dark_sinestra

Julian

The Infirmary

It was slightly more than an hour since Garak had left his office, slightly less than three until what most would consider a decent lunch time. They had no patients, and there were no nuisance diseases currently circulating through the population. He couldn't focus on his routine record keeping. “This is ridiculous,” he sighed, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. “Why can't I just decide on a course of action and stick to it when it comes to him?” He had tried to be as gracious as the Cardassian had been, as mature and understanding. He had believed that he was once and for all setting all of that behind them, particularly after the holosuite incident. So why had it taken every ounce of his control to allow the tailor to leave without doing something horribly rash?

The thought of waiting three hours just to sit across a table at the Replimat from him and talk about things that didn't matter was intolerable. “Get a grip,” he muttered. He considered paying an impromptu visit to Leeta and immediately rejected the thought. She'd be deeply asleep right now and not appreciative of a surprise visit just because he was suddenly horny and frustrated. She was perceptive enough that she might even figure out that it had nothing to do with her. That would never do. Shaking his head, he stood and strode from his office. He found one of the nurses in the lab, unpacking new supplies and putting them away. “I'm stepping out. Call me if you need me.”

“All right, Doctor,” she said, never even looking over at him from her work.

That suited him fine. He wasn't sure what anyone would see if they looked at him too closely. He left the infirmary and paused on the Promenade. His initial intention had been to go to his quarters for quick relief, but Garak's open light caught him like a flame a moth. This is crazy, he told himself. You're crazy.

He crossed the flow of foot traffic and slipped into the shop. Garak had his back to the door, arranging older merchandise on the back racks. Julian watched him and allowed himself an unadulterated moment of pure enjoyment. Garak was graceful and precise in almost everything he did. It didn't matter if he believed that he had an audience or not. He found himself staring at the gray hands. Swallowing, he stepped further in. He wondered how close he could get before the tailor perceived him and then how much longer Garak would make him wait before letting him know he knew he was there. It was possible he already did.

He was a little over halfway to him when Garak said without turning, “It's early for lunch, wouldn't you say? Is there something I can do for you, Doctor? I am a bit busy at the moment.”

“I want a fitting,” he said without thinking.

Garak's hands stopped moving over the rack. He turned and glanced at Julian over his shoulder. “Now?” he asked.

“Yes,” Julian replied, glancing quickly over the merchandise. “That,” he pointed at something with four different clashing colors and random looking patterns. It was the first thing that really caught his eye, and he already regretted selecting it. Garak was critical enough of his fashion sense, or lack thereof as the man loved pointing out.

“You'll forgive me for saying it,” Garak said drolly, “but I don't think the latest in Andorian fashion is for you.”

“Yes, I forgive you for saying it. Now, are you going to help me or not?” he asked tightly.

The Cardassian eyed him for some long, tortuous moments before nodding and hanging what he already held in his hands. He walked the short distance to the Andorian outfit and plucked its hanger then gestured Julian ahead of him into the nearest fitting room. He hung the clothing on a wall hook. “When you've put it on, let me know. If you need any help with any of the fastenings, just say so.”

He knew better than to say he needed help with his uniform. His mouth now dry, he nodded and waited for the tailor to leave. What in the hell are you doing? he asked himself. He didn't have a good answer for it. Quickly stripping from his uniform, he started struggling with the loud outfit. It was more complex than it looked from the outside, very typical of most of Garak's creations. Either it truly wasn't designed for the human body type in any way, or he had done something very wrong. “Garak?” he called out hesitantly. “I think I need help.”

Did the tailor keep him waiting longer than usual, or was he just that eager to have him in the small fitting room with him? He was about to call out again when the curtain briefly whisked open just enough to admit Garak. Amusement and a little annoyance flashed in the blue eyes. “You really did make a mess of things,” he chided him, immediately reaching to a set of clasps Julian had fastened at his left shoulder.

Yes, I did, Julian thought. Garak's touch was nothing but professional and yet every brush of the cool gray fingers eroded his composure. He tried not to watch them while they sorted out his clumsy mistakes. There was no safe place to rest his gaze, neither on the tailor nor on the mirrors around them. Seeing their joint reflections was somehow worse.

“Now,” Garak said, taking him firmly by the shoulders and turning him to face his own reflection. “I have to say, the cut isn't bad on you. You're as slender as they are, but the colors are atrocious with your complexion. You look positively yellow.”

Garak was right, of course. The garish orange, purple, green, and gold brought out a sallow tone in his skin. He looked himself in the eyes. How could Garak not see what was blatantly there? His gaze shifted downward and stopped on the curved gray fingers still clasping his shoulders. The grip was tight. Was the tailor trying to prevent him from turning around? He couldn't see Garak's face in the mirror, just the sleek curve of his hair. He pressed backward subtly and felt his shoulder blades touch Garak's chest. The Cardassian didn't step away.

He then pressed not so subtly, and there was the resistance he had been expecting. Garak's grip tightened further and his arms stiffened, preventing any more backward movement. Julian held his breath. The silence between them had dragged for far too long. Any moment he expected admonition or an airy return to the professional charade of shop keeper with a difficult customer. When neither came and the silence continued to weigh upon him, he reached back between them, sliding his palm flat over the front of Garak's tunic beneath his belt. He gasped softly at the feel of a hard, unyielding bulge, unmistakable even through the layers of thick clothing.

Garak's grip grew vise-like, but he didn't thrust the doctor away. Taking the lack of outright rejection as encouragement of sorts, Julian fumbled his hand beneath the tunic hem, bunching it up against his wrist while he felt for the clasp of the trousers. With deft surgeon's fingers, he managed to work it loose one handed. His breath came more quickly, and he gasped again as he slipped his hand into the parted fabric, closed his fingers around the wet heat of Garak's cock, and stroked the entire length of it. The Cardassian's only concession to him came from a press of forehead to the back of his head.

He didn't dare to glance at the mirror. He didn't want to see his own expression while he took this forbidden pleasure from a reluctant partner or the obscene bulge in a body suit not designed to be accommodating of such displays. That Garak was reluctant to accept this he had no doubt. He could feel it in his profound tension and the absolute control he maintained in the face of the skillful ministrations. He squeezed and drew upward. He felt wetness coating his fingers and palm and the perfect weight and heat of something he had missed more than he realized until right in that moment. He circled his thumb at the sensitive opening and felt Garak's breath spill warm down the back of his neck. He tried to turn. The implacable grip wouldn't allow it, and the tailor gave him a small, harsh shake as though to insist that he stay put. He sensed that if he spoke, he would shatter the moment, so he didn't, furtive breaths and the rhythmic pump of his hand over increasingly slick flesh the only sounds in the dressing room, not loud enough to call attention to them.

The enclosed space grew stuffy from their combined body heat. Julian felt damp all over and flushed. He wanted Garak to touch him, too, to give him something besides his stillness and tacit agreement. More frustrated than before, he rubbed his free hand over the garish fabric, too closely woven and tight for him to get any sort of grip on himself. Garak suddenly released his shoulders, seized his wrist, and forcibly pulled his hand away from the front of his body. He stilled his other hand over the Cardassian's cock and held his breath again, wondering what he intended to do to him next. In the mirror, he saw one fierce blue eye reflected at him from over his shoulder. He couldn't look away, not when he felt deft hands unfastening the complex outfit, nor when he realized that Garak was undressing him.

Yes, he thought. Thank God, yes. He shrugged out of the clinging fabric, having to release the tailor to do it, and stepped from the pants legs. The garish bodysuit became a puddle of vibrant color on the floor, stepped over and forgotten. He turned and clung tightly to the man, pulling at the back of his thick tunic and knotting it in both of his fists. Garak twisted his face slightly so that Julian's hungry kiss met a jaw ridge instead of his lips. Undeterred, he lipped and bit at him, demanding a response, thrusting at him with his hips, grinding cock to cock. Damn you, he thought, I know you want this as much as I do.

He lifted both hands to the cool face, pulled it to him, and forced Garak to allow the kiss mouth to mouth. Unrelenting, he growled low, biting at his lower lip and tugging back, delving his tongue inward. He slid his hands further back and tangled them in the thick black hair, tugging sharply. Kiss me like you mean it, you bastard!

Garak moaned softly, a desperate sound from the back of the throat. Suddenly, he wrapped his arms tightly about Julian, his blunt cut nails digging and raking at his back. They staggered as they pushed one another, seeking leverage. Julian felt cold mirror at his back. It stung the shallow gashes. He didn't care. He welcomed the pain, all of it. He bit with abandon at Garak's neck ridges and relished every harsh shudder against him, knowing they were as much from pain as pleasure. He was too starved for this to show mercy or give quarter.

