

Garak

The Promenade

 

He didn't often have reason to use the skills he developed at the Bamarren Institute, the rare ability to hide in plain sight, but it was exactly what he did as more and more Bajorans gathered outside the temple to hear their new Emissary for the first time. Someone needed to keep an eye and ear out for Cardassian interests. Who knew which way the wind might blow with a different hand guiding the hearts and minds of the volatile and sometimes fickle people? He didn't see Captain Sisko in the crowd, wise of him, he thought, yet Odo and Major Kira stood above the throng on the second floor. Of the Starfleeters, all he saw were a few in security gold. He didn't buy this feigned indifference. He imagined there were several nervous officers scattered throughout the station, probably watching the activity through the security feeds.

 

The crowd broke into applause. Garak saw the man of the hour emerge from the temple doorway and ascend the podium set up for him. After the applause, a hush fell over the gathered, and Akorem began to speak. The more Garak heard, the more disquieted he felt. Here we go again, he thought, his reptilian eyes going flat at the talk of the great wound of the occupation and the return to the old ways.

 

The old ways, he thought contemptuously, the last refuge of the unimaginative and those lacking vision. You can't erase the past. If you try, you'll never even learn from it. As uneasy as the old man's words made him, the crowd's reaction was worse. They were divided, some shouting and clapping their enthusiasm, others whispering and glancing at one another with furtive body language.

 

He had heard and seen enough. For all the good it would do him, he determined he would report this back to the civilian government. They needed to understand that the climate on Bajor was shifting abruptly, not for the better. If they were wise and truly serious about the treaty, they should have sent a permanent liaison or made use of him for the job. He knew the people. Some of them even trusted him.

 

When he reached his shop he closed and locked the doors. He didn't want interruptions. He quickly compiled his report and sent a scrambled, encrypted transmission. After he was done, he decided to leave the shop closed for the day. He didn't like what his instincts were telling him. He hadn't survived as long as he had by ignoring them. He made good use of the time in his stock room, working on orders until quitting time.

 

On his way past the Replimat, he heard raised voices. His first instinct was not to get involved, but he recognized one of those voices as Leeta's. Stepping around the tables and chairs that were scattered at the entrance, he made his way further in just in time to see a man shove her out of her chair. “Hey!” she cried out more in surprise than pain, glaring at the man from the floor.

 

“It's not my fault you don't know your place,” the Bajoran sneered.

 

Garak approached so swiftly and silently that neither noticed him until he was practically on top of the now seated man. “Do you know the place for those who physically assault others on this station?” he asked pleasantly.

 

“If you know what's good for you, you'll stay out of it, Cardassian,” the man sneered.

 

“Or what?” Garak asked. “You'll shove me, too?” Although his tone of voice didn't change, he bored a hole in the man with his gaze. He noticed Leeta climbing to her feet in peripheral vision, not breaking his eye contact with the antagonist.

 

“I don't need this,” the man said, standing abruptly and flinging the chair aside. “Who wants to eat here with the stench of spoonhead in the air?”

 

Garak caught himself committing the features and clothing, even the earring, to memory and watching his path on his way out. Shaking himself from a bad habit and a worse impulse, he turned to eye Leeta. Although she attempted not to look shaken, he could tell that she was. She was also rubbing her wrist. “Are you all right?” he asked.

 

She nodded tightly, her expression conflicted. “Thank you,” she said stiffly.

 

“Leeta,” he began, but she cut him off.

 

“Garak, please don't,” she said. “I'm not ready not to be angry with you.”

 

He nodded. “I understand. At least let me have a look at that wrist.” She bit her lip, indecision flickering in her eyes, glanced toward the infirmary, and suddenly thrust it toward him without a word.

He probed carefully with his fingers and manipulated it in its full range of motion. She winced painfully as he bent it back. “I think you have a sprain,” he said.

 

“Can you wrap it?” she asked.

 

It was on the tip of his tongue to send her to the infirmary. He knew she wouldn't go before it ever got out. He nodded assent. “You'll have to come with me to the shop.”