He brought shaking hands down between them to fumble at the fastenings of Garak's tunic. Garak grabbed his wrists and forced the backs of his hands against the mirror. No, he thought, not this time. You don't get your way this time. He jerked his hands from the grip, Garak's surprise only partially registering. Thrusting with his back against the mirror, he managed to turn them so that it was Garak who was pinned and went for the tunic a second time, working it open and only by some miracle managing not to burst any of the delicate hooks and eyes. He rubbed chest to chest, deliberately raking his nipples over the sharp ridges. The pleasure wracked him straight to his core.

He wanted inside that amazing, alien sheath, penetration that was tighter and sweeter than anything else he had ever experienced, before or since his last time with the tailor. It took him a few tries. It seemed almost as though Garak was trying to thwart him, and maybe he was. It didn't matter. He wanted what he wanted, and he was determined to have it. Both of them groaned and clung to one another just a little tighter when he felt the outer ridge shift and part and felt his cock nestle into a velvety space that was barely large enough to accommodate it beside the fullness of the base of Garak's erection.

He lifted his hands again, his palms against Garak's jaw, the gray face between the arch of his fingers, tilting the Cardassian's head back against the mirror. He held him there, looking deeply into the blue eyes that were so adept at holding secrets within secrets. They were as enigmatic as the blood streaked mirror. Had he been expecting more? Had he thought that if he could get Garak to yield to him like this, he would open him wide and obliterate all that stood between them? He kissed him extra harshly to shut those eyes and tasted blood, not his own. He ground his hips against him, drew back, and thrust again. Garak's jaw muscle rippled beneath the tiny scales of his cheek in a silvery gray flash, his teeth clenching.

Julian knew he was hurting him. He knew it wasn't like him to do this to anyone, much less someone he cared about, so why couldn't he stop? Why was he thrusting with all the mindlessness of a targ in musth? Why did he crave the knotted tension building in his partner? How much more of this can he take? he wondered, watching Garak's lips draw back in a grimace. He wasn't expecting him to open his eyes again or the feeling of exposure when recognition of whatever drove him and contemptuous amusement flashed in the blue depths. One look was all it took for the balance of power to shift, for his inexplicable anger to drain. Instead of twisting him or pushing him back, Garak simply shut his eyes again and clenched his hands at his hips, encouraging him to continue.

He leaned forward and laid his cheek against Garak's, biting down on his own tongue to keep from crying out. It felt too good. It felt as though his strength flowed from him right along with his seed in a wracking release that lasted twice as long as what he was used to. He slid down Garak's body and dropped to his knees. Heedless of the mess, he rubbed both cheeks and his parted lips over the man's soaked cock and the ridged scales to either side of it. He opened his mouth wider and raised up so that he could plunge downward over head and shaft. He gagged once, shifted himself and tried again, relaxing his throat. It had been too long. He had momentarily forgotten, but now he knew what he was doing and how to ease the way. He tasted himself on Garak, a strong, sharp musk over the milder but more pervasive glaze of thick lubrication. He lapped and sucked, only partially flaccid and wondering if he was going to work his way back up to full arousal with this. How long had they been in the dressing room now?

He didn't know and didn't care, a reckless attitude during work hours. He knew this, too, and allowed the thought to slip away. All that mattered right in that moment was Garak, his pleasure, the taste and feel of him, a scent that he realized he caught faintly from time to time when they lunched together and now wondered if he had been secretly aroused at those times, capable of hiding it when he concentrated and chose to do so, unlike his unfortunate human counterparts. There was no hiding it now. He came up for air and plunged down again, ground his nose against the raised ridge, and swallowed hard to caress him with his throat. As he pulled back, he felt Garak's cock swell and pulse. His mouth flooded, and he found himself wondering how long it had been for him last. He was slow to pull back, wanting to prolong the moment for as long as he could.

Panting, Garak braced himself against the streaked mirror, letting his fingers slip away from Julian's hair. He glanced down at him and reached to pull his trousers up. “You can clean up in the washroom,” he said. “I have a portable dermal regenerator in my emergency med kit. I'll get it for you.” Julian nodded and somehow managed to force his rubbery muscles to do his bidding, climbing to his feet, flexing his back, and wincing. Garak left and returned with the small device in hand. “Better let me,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. “If you miss a spot, I wouldn't want to be you answering the question of what that is or how it got there.”

He nodded again and turned his back so that Garak could erase his handiwork. He regretted the loss. That pain helped to anchor all of what they had just done in the reality of the here and now, a feeling that was already beginning to fade and slip away.

“Done,” Garak said.

Julian turned and took it from him. “Hold still,” he said, raising his free hand to brace Garak's chin so that he could run the regenerator over his ravaged lips. He kept his focus on the healing flesh so he wouldn't have to look into his eyes. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what expression would show itself now that they were re-establishing their barriers. “I'm sorry I hurt you,” he murmured.

Garak waited until he finished to answer. “No you're not.” He took the regenerator back and left the dressing room again. Julian knew he wasn't coming back this time. Sighing to himself, he carefully gathered the Andorian outfit and hung it back on its hanger, not sure if he fastened it all correctly or not. He zipped up his jumpsuit without his turtleneck and raced the short distance to the washroom so that he could clean up thoroughly before dressing. He was grateful no medical emergencies had come through and very aware of how lucky he was for that.

“You're an ass,” he told his reflection. Outwardly, he looked as respectable as ever. No one knew how deceptive appearances could be more than he. He stepped from the wash room into the stock room. Garak slipped past him wordlessly so that he could clean up, too. Unsure of what to do, he waited. He decided he'd let Garak set the tone for whatever came next.

When Garak emerged, he seemed somewhat surprised to see him there. “Aren't you supposed to be working?” he asked.

“Yes, I am,” he said.

“Then I suggest you get back to it,” he said. After a short pause, he added, “I hope you don't mind, but I don't think I'm up for lunch today after all. Perhaps another time.”

Julian winced. “If that's how you feel, I'm not going to argue with you, but I would like the chance to talk about this later.”

“Talk about what?” the tailor asked, tipping his head. “Do you think this is the first time I've ever been used? It's not. There's really nothing to talk about.”

His angry denial died on his lips. Hadn't he done just that? He had an itch that Leeta couldn't scratch. He wasn't prepared to leave her. He couldn't give Garak what he felt he deserved, so he had no intention of trying to pretend. That always ended in disaster. “You're not upset with me?”

“Do I seem upset, Doctor?” he asked.

It was the dreaded polite businessman front, the expression that was the equivalent of tapioca, bland and utterly inoffensive. If he knew Garak as well as he believed he did, it meant he had cut him, but how deeply? He also knew that he wasn't going to get an answer in the shop, not during business hours, not when Garak could retreat into Cardassian virtuous industry. “We both know you never seem upset if you don't want to,” he said. “If it's all right with you, I want to stop by later after work and talk.”

“You're going to force this, aren't you? You can't just leave it alone?” Garak asked, irritation sharpening his voice.

“Yes to your first question. No to your second. I'll see you tonight,” he said, smiling slightly and turning to leave. Now he had an entire afternoon to brace himself for what might be a very unpleasant conversation and to sort out exactly why he had been so rash to begin with. He hoped it would be enough.

Garak

Garak's Clothiers

After Julian left, Garak returned to the fitting room to retrieve the outfit. It needed cleaning, as did the mirror. He removed it to the stock room and returned with a cloth and solvent for the mirror. With just a few spritzes and wipes, he had the polished surface gleaming. He dabbed up the few spots on the floor and gave the room a critical once over. Good as new.

The rhythm of his work day allowed him to calm the turbulence stirred by the unexpected visit. Public wasn't the place for sorting out messy emotions or having angry outbursts. He took a few of his pills to stave off anticipated trouble, not looking forward to having to renew the prescription. A few customers, evidently wanting to impress the First Minister, came to him to purchase Bajoran formal wear. Aside from the sporadic distractions, he was able to get his displays shifted in anticipation of the newest collections coming out within the week.

When he finished, he closed early. He wasn't eager to have the promised conversation, far from it. He wanted the time to settle himself and sort his uncharacteristically complicated reaction into something manageable. He made his way to his quarters quickly, hoping not to run into anyone who would want to talk to him along the way. There were few enough of them. Logistics were on his side.

The first thing he did behind closed doors was to strip from his clothing and take a long, thorough shower. Nothing physical could wash away the soiled feeling of being used; however, being clean always made him feel better. Afterward, he chose a dark tunic with little embellishment and a conservative cut. You allowed it. You actively participated, he thought to his reflection. It had been too long since he felt truly wanted. Holding himself apart from any who might have possibly taken an interest had been a mistake, made him vulnerable to his own needs. Of course the doctor was intelligent and perceptive enough to sense that. He had been foolish to believe he would never try to exploit it.

You weren't the only blind one, he addressed Julian in his mind. There are parts of you I failed to see. It had been flattering to think of a somewhat naïve young man enamored of his experience and wanting to learn what he had to teach. The doctor was a better pupil than he anticipated. He added pride to the list of internal casualties his isolation on Deep Space Nine had cost him, one more piece of what made him Cardassian taken away.

He ate an early dinner and allowed himself a small, seated nap. When he awoke, he felt more clear headed. It occurred to him that he could simply not be there when Julian arrived. That would only postpone the inevitable. It was a small station, seemed smaller all the time. There was nowhere he could go to avoid this confrontation. It wasn't in his best interest to do that, anyway. He allowed something in a moment of weakness. That didn't mean he had to remain in that position. No, there were specific things he could do and say, he knew, to leverage this to an advantage of sorts. He nodded slowly to himself. A setback was not necessarily a loss. He plucked a PADD from a side table and pulled up a new enigma tale. New literature out of Cardassia was growing rare. He savored it when he managed to get his hands on it.

His door chimed about an hour after Julian would have gotten off work, assuming a normal day. Garak called, “Enter,” casually and set the PADD aside as the doctor stepped into the room dressed in an outfit he knew Garak liked. Conciliation, or seduction? Garak wondered, maintaining his detachment. “Please,” he said without rising, “have a seat.” He gestured at the chair catty corner to his spot on his sofa.

“Thanks,” the doctor said, offering a fleeting, closed lipped smile and taking the seat. Garak noticed he sat straight, not settling in. He was uncomfortable. Just as well.

“May I get you anything?” he offered cordially, content to play the consummate host.

“No, thank you. I just finished supper. Garak,” he said, hesitating before adding, “I owe you an apology.”

“For what, precisely?” He felt it best to see how the doctor saw what had happened between them before trying to push his own agenda.

“For what I did to you today. For...re-opening old wounds and crossing a line we both decided some time ago we'd never cross again. I took advantage of...” He hesitated again, umber eyes searching Garak's.

Are you going to say it? Garak wondered as he watched him and listened. Are you going to point out blatantly that I'm alone?

“Your feelings,” he said instead.

“What feelings might those be, Doctor?” he asked mildly.

The man laughed nervously. “You're really intent on making me pay for this, aren't you?”

“How can I accept your apology if I don't know what it is you're sorry for?” he asked reasonably. “Or for that matter, what it is you think you've done?”

“I know you still love me,” he said quietly.

Garak laughed. He couldn't help himself. Of course he loved him, but that had nothing to do with what happened in the dressing room. Julian's angry, perplexed look just served to amuse him that much more. “What a world you live in,” he said, his voice still rich from his laughter. “Chased by so many, truly held by none. Yes, I can see how you'd believe you wounded my poor, yearning heart.”

“I don't understand what's so funny,” he said, sounding almost petulant.

“I know that,” Garak said. “It should set your mind at ease to know I'm not twisted in knots with longing or wanting a return to what we had. At our best, it still didn't work very well, did it?”

The doctor gave him a long, searching look. “You expect me to believe you're not upset?”

“Would it be easier for you if I were?” he asked. “Perhaps that's what you'd like?”

“Of course not,” he retorted, frowning deeply. “I don't want you hurt.”

“That's not the impression you gave me earlier,” he all but purred, satisfied at the instant color rising in the man's cheeks. After all these years, he was still ridiculously easy to provoke to a blush. “Please, Doctor, you're not the young ingénue on your first adventure. Why the coyness now, after the fact?”

“That wasn't like me, and you know it,” he replied, looking away.

“Wasn't it?” he asked, arching an eye ridge. “You see, I think it was very like you when you're conflicted. You were angry with yourself and taking it out on me. It was easy, because I allowed it. I didn't fight you, and I didn't answer in kind. To tell you the truth, I was intrigued, curious just how far you'd go.” He dropped his voice to an intimate whisper as he leaned toward him. “I should have kept my eyes closed.”

“You're enjoying this,” Julian accused. “You love the fact that when you look at me these days, I look more and more like you.”

Garak smiled. Well, that was an unexpected little gift, that revelation. It somehow made his own recent hit to his pride more bearable. It was true. Misery loved company. “Don't worry, my dear. You have a way to go yet before any of your friends would pick up on it.”

“It won't happen again,” he said stonily.

“That's entirely up to you,” Garak replied, spreading both hands and sitting back once more. “I told myself that I wouldn't interfere in your relationship, and I meant it. It never occurred to me that you'd come to me. I could have stopped you. Is that why you're angry with me, because I didn't stop you? Or is it that you want me to be as furious with you as you are with yourself? You want my scorn as a scourge for your guilty conscience? I let you use my body today. That's not enough for you?”

“You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical,” Julian retorted. “As manipulative as you are...”

Garak cut him off. “Yes, that would be easier for you, wouldn't it? Painting over the scene with an opaque glaze of delusion and denial. It must have been my pulling the strings, not your impulsiveness or selfishness at all. When I went to see you this morning, I must have slyly planted subconscious seeds of desire, my invitation to lunch a coded offer of a clandestine tryst. Imagine my surprise when the seeds bore fruit a full three hours before the appointed time!” Sarcasm sharpened his voice, anger dangerously close to returning in force.

“No, you're right,” he conceded unexpectedly. “I can't blame it on you.” He looked down at his loosely laced fingers resting between his thighs. “I have tried so hard to find...a balance point...when it comes to us. I've tried to let go the way you did. It seems I can emulate some of your less endearing traits a little too well, but when it comes to sacrifice...” he gave a small, humorless chuff of a laugh and glanced at Garak, “is it any wonder I just don't get Preloc?”

Was he reduced to being disarmed with a glance? He knew that wasn't quite accurate. It was the vulnerability behind it. It was one of the few traits in the younger man that penetrated all of Garak's defenses. Had he sensed even a trace of manipulation behind it, he would have happily thrown the doctor out on his ear and washed his hands of him. The doctor wasn't so jaded yet, though, and Garak, no matter how much he wished otherwise, wasn't immune. “This wouldn't happen if we weren't...stuck here,” he said carefully.

“You mean if you could leave?” Julian asked, lifting his head and meeting his gaze.

“Or you,” Garak said, nodding. “Practically everywhere we turn holds a memory. You may not be Cardassian, but I know you have excellent recall. I've explained to you before how my people process and experience the past. Not only are we trapped in the same places, but we travel in overlapping social circles. We're tied to each other in ways we wouldn't be on a planet, or if one or both of us could come and go at will.”

“Is that supposed to be comforting, that if you could get away from me, you would?”

“Must you always take everything I say in the worst possible way?” Garak snapped.

“It doesn't help that you rarely explain yourself,” Julian replied. Had he not been smiling faintly when he said it, Garak might have thrown him out anyway. His patience was running thin.

“You humans are mentally lazy enough. I would be a poor friend indeed if I encouraged such bad habits,” he retorted without heat. “I think getting back together is a colossally bad idea. If you have...appetites...we can work with that.”

“What are you suggesting?” Julian asked, his brow furrowing. “That I just...come to you when I get the urge, sneak around on Leeta, use you? You can't be serious.”

“What you do with Leeta is between you and Leeta. It doesn't concern me. If I'm allowing it, and we're both in agreement about what it is we're doing, it's not using, is it?”

“I don't understand,” he said, shaking his head. “Why would you propose something like that? Do you honestly believe I'd be able to do something like that?”

“You did it today with no prompting or encouragement on my part,” Garak said simply. “Am I to believe that you've already told Leeta, a little light supper conversation before leaving her and coming to see me?” At Julian's dark look, he continued. “I thought not. Now, you can sit there and tell me you'll never do it again and find yourself back in the same position you were in this morning a few weeks or perhaps even months down the line, or you can try to be sensible about this and manage your problem. You said it yourself, Julian. You've tried to find balance, and you've been unable to do so your way. Why should I not be OK with this? It's a very Cardassian solution.”

“I have to say, this isn't what I expected to hear when I came here tonight,” he said, sounding more than a little taken aback.

“No, that much was obvious,” Garak said dryly.