 

She gestured for him to lead the way. He could feel her at his back as they walked, an angry presence, a burr of rough edged energy in his bio-electric periphery. Had he not known her as well as he did, he believed he couldn't have tolerated allowing her to stay behind him. He led her into his stock room and pulled out his emergency med kit.

 

“Have you talked to him?” she asked the question to his back.

 

“Yes,” he said, turning with the self-adhesive wrap.

 

She held her arm out to him. “I'm sure the two of you will be very happy together,” she said, her voice brittle and glass edged.

 

He carefully began to wrap the already swelling joint. “You'll have to tell me if it's too tight,” he said gently. He sighed, the conversation unwelcome but owed to her. “We're not together. We haven't been together since he left me.”

 

“Don't lie to me, Garak,” she gritted. “It's insulting.”

 

“I'm not lying,” he said, lifting his gaze to meet hers and holding it as surely as he held her wrist in one hand while wrapping with the other. “You're more angry at the deception than you are at anything else. I can tell that much.” He finished with the bandage and tested the hold then settled his free hand atop hers, sandwiching it between his. “I wasn't pretending to be your friend. I don't expect you to understand or to forgive me, but I do want you to know that.”

 

“You lie to all your friends?” she asked, pulling her hand back gingerly.

 

“Yes,” he said, “particularly the ones of which I'm fond.”

 

“I don't understand that,” she said, sounding more confused than angry.

 

“I know you don't,” he said, having no intention of explaining or justifying himself to her.

 

“I wish I could tell when you're lying and when you're telling the truth. If you're actually some huge jerk pretending not to be, I know this isn't going to matter to you, but I don't want things to be this way. I don't want to feel knotted up inside or like I was used and made a fool of.”

 

“I don't believe that Julian was using you. If he has been using anyone, it's me,” he said without any self-pity or rancor.

 

“Why would you allow that?” Her anger returned, but he wondered if it was directed at him at all.

 

“I prefer it to the alternatives,” he said simply.

 

“I really want to stay mad at you,” she said. “It's harder than it should be, particularly when you save me from self-righteous fanatics.”

 

“Was that incident because of Akorem's speech this morning?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” she nodded. “I'm caste-less, the lowest of the low. It didn't matter that he had almost the entire place to choose from. He decided he wanted my specific chair and table. According to the old ways, that means I'm supposed to turn it over to him without a word of complaint. I shouldn't even make him sully himself by having to address me or look directly at me.”

 

He frowned, no stranger to social stratification or what being at the bottom of the heap was like. He recalled all too well his work with Tolan in the Tarlak sector and the way they were so often ignored as though invisible by those paying their respects at the grand statues of the legates. “I think you need to be careful,” he said. “It may be different on Bajor, but on Cardassia, it's very difficult for those of low to no status to get justice for wrongs done by those who outrank them in importance. Today it's shoving out of a chair. Tomorrow it could be shoving out of an airlock.”

 

“I've worked hard for everything I have. All my life I've worked hard. Now, some poet from the past comes along and declares none of that matters. I don't matter, just because I don't know my family name. The very occupation he says we need to heal from produced that situation for me, and hundreds if not thousands more just like me. Pretending it never happened may work fine for those of a D'Jarra they find desirable. It does nothing for the rest of us except piling upon yet another indignity and unfairness.” She stopped talking abruptly and focused on him again. “I have no business bringing all of this up to you. I'm sorry.”

 

“No, I'm sorry,” he surprised himself in saying. It emerged from a part of him that rarely voiced itself, a part that Tain had never touched but Tolan had carefully cultivated, so carefully that not even Mila was aware of his efforts.

 

She seemed to sense that he spoke of something larger than either of them or their recent division. “I didn't think I'd ever hear that from a Cardassian in a way I could believe.” She touched his cheek lightly with her undamaged hand and let it drop back to her side again. “If I ask you to promise me something and you do, can I trust you to keep your word?”

 

“You do realize that I could very easily lie about that,” he warned her.

 

“Yes, I do,” she said.