Julian sighed and rubbed his face. “I'll have to think about this. It may be normal for Cardassians. It's not normal for me.”

Garak conceded that point with a faint incline of his head. “No need to rush,” he said. “As I've already pointed out, I'm not going anywhere.”

Frowning, the doctor said, “You seemed to have a lot of contempt for Gul Dukat when he was hitting on Major Kira.”

“I don't need an excuse to feel contempt for Dukat,” Garak said, amused. “You're not married. If you decide you want to be, I trust you will tell me so that I can extricate myself from the situation.”

“I suppose I just have trouble believing you can be so casual about this.”

“If you're wanting me to pine for you or pledge undying devotion while you vacillate, there's the door,” he said, pointing. “It's insulting. If you need that from someone, I suggest you have a deep heart to heart with your good friend Miles. I am certain he will provide you with all of the heart wrenching drama you can stomach.”

“That was cruel,” Julian said.

“No, leading others on with no intention of follow through is cruel,” the Cardassian said without pity. “I think you know as well as I do how that man feels about you. I think you use him, in a different way than you used me, to be sure, but you use him, nonetheless. I've given you a choice, and I have been most charitably open with you about what it is and what it is not. I trust that when you've made a decision, one way or the other, you will at least have the courtesy to inform me.”

Julian drew a shaky breath and let it out. “You know what I'm going to say. You're such a bastard. You enjoy seeing me like this, knowing that you've gotten under my skin.”

More than you know, Garak thought, feeling very much as though he had gotten back a little of his own. Others wounded him at their peril. At least that hadn't changed. “One more thing then,” he said, standing to indicate that as far as he was concerned, the visit was at an end. “Don't come to me during work hours again. That was utterly irresponsible.”

“I know,” Julian said, also standing. “I won't.”

Garak almost thanked him for insisting on visiting, but he decided it would be a crass overplay of his hand. No matter what Julian might think, he knew that he had regained control of the situation. While he would be content to allow the younger man to determine when and how often he came to him, Garak would be the one to control how close they were. He wouldn't make the mistake of emotional intimacy with the doctor again. He was singularly capable of both love and distance at once. In fact he had almost elevated it to an art form long before ever meeting Julian. He took him lightly by the elbow as he escorted him the short distance to his door. “Have a pleasant evening,” he said as the door hissed open and the doctor stepped into the corridor.

He wasn't sure if he heard or only imagined, “Not bloody likely,” just before the door shut once more. Either way, he smiled.

Julian

The Promenade

He had never considered himself much of a voyeur before. Somewhere along the way, meeting Garak changed that, not in a fetishistic or titillating fashion, but in making him a much keener observer. Being superior among the average had made him lazy for a large part of his life. Garak awakened a piece of him that had slumbered, disengaged and unused. He watched the Cardassian now, seated at his breakfast table with Odo. It wasn't the first time he had watched the pair of them. They were fascinating at a distance in their complex and subtle choreography of feint and counter-feint. This morning was different. Odo's stiff posture and precise movements conveyed an odd sort of brittleness. Garak was a stolid presence without being solicitous. To be a fly on that wall, Julian thought.

Deep down he envied the ease with which the two came together. Outwardly, they were so different, yet they had found a way to bridge their differences with a common thread. None of Garak's other relationships seemed turbulent or terribly complex. Of course, none of Julian's other relationships were, either. No, because I'm able to keep them at a certain distance. I've never been able to do that with him, not the way I should.

He slipped away from his observation post—he hoped unseen—and retreated to the orderly world of his work environment. Just as things had changed in the holosuite, they had changed again in the dressing room yesterday. Small pieces of the person he had always thought himself to be were falling away to reveal a stranger, a dark reflection of the shiny facade he worked so hard to create that sometimes he forgot he wasn't that mask. Garak reminded him. Revealed him.

Was the tailor right? Would the two careen away from one another faster than light speed if freed of the traps, bonds, and obligations that bound them to the station and never look back, or would it be as Julian suspected and feared, that even freed of their external bonds, they would be tied to one another so tightly that they'd be doomed to return to the painful spiral until one of them was dead? He didn't have an answer to that, and he privately hoped he wouldn't have to find out any time soon. Having Garak back, even in such a tainted way, was a pleasure that for the moment outweighed any guilt of deception, and that bothered him most of all.

The End

Author Notes: The story begins during Starship Down and ends shortly after Crossfire. While time-wise, I know that's a huge span, much of what happens is between or behind the scenes. I made the decision not to directly include anything from the episode Our Man Bashir largely because that episode was so tautly paced that there wasn't much room for writing in the margins. It does, however, have a large impact on the story itself.

Summary: A brush with death has Julian considering his life and the stresses of the job, but a trip into escapism doesn't go quite as planned, threatening the very foundations of his friendship with Garak. As the two try to find a way to negotiate the new pitfalls, Odo faces some challenges of his own, and nothing goes as planned.

Author: Dark Sinestra

Date Written: March/April 2010

Category: Slash, Het

Rating: R for strong sexual content, adult situations, and mild adult language.

Disclaimer: If there's still anybody out there who thinks that fanfic authors profit from fanfic or that DS9 characters could ever belong to a fanfic author, point me to them. I'll give them a little smack with a wet fish.

Word Count: 17,542

Julian

USS Defiant

Cold. He couldn't remember the last time he had been so cold. It wasn't quite the cold of the vacuum of space, but that was only by a matter of a few degrees. The upper level of a gas giant's atmosphere was nowhere to stay for any length of time without things like environmental controls and recycling breathable atmosphere. Both he and Dax were shivering constantly now, not the small, intermittent shivers that helped regulate body temperature on a nippy day but the deep body shivers that heralded the beginning of the second stage of hypothermia.

They had stopped talking to one another some time ago. The chattering of their teeth and muscle spasms of their jaws made it difficult. Besides, both of them knew that talking used more oxygen. Freeze or suffocate, he thought, idly wondering which would be worse. He knew the cold was beginning to affect his brain function. Otherwise, he didn't think he'd be nearly as detached about their impending deaths. He thought perhaps he gripped her more tightly to himself, but he could no longer be sure. He had little control of his limbs.

How ironic it was that it came to this. It took being locked in a room together without life support for them finally to finish clearing the air between them after years of association in a dysfunctional pattern of pursuer and pursued, to behave as the rational adults they were and come clean. Why? Why did it take something like this? He tried to slow his breathing, but it was no use. His diaphragm was beginning to spasm. It wouldn't be much longer before heart arrhythmia set in. If he still had the control for it, he would've laughed. He had something he had dreamed of nearly steadily for two years straight, and now all he wanted was to see Leeta. Liar, a deeper part of his psyche whispered. You want to want to see her. You know who you want to see.

“J-J-Julian,” Dax stuttered, “y-you're muh-moaning. A-are you a-all right?” She shifted her head and looked up at him.

She was so pale, even her delicate markings starting to fade. He nodded convulsively and tried to lift her so that they could rest cheek to cheek and provide one another just a little more warmth. He gave up after a few moments of futility. It seemed as though she was stuck to him like a limpet to a rock, her arms so cramped in their hold that he couldn't budge her. “S-s-sorry,” he managed.

She didn't answer, her head lowering again so that all he could see was the dark curve of her hair. Who did she long to see? In whose arms would she rather be dying? Lenara's? The captain's? Someone else's? Was there even anyone else alive or capable of reaching them, or were they all off in various parts of the ship dead and dying in different ways? Blunt force trauma, fire, electrical shock, suffocation. Each thought brought with it a clinical list of symptoms, internal bleeding and organ damage, burns, cellular death from oxygen deprivation. Stop it, he told himself. You actually want to die cataloging ways to go?

I'd just as soon not die, if it's all the same, he retorted to himself feeling inappropriately amused. I'd rather have tea, Tarkalean. Double sweet.

“Ju-Jul-Jul...” Dax gasped. He felt her fingers digging into his back as a distant sensation. She struggled to lift herself again.

Save your strength, he thought, or perhaps he said it. He couldn't be sure. Confusion was starting to set in. Why couldn't she just leave him alone? If anyone had told him how bloody painful hypothermia was, he might have gone ahead and let the both of them suck down the fluorine gas in the flooded corridor.

How morbid of you, a thought came in a voice that wasn't his.

He knew that voice. He tried to smile. Garak, he thought. I should've known you wouldn't miss the party.

If this is a party, I'd rather be at work, the voice came again, something strangely comforting and reassuring about its familiar sarcasm. You need to pay attention and look at the light.

He felt a vague stirring of irritation. When had Garak become a mystic, and why was he trying to encourage him to die? He then realized that the light he saw was quite real. He blinked and squinted against it right along with Dax and felt someone pulling them up. His mind gladly released the reins then, and for quite some time, he knew no more.

When he came to, he found himself on one of the sickbay beds of the Defiant. “Dax,” he croaked, trying to look around.

“Is fine, Doctor,” one of his hand picked medics assured him. “You need to rest.”

He thought he saw the captain lying in the next bed over. “Is he...” he started to ask.

“Also fine,” the man said. He felt the cool nozzle of a hypospray against his neck and a rush of warm comfort. He knew he had just been given a sedative and was powerless to resist the pull back into welcoming blackness.

The next time he awoke, he realized that he was in the infirmary back on the station. Unused to being an occupant of one of the biobeds, he tried to look around, only to realize that he was in one of the private rooms. Two blurry shapes at the side of his bed resolved into the figures of Leeta and Garak. The dabo girl had her head resting on the Cardassian's shoulder, her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open in sleep. He met Garak's gaze, only to have the tailor put a finger to his own lips and then smile at him warmly. He returned the smile and settled back. He was so tired, sore, and drained he felt that he could sleep another week.

Garak carefully awoke Leeta, his gentleness touching Julian in a way he couldn't begin to explain. The Cardassian was such a conundrum. He thought he could study him a hundred years and still not understand who he really was. “Someone would like to see you, dear,” Garak murmured as she sat up, blinking at him sleepily. He gestured at Julian.

Her attention snapped over to him, her smile like sunshine emerging from cloud cover. “Sweetie,” she said, immediately leaning forward and taking his hand between both of hers, lifting it, and lightly kissing the backs of his fingers. “You had us so worried.”

Smiling benevolently at both of them, Garak stood. “I'll come see you later,” he said, inclining his head to Julian and stepping out of the room.

Julian followed him with his eyes, wanting to call him back. Reluctantly, he looked back to Leeta and offered her the best smile he could muster. “I'm OK,” he said. “How long have I been here? Did we...who didn't make it?”

“I'm not allowed to talk to you about any of that,” she said, patting him lightly and standing. “Let me go get Nurse Frendel.”

He nodded and watched her go, too, anxious and wanting more than anything to get up and out of that bed. There were bound to be other people who were hurt, people who should have been his patients. His head nurse came back into the room with Leeta in tow and offered him a reassuring smile. “Welcome back,” he said. “You've been here a few hours now. I'm keeping you overnight for observation. I don't need to tell you that's standard procedure for hypothermia patients, Doctor.”

He shook his head, resigned to the overnight stay. He knew arguing would just be obnoxious and get him nowhere. “The crew?” he asked anxiously.

“There were some losses,” the nurse said. “No one from the command staff. Once you've been released, you'll have full access to the list. For now, I would suggest you rest. Once you're up and about tomorrow, you're going to be busy dealing with a full facility.”

He nodded again, saddened to hear of the losses. The Gamma Quadrant seemed more dangerous by the day. It was very rare they managed any incursions that didn't involve an encounter with Jem'Hadar attack ships. I need a break, he thought. We all do. “Thank you, Nurse Frendel. I know the infirmary is in good hands,” he said. It didn't stop him from wanting to be the one already treating the wounded.

The Bajoran nodded and left him with Leeta and the final instructions to call him if he needed anything. “I'm so glad you're OK,” she said. “Do you need anything?”

He didn't dare ask for what he most wanted right at that moment. “Water would be nice,” he said instead. “How long have you been here?”

She poured him a glass from a nearby pitcher and helped him adjust the bed so that he could sit up and drink. “Ever since they brought you in. Quark was just so happy to be alive, he didn't even question me when I demanded the time. I would've quit had he said no.”

She was such a good woman. He felt a pang of guilt. “I'm glad it didn't come to that,” he said quietly, sipping his water. “Are you tired? You look tired.”

“I'm fine,” she brushed the question off. “I don't think I would've been calm enough to catch a few winks if Garak hadn't been here. I think Nurse Frendel let him stay for my sake more than yours,” she said sheepishly. “I was a little emotional.”

Now that he looked at her more closely, he could see the puffiness of her lids and the reddish tint to the whites of her eyes. “I'm harder to kill than that,” he said, attempting humor. He didn't know if he had ever been closer to death, a fact he thrust away as soon as he thought it.

“Every time you go away on that ship, I know something like this can happen,” she said softly. “I'm just glad it usually doesn't. Rom was beside himself worrying about Quark.” She lapsed silent with a guilty expression.

“What?” he asked, curious.

She looked over her shoulder, even though there was no chance of their being overheard and leaned in closer. “It wouldn't be so bad if Quark died,” she said with a low ferocity he hadn't expected from her. She sighed. “That sounded so horrible, but he's horrible. Horrible to Rom. Horrible to all of us.”

“You know,” he said, “if you're so stressed out you wish your boss was dead...”

She cut him off. “I don't really. I just hate how he treats Rom. He makes me so mad!” She made a fuss of smoothing his blanket and getting him more comfortable, taking the empty water glass and lowering the bed, despite his protests that he'd rather sit up. “You've been ordered to rest, Doctor,” she said pertly.

“You're so cute when you get stern,” he said, smiling in spite of himself.

“You haven't seen stern,” she said, “but if you keep talking, you're going to.” She ran her fingers gently through his tangled hair, teasing out the snarls. “Would it be easier for you if I let you sleep?” she asked.

He nodded. “I hate to say it, but yes. If you're here, I'll want to talk. If I want to talk...”

“You won't sleep,” she finished for him. Leaning down, she kissed his forehead. “Is there anything else I can do for you before I leave?”

He hesitated. “No,” he said at last. There was no way for him to ask her to send Garak in without upsetting or insulting her, not after her just told her he wanted to sleep.

“I'll be by in the morning,” she said, giving him a final kiss and leaving.

He closed his eyes and sighed softly. Why did things have to be so confusing? He couldn't argue with his psyche's desires when they came from a moment of finality, could he? He had been convinced that they were going to die, and his supposed last thoughts were of Garak. What did that say about him?

He felt a cool touch on his hand and almost jumped out of the hospital bed, his eyes flying open. “I'm sorry,” Garak said. “I thought for certain you heard me come in.”

“No,” he said, twisting his hand so he could clasp Garak's. “I didn't think you'd come back tonight.”

“After the look you gave me when I was leaving? Julian, please, give me a little credit,” he said, reaching behind himself and pulling a chair close enough to sit next to the bed. After he resettled, he gave him his hand again.

Julian, not “doctor”, he thought. It was rare that Garak called him Julian these days. He wanted to tell him of his last thoughts before they were found, all of it. The words wouldn't come. “Thank you,” he said instead.

“I recall a time when a frightened, bitter man believed that he was dying, and a dashing, yet strangely irritating, young man came to his rescue,” Garak said with an undercurrent of warm amusement in his rich voice. “All the man really needed was someone to hold his hand.”

“Strangely irritating, eh?” Julian asked, his face creasing a smile.

Garak made a soft tsking noise. “In all that blatant flattery, you seize upon the one criticism? Am I the only one who sees a problem with this?”

He suddenly felt hot tears slide from the corners of his eyes into the hair at his temples, relief to be alive, release of all the previous pent tension and fear, gratitude that for once in his life, the one thing he wanted most in the world was at hand at the time he needed it most. He would have tried to speak had Garak not laid the index finger of his free hand against his lips and shaken his head subtly. Taking a convulsive breath, he let it out audibly and turned his cheek into the cool hand now against it, both eyes squeezed shut.

“You're all right now,” Garak told him quietly. “As I've told you before, you're strong. Whatever happened on that ship is behind you, and you're in control of much of what lies before you.”

He followed the cadence of his voice and felt himself slip past the momentary loss of control. He exhaled most of the tension from his body and lay passive while Garak lightly stroked his cheek with his thumb. When he opened his eyes again, he felt calmer. “You are such a damnable contradiction,” he said softly. “And you know it, don't you?”

The tailor smiled faintly. “I've been under the impression for quite some time that you wouldn't have me any other way.”

“I haven't had you in quite some time,” he said. Perhaps his brush with death had made him bold, or perhaps it was the residual effect of the sedatives. He didn't care. He had said his piece earlier with Dax. Now it was Garak's turn.

“Are you prepared to break Leeta's heart?” Garak asked, a world of complexity in the look with which he favored Julian.

Why? Why did he always do that, say the one thing that would keep him from throwing caution to the wind and just acting on his own desires? He dropped his gaze, chagrined and shamed both.