 

“Ask,” he said abruptly, intensely uncomfortable with what had just happened and wanting to distance himself from it as quickly as he could. Tolan's path led to rocky ground and uncertain footing.

 

“Promise me that if you think Julian is getting serious about trying to come back to you, or you think you really want him back, you'll tell me,” she said.

 

“You're going back to him?” he asked.

 

“I haven't decided. I'm still furious with him and hurt, way more hurt than I was by you. I won't pretend to understand what it is that pulls you two toward each other, and I really don't want details.” She paced the confines of the stock room and turned back to face him from a greater distance. “But even angry, I know he wouldn't do something like this lightly or on a whim, and neither would you. What do you know of our beliefs?”

 

“A bit,” he said. He knew more than he wanted.

 

“Then you know that a pagh's path can sometimes be convoluted and confusing and that sometimes paghs can be bound in ways that are impossible to ignore. It doesn't matter if you and Julian believe in it or not. That doesn't mean you aren't bound in some way.”

 

He found the talk frustrating. It made him want to shake her. “Please, don't make excuses for us,” he said earnestly. “If you want to go back to Julian and give him another chance, do it because it's what you want. The same applies for if you wish to have me as your friend. See us for who and what we are. Don't use your beliefs to mitigate what either he or I did to you with the deception.”

 

“I'm not,” she said. “I know it sounds that way to you. As you said earlier, I don't expect you to understand. Will you just promise to do as I've asked? Can you respect me enough to be honest with me if things change or deepen between you two?”

 

“Yes,” he said. “I promise I'll do that if the two of you are together at the time it happens, not that I expect it.”

 

“Thank you,” she said. “May I ask one more favor for now?”

 

“Of course,” he said.

 

“Would you please walk me to Quark's? I know it isn't far, but I...I suppose I'm still a little shaky from being assaulted like that.”

 

“I will. I think you should press charges, though.”

 

She shook her head. “I don't even know who it was.”

 

“I got a very good look at him. I could easily identify him, and I saw what he did to you. That may be the new law of the land for Bajor, but there are still rules of conduct on this station that don't allow for that sort of violence. If you don't press charges, what's to stop the next one from coming along and doing the same thing or worse?” They walked out of his shop together, and he paused to have the computer lock up.

 

“I could do that, yes, and then he or his friends could find ways to retaliate. I know how these things go, and I suspect that you do, too. While I appreciate your indignation on my behalf, I think I'll be better off letting it drop.”

 

She had a point. More frustrated than he was that morning, he walked her in silence the rest of the short distance to Quark's. She visibly relaxed when they passed through the wide doorway. Garak knew that for all of his flaws, Quark wouldn't tolerate foolishness like what happened in the Replimat in his bar. She was safer there. “If you change your mind, just let me know,” he said.

 

“I will. I'll let you know if I decide to talk to Julian, too. Do you think he actually cares about me?” she asked, somehow looking younger in her sudden vulnerability.

 

“Yes, I do,” he said, not needing to lie.

 

She nodded and withdrew from him, heading toward the back to prepare to start her shift. He watched until he could no longer see her and turned to go, much warier on his way home than he had been in a very long time. The entire way he mulled the assailant and the situation, a plan forming that he was positive would earn Odo's ire should he ever learn of it. He supposed he'd have to make certain Odo never found out.

 

After ordering a mug of hot rokassa juice from his replicator, he sat at his terminal and got to business. The security files were harder to hack than the last time he poured through them. He had to credit Odo for staying on his toes and idly wondered if it was he or Quark who had tripped some alarm last time prompting the change, or if perhaps the changeling simply did it out of paranoia. He searched criminal files going all the way back to the end of the occupation and didn't see a mugshot of his man. It didn't mean he wasn't a criminal, of course. It simply meant he hadn't been caught for anything aboard the station and wasn't notorious enough on Bajor to be flagged.