“I didn't think so,” he continued in the same gentle tone of voice.

“What about your heart?” Julian asked.

“Have I ever given you the impression that it's fragile?” the tailor asked, amusement in the depth of blue eyes. Thankfully, it wasn't his usual cruel or caustic humor. That had yet to rear its head that night. He smoothed Julian's hair back from his forehead.

“I don't know why you put up with me,” the doctor said, largely feeling he deserved none of this care. He was no closer to divesting himself of the biggest wedge between them, and he knew that no amount of tenderness on Garak's part would change that.

“I often ask myself the same thing,” Garak said. “I decided it's because of all of the officers on the station, you're the only one with any hope of saving me should an assassin come along and succeed where others have failed. Personal motivation can be quite strong for taking decisive, life saving action.”

Julian stared at him for about two seconds before finding himself shaking with suppressed laugher. He didn't want the nurse hearing him and coming to find if anything was wrong. “You're dreadful. You are a horrible, horrible man. Half of me thinks I should take that at face value.”

“Half of you is right,” he said, beaming.

“The tragedy of it is that I'll probably never know which half,” he said, still amused. He grew more serious as he allowed himself to look into the lovely alien eyes, inscrutable as ever. “You were there,” he blurted.

“I beg pardon?” Garak asked, arching an eye ridge.

“Not literally, of course,” he said, reaching up and taking the hand in his hair between both of his and settling it against his chest. “But toward the end, when I was starting to lose consciousness, you're the one my oxygen deprived mind conjured.”

“I have never felt sorrier for you,” Garak said, wide eyed.

He chuffed a soft laugh and shook his head. “Oh, I give up. You're not going to take the compliment, are you?”

“Was it a compliment?” he asked innocently. “After all, you didn't say what I was doing. For all I know, I was the one sucking the air and heat out of the room in your elaborate delusion.”

“Every time I think I might just once like a peek into your mind, you go and say something like that,” he said, both exasperated and amused in equal parts. “You were telling me to pay attention to the light.”

“Oh, lovely,” Garak said, rolling his eyes. “Isn't going into the light some insipid euphemism you humans have for dying?”

“As a matter of fact, it is. I was quite irritated with you, until I realized the light was real, and you were basically telling me to get my head out of my arse and hang on just a little longer.”

“What a relief to know that at least one part of your mind has a sound grasp of my mannerisms,” he said. “Now, wrap that wonderfully sensible part of that mind of yours around this. You need to sleep, and, therefore, I need to go.”

He wanted to clutch his hand like a child in the dark, but he knew better. Garak had made up his mind. He pressed his palm against his sternum with both his hands and then released him. “Thank you,” he said again, “for coming back.”

“I could say the same thing to you, Doctor,” he said, pressing a moment more than Julian held and standing. “This place simply wouldn't be the same without you.”

He felt that pressure long after the man was gone, a weight on his heart in more ways than one. He wasn't ready to break Leeta's heart. It was true. He couldn't walk away from her and back to Garak with open arms and a clean slate. He couldn't force him to endure his self-imposed barriers of “this close and no closer”. He couldn't bear it if love finally turned irrevocably to hatred. Leeta wasn't as quick to pick up on his distance since he had gotten more careful. Garak still felt it just then when his barriers were down lower than they had been in years. For the first time, he believed he understood exactly what the Cardassian had done in letting him go and the depth of love it took to have such grace. He understood, because now he was having to do the same. Were it not for the steady sound of his heart monitor, he might have believed he was in trouble. The pain in his chest was nearly unbearable.

Garak

The Infirmary

Garak stepped into the corridor outside Julian's room and rubbed at his eye ridges. It had been a long night of worry, and it was very late. On his way out, he noticed Major Kira still seated in the waiting area, looking a little lost and out of place. “Major?” he asked, pausing near the front entrance.

She frowned slightly, stood, and headed over to him. “I probably should leave for a while,” she admitted. “They said I'm not in the way, but I'm not doing much good here, am I?”

“I'm not sure,” he said. “Who are you here for?”

“You wouldn't understand,” she said, gesturing for him to start walking again. She fell into step beside him. “How's Julian?”

“He seems OK,” he said. “Tired.”

“He saved Jadzia, and she saved the rest of us,” she said. “He has really...come a long way, hasn't he?”

“That he has,” he said fondly. He wondered where she intended to go. Surely she didn't intend to follow him all the way back to his quarters?

She answered his unasked question by stopping in front of the temple. “I think I'm going to pray for a while,” she said. “Good night, Garak.”

“Good night, Major,” he replied, inclining his head. He had no patience for mysticism. It seemed like a waste of time, petitioning something or someone to fix one's life or offer guidance, time better spent doing the hard work oneself. He climbed the stairs to the second level of the Promenade and looked out one of the star ports into the deep black of space.

Death could come for any one of them at any time. It was a reality he accepted. It had been part of his life for as long as he was of school age and beyond. He thought back to a long ago school team member, partially blinded by a honge during one of the exercise raids. One minute, he was near the top of the class, a heavyset bully that few dared to cross. The moment the predatory bird took his eye, all of that was over. He was a cripple, pitied by a few, simply forgotten and discarded by the rest. Without his full vision, he could never hope to be useful in the Order or Central Command. Better off dead, many said, and there had been a time Garak was in full agreement.

He never let himself care, not for the longest time. Even when Tolan had died, it was more of an inconvenience having to go home and see him, weak in the bed, a skeletal parody of his former strength, and listen to him go on and on about the Oralian Way. He still had the recitation mask. Why had he kept it? Then to find out the truth that Tain was his father, not Tolan after all, Tolan his mother's brother. So much of a family puzzle fell into place then and left him feeling empty and hollowed out, part of him ashamed for the relief he felt that he wasn't the son of a mere gardener, part of him appalled at the depth of the deception, part of him angry at the things they had allowed Tain to do. All of those parts were there and yet distant, almost as though he had watched someone else feel them. That detachment had been so carefully cultivated in him by every influence around him and served him so very well for decades. It wasn't until later in his adulthood that it started to erode.

Where was it now? He hugged himself against the perpetual chill of the station and the deeper chill that came from the knowledge that Julian had escaped death by a narrow margin. He had come so close to giving up on pride and simply accepting what the doctor was willing to give, letting him have his distance and his inconsistency and saying it was enough for him. How much of himself could he give away before there was nothing left? With detachment gone, he needed his pride more than ever. Otherwise, what did it mean to be Cardassian? He refused to reduce that to a label or a title. No, it had to mean something. Flesh, blood, and DNA was not enough. If it were, that war “orphan” Rugal that Dukat tried to use would be Cardassian. Even the boy had sense enough to know that it was not so.

He ached for home. Often it was background pain, a constant presence that could be ignored and put off for its very consistency. At the moment, it was nearly crippling. He knew that if he could go home, he could put every hellish day on this station behind him. Oh, it would be with him in the way that all experiences he had ever had always were, but the emphasis would make all the difference. He believed—he had to believe—that he could reclaim himself, that he could become who and what he had been raised to be. Perhaps there would be some small differences, yes, but he could be a Cardassian again, not this strange creature that looked and talked like one but was hollow inside. It was that hollowness that was the problem, he realized. Nature abhorred a vacuum and had conspired to fill his with pain.

Go back to your quarters, he told himself and instantly moved to obey. The only thing worse than feeling like an empty shell was putting himself on display. No one needed to see that.

Julian

Private Quarters

Julian could hardly wait. He tore into the small package that had arrived for him on a freighter earlier that day and all but crowed his delight. His long awaited holoprogram had arrived. He grinned wide and set it aside on his table, hurrying to change out of his uniform and into a tuxedo he had ordered from Garak some time ago with no explanation as to the style beyond a vague, “It's a type of Earth formal wear.”

Yes, he could have had the program clothe him, but there was something magical about a good fitting tux, something that transformed the mundane to the extraordinary. At first he hadn't intended to keep it all a secret, but Leeta's disdain for most of his favorite programs had him feeling a little self-conscious. There was more to it than that, as he well knew. It had been a very long time since he kept anything just for himself. In his job and in his personal life, he was expected to give and be far more selfless than most of his peers. Although he didn't begrudge his co-workers or his loved ones time and energy spent on them, more and more these days he was feeling he had less of a reserve from which to give. He viewed this as a way to recharge his energy cells with some harmless fun that most of his friends simply wouldn't appreciate or understand.

The program was everything it promised to be and then some. He was entranced with the sleek, gleaming world of the mid-1960's, replete with wonderfully impractical spy devices disguised as everything from shoe heels to boutonnières, campy names, lovely ladies, and no one expecting him to be anything other than charming, debonair, and clever. There was just enough challenge within the built in plots and scenarios that he didn't feel bored, but everything retained a lighthearted humor that was the perfect antidote to the deadly serious conflicts they continued to face in the Gamma Quadrant and closer to home. His most recent brush with death brought home to him his need for some immersive escapism.

He didn't give much thought to how much time he was spending in the holosuite over the next few weeks. Leeta seemed grateful that he was pressuring her less for together time with her punishing work schedule. Miles had some of his own programs that weren't of as much interest to Julian, and Dax was either working extra hours or spending quite a bit of off time with Kira in their historical fantasies. He knew better than to try to spend more time with Garak. The temptation to act on his personal revelations would be too strong and ultimately selfish. He might not be able to do much for the Cardassian, but he could do that. In the latter, he made a mistake. No one enjoyed ferreting out a juicy secret quite as much as the tailor, and no one excelled at it more.

Garak

Quark's Bar

His mother told him years ago that his curiosity would lead him to ruin. At some point in early life, he stopped listening to Mila. After all, what was she but a housekeeper and occasional secretary to Tain, when he had larger goals and nearly bottomless ambition? The older he got, the smarter Mila seemed to be. Garak emerged into uncharacteristic quiet in Quark's bar. Due to the power requirements of storing the crew's personal patterns in Deep Space Nine's computer system, Quark had been forced to close down and evacuate the patrons for safety reasons. Cables that resembled shadowy, tentacled leviathans coiled and stretched away from the holosuite as far as Garak could see. He slightly arched a brow ridge.

Quark approached him and the doctor, looking decidedly put out. “This is bad for business,” he said flatly. “Not only that, I figured it out. I realized where they were, but did I get any thanks? No, of course not.” He squinted at both of them. “You're welcome.” He squinted harder, this time focusing on Garak. “And you're bleeding,” he said. “I hope you didn't bleed everywhere in there. It's unsanitary.”

“I'm fine,” Garak said rather pointedly. “Thank you for asking.”

Julian glanced back at Garak, his large, dark eyes unreadable for a change. “Do you need me to treat that?” he asked a little awkwardly.

Garak lifted a hand and shrugged off the concern. “No,” he said, “it's little more than a nick.”

“Nick or not, you're bleeding in my bar,” Quark said, ushering both of them ahead of him. “As you can see, I'm closed. I just hope this doesn't damage my holosuite rentals. People have expectations that those things are safe. They'll take one look at you two and change their minds.”

“We're leaving, Quark,” Julian said irritably. “You don't have to be a nag about it.” He shot a look at Garak, shook his head, and the two of them headed quickly out of the bar. More cable sprawled across the Promenade, leading down a side corridor. “I suppose I should go report to Captain Sisko,” Julian offered, hesitant in a way that lent hidden weight to the seemingly innocuous words.

This is a form of good-bye, Garak thought as he watched the younger man. Everything now paid lie to what they said to one another in the holosuite a few minutes before. Would they still lunch tomorrow? Garak didn't believe it. Would he be the one to cancel to spare his friend the discomfort? No, he rather thought that he would not. In all their dealings, he had never truly attempted to hide his nature from Julian. In fact, he had warned him on more than one occasion that he was ruthless and not to be trusted. For a time, he believed that the doctor truly understood that. Now he knew that he had not. He inclined his head and put on his most pleasant, professional smile, waiting for Julian to turn to go before resuming his own progress toward his quarters.

He wondered if he should have pushed the man the rest of the way, forced him to make a decision. Would he have killed Garak on the spot in order to save his friends and co-workers? Well, that was the real question, wasn't it? The truth was that Garak didn't know, but the possibility had been strong enough that he hadn't wanted to risk it. The stakes had been high enough as they were. You know what I am! He wasn't surprised at the vehemence of the thought, just the bitterness. He knew for certain that any glamor he held, any residual charm, had dropped away in Julian's regard that night. The doctor had his first glimpse of Garak's core unmasked and had, not at all surprisingly, found him lacking. Again, he felt a small frisson of anger.

Once back in his own quarters, he thoroughly cleaned the small scratch on his face and the deeper wound at his neck ridge. It throbbed and burned, but he could see that it was neat and clean. There would be a scar if he chose not to get it tended. Let there be a scar, he thought. It would be a good reminder of the cost of too much trust.

Julian

Private Quarters

It took three stiff drinks to take the edge off of his adrenaline rush. Even so as he sat on his sofa, the entire scene seemed to be limned by an aura of unreality, jagged at the seams. How had things gotten so horribly out of hand, and how could he ever look at Garak the same way again? He wished he had never even heard of that stupid holosuite program. How fitting that for once it was his secrecy with Garak that led to disaster, rather than the other way around. Hadn't the two of them been switching places in their painful dance back and forth all along?

He had pretended that everything was the same when they parted ways, that they would continue to meet for lunch, that they would further indulge in the silly escapism of the campy spy holoprogram. It was a lie. At the time he said it, he knew it to be a lie. He simply couldn't articulate the truth beneath it, that before this day, he had never seen Garak's true face, and he wasn't certain he could accept him for who he was. It wasn't that Garak had ever lied to him about that, perhaps most ironically of all. The Cardassian always insisted he was exactly what he proved himself to be when he nearly ended the program, risking the deaths of most of the command crew in the process, Julian's closest friends in that roster. It was Julian who glossed that over, who decided that all of that was in the past for Garak and didn't apply to him now.

Recent memories flashed across his mind's eye in a dreadful sort of collage, Garak looking better in a tuxedo than anyone had a right to look, the jolt of Kira on the bed in place of Ana, the photo of Dax as Honey, the cut on Garak's face when they both realized that the safety protocol was no longer functioning, the flash of his gun barrel, Garak's blood, his wound, his expression. Julian ran a slow hand down his face. I shot him, he thought. He wasn't sure what gave him more dismay, the fact itself or the fact that given the same choice, he'd do it again. He would always choose the life of his friends and co-workers over Garak's instinct for self-preservation. He would have shot him dead had he forced the issue. He tried to ignore the light tremor in his hands. Why did you make me choose? The thought contained anger and sorrow both. He knew without articulating it that something inside him died the moment he pulled that trigger, but what?

Garak

Replimat Café

Garak watched Julian pick at his food, pushing it around the plate more than anything. It wasn't like him not to wolf his lunch down. He took a small, neat bite of his stew, chewed thoroughly, and washed it down with some tea. “It's already dead,” he said helpfully.

“I beg your pardon?” Julian lifted his gaze quickly, looking almost startled.

“The food,” Garak elaborated. “If you're checking it for signs of life, you're going to be disappointed. Had you wanted Klingon cuisine, you should have said something before we sat down for lunch.” He gave him his most helpful smile.

The doctor's smile was slow to come, but when it did, it showed genuine amusement. “I'm sorry,” he said ruefully. “I'm miserable company today, aren't I?”

“You've been more entertaining in the past,” Garak conceded. “Fortunately for you, I am not one in need of nonstop stimulation and delight. Is there something you'd like to discuss? I'm quite at your disposal.”

“It's not really mine to discuss,” he said reluctantly. “It's Dax.”

“Ah,” Garak said with a single nod. “Yes, the plot continues to thicken in that situation, the long parted spouses growing ever closer.”

“How did you...” Julian started to ask then set his fork down. “Never mind. I ought to know better by now than to ask you how you know anything. One, you won't tell me the truth, and two, you always have had an eye for all of the important happenings. I'm really worried about her.”

And you call me the liar? Garak thought archly. Oh, he had no doubt that Julian was concerned. However, he didn't believe for a moment that it was strictly concern for Dax that had his young table mate so tied in a knot. “I'm surprised that you're not more...entertained,” he said, being deliberately confrontational.

“Entertained by my friend's confusion and emotional distress? Since when have you known me ever to be that way, Garak?” he asked crossly.

“You're so enamored of tales of star crossed lovers,” he replied reasonably. “You must admit that such a situation would be tasty fodder for that Shakespeare of yours.”

“This isn't some fictional play. These are real people in real pain. There's a tremendous difference,” he said hotly.

“As you say,” Garak conceded.

“You're provoking me,” the doctor said suddenly, narrowing his eyes. “Why?”

He has come such a long way, he thought with no small degree of pride. “What about the situation actually has you worried, Doctor?” he replied with a question of his own. “Are you afraid that Dax will give in to forbidden desire, or that she won't?”