 

“Going to make me do this the hard way,” he murmured, sipping from his mug. “I believe I'm going to take offense at that.” The next set of files was easier to access, but the database was tremendous, and he had no simple way to narrow it down other than to key in some very broad parameters, adult male, brown hair, brown eyes, Bajoran. Pictures flipped by on his screen at a speed that would suit a Vulcan. Garak never blinked, watching them all. Almost two minutes later, he said, “Computer stop. Go back ten files.” A slightly younger version of his culprit appeared on his screen. After all of that, it was nothing to discover where he lived. A search of information on his quarters told him that at least officially, he lived alone. It was no guarantee.

 

“Now,” he said, feeling very satisfied, “let's see where you work and who you work with. Family, either on the station or on Bajor...” Between speaking, he hummed lightly, thoroughly enjoying himself.

 

Much later in the evening, he left his quarters with a small satchel slung over his shoulder. All was quiet in the H-ring, the lights low, the deep rumble of the station a soothing background noise he barely noticed. It was convenient that they shared the same ring. It made his job of getting there less likely to draw attention. He felt alive all over, every sense keyed and heightened. This was always a dangerous game to play, regardless of the target.

 

Once outside the quarters, he fished a small tricorder from his bag and ran it. One life sign behind the wall where the bedroom should be, no movement to speak of, slightly lower respiration, temperature, and heart rate than one would expect of a Bajoran who was awake. Asleep. So obliging. It almost puts me in a more forgiving mood, he thought. Almost. He turned it off again and tucked it neatly back into its separate pouch, the entire bag compartmentalized to prevent anything from clacking together inside.

 

Cracking the door code and disabling the internal computer interface was nothing. He slipped silently into the dark quarters and waited. Did the hiss of the door awaken his quarry? He knew that some Bajoran's hearing was so keen as to seem unnatural to his people. He heard no stirring from the room beyond. The wait allowed his eyes to adjust to the starlight illuminating the quarters from the port and gave him time to take what he needed from his satchel by feel alone. Messy, he saw. He had to pick his way carefully around clutter on the floor. Oh, how he loathed disorder! His opinion of the man fell further.

 

The bedroom door was open. He stepped through it very quickly and to the side, hugging the wall. Doorways were a danger zone, the place where one was most likely to be spotted. He saw a pale face above a rumpled blanket, the man asleep on his back. He smiled closed lipped and stepped forward. The first magnetic clamp in his thinly gloved hand clicked very softly as he set it into place at the underside of the bed platform. He froze and watched the slack face. Not even a twitch, he thought, still waiting a bit longer to be certain. Extending a fine wire from its tight spool, he snapped it into place in the small slots on the clamp designed just for that purpose and circled the foot of the bed, allowing the wire to extend and retract again to accommodate his movements.

 

At the other side, he supported the wire gently beneath the fingers of one hand while setting a twin clamp with the other, still no reaction from his quarry. His next move was fast and precise, allowing the wire to pop down onto the bare neck while securing another end beneath the other clamp and using the snip on the spool to cut it to length. As expected, the man snapped awake from the sudden sting, only Garak's firm hand at his shoulder preventing him from slitting his own throat.

 

“I see I have your attention,” he hissed softly.

 

“Computer, lights!” the Bajoran croaked in a panic. Nothing happened.

 

“No,” Garak said, tutting him. “We can't have that. You see, there's a place and time for everything, wouldn't you agree? Darkness suits this sort of activity.”

 

“I don't know who you are, but I swear you'll pay for this,” the man growled. Although he attempted to sound menacing, Garak could hear the underlying waver in the bravado.

 

“Oh, how rude of me not to introduce myself,” he said. “I'm the spoonhead. I'm surprised you couldn't tell by the smell, but I suppose your sensory lapse is understandable due to the circumstances.” He saw the chest rise sharply with the man's semi-panicked inhale. Good. He did fear Cardassians. Garak honestly didn't care why. “I'm going to take my hand off your shoulder. You'd be very wise not to try to move much. There's a wire across your throat taut enough to slit it if you try to sit up and thin enough to slice your fingers off if you're foolish enough to pry at it. You are, of course, welcome to test this for yourself.”

 

He released his pressure and squatted back on his heels so that his face would be at the bed level, watching intently. “I'm glad to see you're not as stupid as your actions earlier this evening led me to believe.”

 

“So this is revenge for that tun'jarra?” He sounded incredulous and a little outraged on top of his obvious fear.

 

Garak chuckled low, an ugly sound. “Oh, no. You completely misunderstand. You see, I found the Emissary's speech quite inspiring. All that talk of a return to the old ways. Do you know that my people have something of a caste system, too? Hearing that talk made me homesick. It made me realize that I've been untrue to my calling, settling for the dull life of a simple tailor. Would you care to guess what my 'D'jarra' is?” he asked liltingly. Nothing but shallow breathing followed his query. “No?” He pressed gently on the wire with a gloved finger.

 

“Y-you're an assassin,” the man yelped.

 

Garak let up. “Rather crude, not entirely accurate, but close enough for my purposes, I suppose,” he said in a way that voiced disappointment. “You could, of course, report me to security. Once I leave this room, I have no real control over what you do. Knowing Odo, he's going to want more than your word to have me arrested, particularly after Leeta tells him how I prevented you from doing her further harm. As efficient as he is, a thorough investigation will still take him at least twenty-six hours, possibly more because I'm very good at covering my tracks. Do you have any idea what I could do in twenty-six hours? Think of the collateral damage of our little disagreement, your work detail in maintenance, cute little Jerra Revan in Dahkur Province.”

 

The man swallowed heavily and a thin line of black appeared on his throat, all color leached from the room in the pale starlight. It trickled downward toward the mattress, and Garak watched him twitch. “Please,” he said, all bravado gone, only naked appeal left. “What do you want from me?”

 

Garak leaned closer so that his breath would tickle the large curve of ear. “I've known people like you,” he whispered. “Frustrated little people who covet the power of others but don't have the...initiative...to seize any of their own. This return to the old ways must seem like a windfall from the prophets for you, an excuse to tread on those lower on the rung by accident of birth or misfortune of the occupation. The way I understand it, and please, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm hardly a scholar of Bajoran history.

 

“Yes, those of lower caste and the tun'jarra, those with no status at all, are expected to defer to their so-called betters, but you have a duty to them not to abuse them. I suggest you study your own texts, or I may find myself completely overwhelmed with nostalgia and have to pay your friends a visit before I come back to see you again. Do we understand each other?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” the man said, his voice now starting to shake. Garak could see a sheen of sweat on the pale face. The stress of the situation was beginning to wear his victim down.

 

“Another thing,” he said. “I find the term 'spoonhead' to be quite hurtful, and I can't seem to keep myself from lashing out when I'm hurt. Do you think I should see someone about that? Is it...normal?”

 

“N...no. I mean yes! I mean, you don't need to see anyone. I...I apologize for offending you,” he said in a rush.

 

“Apology accepted,” Garak said, sliding one hand down the man's arm until he reached his hand and bracing him at the shoulder with the other. He loosely clasped his fingers around his index finger and gave a sharp jerk. The Bajoran howled in pain, Garak's hand at his shoulder preventing further, graver injury to the pinned throat. “You sprained my friend's wrist,” he said coldly. “Shall I convey an apology to her as well?”

 

“Ye-es,” came the ragged reply.

 

“I'm happy to see you're more reasonable than I expected,” he said. He released the clamp closest to him and circled the bed to release the other, tucking everything neatly back into his pack. He wasn't at all surprised that the man didn't move. His eyes glittered as they tried to follow Garak's movements, but it was obvious to the Cardassian that it was too dark for the man to see him as anything more than a disconcerting shadow. “I'm leaving now. I do hope that you'll set a good example for all of your friends in how to behave toward those of lesser status than your own. The very best way to teach is by example. Good night.”

 

He exited as quietly as he entered and took as much care returning to his quarters as he did upon leaving them. He knew there was a possibility his victim might do something stupid and actually file a report. It would be a shame if it came to that, as he didn't make idle threats. All in all, he believed the excursion was successful, even if it truly had left him feeling a bit nostalgic.