Julian opened his mouth and shut it again, looking like nothing so much as a surprised fish suddenly hooked from the comfort of his watery abode and unceremoniously plopped into the bottom of a boat. “I...don't want to see her hurt,” he said a little weakly.

“Yet you already concede that the situation is a painful one,” he said. “Does it make sense to worry about that which exists and cannot be controlled? As a Trill, surely this is not the first time that Dax has found herself confronted by such a situation. How many lifetimes has she led now? She has navigated them successfully, or she would not be here.” He eyed Julian keenly, his laser focus unwavering.

The doctor squirmed under the scrutiny. “What I think doesn't matter,” he said.

Garak felt an inward twitch of irritation. Julian was better than that. Such equivocation was for those of lesser intellect. “I'm relieved to hear you say that,” he said sharply. “Perhaps you can focus on better, more appropriate lunch conversation, then?”

The man's tawny skin flushed slightly, anger, Garak could tell, not embarrassment. “I wasn't aware my preoccupation was such an imposition on your time,” he said a bit tightly.

“If it's not even important enough for you to state what you really think, why should I find it an appropriate use of my company?” Garak retorted. “Gone are the days that you are my sole choice for companionship. You're going to have to do more than simply show up if you plan to keep me engaged.”

Julian winced. He knew he had scored a point on him. He didn't like resorting to such below the belt swipes, but the man was being ridiculously obtuse. Garak had to wonder if Julian was working to hide his thoughts from him or if he was truly self-deluded into thinking that Dax was his sole concern in all of this. “That wasn't...fair,” the doctor said. “You know I don't want to be your only friend. You sounded like Decla just now, and I'd think that was beneath you.”

Garak shrugged off the pathetic attempt at a barb. If the doctor actually thought such comparisons would phase him, he had truly lost touch with who Garak was, or depressingly, maybe he had never really known. “What's beneath me is meaningless small talk and gossip about individuals who are more than capable of taking care of themselves. I could get that from Quark. In fact I do at times, and from Quark, I don't find it galling. I have no reason to expect more,” he said rather pointedly.

“Where is this hostility coming from?” Julian asked, obviously losing patience.

It didn't matter. Garak had lost patience, too. He gave an ironic laugh. “If you were simply hiding things from me, I might actually find it flattering, but it bores me to tears to see a man lying to himself. I find myself with a sudden lack of appetite. I hope you decide to be better company at dinner later this week.” He stood and gathered his tray.

Julian narrowed his eyes. “With the way you're acting right now, I'm rethinking dinner altogether.”

“Then Leeta and I shall miss you,” Garak said, “but I'm certain we'll have a lovely time.” Of course, it didn't occur to him that Julian would actually skip out on the invitation. He was certain the man didn't like the idea of him and Leeta having dinner alone in Garak's quarters. It wasn't jealousy. No, he suspected that Julian wondered what his motivation was and worried that the two of them were conspiring in some way. The fact that he was half right was beside the point.

Julian

Quark's Bar

What are you doing? Julian asked himself for the millionth time in one night, it seemed. Dax and Doctor Khan had been talking non-stop ever since they had arrived for dinner. He wondered if Leeta had followed through with her angry threat to have dinner with Garak anyway, despite his backing out at the last minute. His admission that he was doing it as a favor for Dax did nothing to smooth things over. It had made things worse.

You really put your foot in it, he thought. Why had he believed that being Dax's friend would somehow make Leeta immune from being jealous of his own friendship with the Trill? Had he done much in the way of giving her a reason to feel more secure about it? He knew he spent a great deal of his free time with Dax, but that was largely because Leeta was working when he had time off and vice versa. I'm not jealous of Rom or Garak, he thought a little angrily. Is that the same, though? She has never professed an attraction to either of them the way I have to Dax. Why had he felt so compelled to tell Leeta all about his unrequited crush some time ago, before the two of them got serious enough for such a thing to take on a different context in her mind? He regretted the late night confessionals. Some things were best kept to oneself, particularly when it came to a potential romantic interest.

He had stopped even trying to pretend that he was part of the conversation between the two Trill scientists. They were so busy traipsing down memory lane and catching up with about one hundred years of separation that he imagined he could set his hair on fire and they'd barely skip a beat. Dax didn't need him there. Not really. To outward appearances at least, the two of them weren't treading on dangerous or inappropriate territory. He knew it was more for appearance's sake that he had been asked along. On one hand, he was glad to be able to do Dax a favor. On the other, it was a costly favor that neither Leeta nor Garak would be quick to allow him to live down. Dax hadn't even given him a chance to explain that to her. She had just seemed to assume that whatever he intended could be set aside. Of course she assumed that, he thought dryly. You've never given her any reason to believe that when she says, '”Jump,” you won't ask, “How high?” Even tonight.

Before his grim thoughts could take him further into a bad place, his comm badge chirped. “Infirmary to Doctor Bashir,” the night duty nurse's voice cut through the crowd noise of the second level of the bar.

“Bashir here, go ahead,” he said, concerned that it might be something to do with Ensign Powers. He wasn't recovering as quickly as he ought to be, an opportunistic infection interfering with the healing process.

“I'm sorry to disturb you, Doctor, but Ensign Tyler's broken his leg, and I think you should...”

“I'm on my way,” he said, glad of the excuse to duck out of deadly dull chaperon duty and also glad that it was something less serious than he anticipated. At that rate, he might actually even make it to Garak's quarters in a timely enough fashion to see if Leeta was actually there or not and perhaps do a little damage control. “Sorry,” he said to both women, “but duty calls.”

“It's all right,” Dax said with a smile. “Thanks for coming.”

“Nice to see you again,” Doctor Khan added.

He favored them both with a perfunctory smile and beat his retreat. What was it with ensigns getting hurt this week? This was the third one so far.

Garak

Private Quarters

Lighting a final taper at the center of the dining table, Garak called a cordial, “Enter,” when his door chime rang. He turned, fully expecting to see Leeta and Julian step into his quarters, only to see Leeta entering alone, the look in her eyes snapping fire.

“Hello, Garak,” she said, holding out a gift basket to him that contained a bottle of blue kanar and a few mysterious boxes that likely concealed sweets of some sort. “Julian couldn't make it tonight. He decided he'd rather have dinner with Dax and Lenara. I'd have sent word, except I only just found out about it an hour ago.”

He had never seen her so angry. He felt an echo of it rising in himself. “I see,” he said, a certain fixed quality to his gaze.

The two of them held the eye contact for several moments, understanding and solidarity passing between them. She broke it first. “I think I'd actually like a glass of that kanar if you don't mind,” she said tightly.

“Of course,” he said, lifting it and fetching two glasses. He poured generous servings and offered her one. She worked in a bar. He didn't think he needed to warn her of the drink's potency or its effect on non-Cardassians. “You look lovely this evening,” he said, inclining his head. “Thank you for coming. Dining alone when one is expecting company is...unpleasant.”

“Backing out of a dinner invitation at the last minute is beyond rude,” she said, “when it's not because of a work emergency.” She downed half of her glass' contents, her eyes watering from the strength of the liquor. “I actually used some of my time off for this. Do you have any idea how long you have to work for Quark before you get any time off?”

“I can imagine,” he said.

She looked past him at the table with the covered dishes arranged aesthetically and invitingly. “You ordered this food, didn't you?” she asked. “I mean...ordered it from a freighter. I know we didn't cater this, and replicated food doesn't smell nearly that delicious.”

He was surprised that she could tell. It pleased him to have his efforts noticed, despite his anger at Julian. “Yes,” he said.

“That...jerk,” she said, looking at him again, her expression equal parts anger and apology. “I am so sorry about this.”

He shook his head, making the decision to set his anger aside for the time being. He had no intention of punishing Leeta for something that wasn't her fault or doing. “Please,” he said, “not another word about that. I don't hold you responsible, and I am happy to have you here. Would you like to have a seat?”

She nodded. “I would. Thank you.” She allowed him to guide her to one of the chairs and serve her from the various dishes. “Where did all of this come from?” she asked curiously. “I don't think I've ever seen most of this before.”

“Most of the food tonight is Andorian,” he said. “It has been a very long time since I had Andorian cuisine. I discovered that there was a ship coming our way with some surplus they needed to sell before it spoiled. It was a happy coincidence, as I don't think you would have enjoyed being subjected to my Cardassian dishes.”

She waited for him to serve himself and settle in before continuing the conversation. “I have a hard time imagining you doing anything badly,” she said with a sincere smile. “Not all Cardassian food is bad. I actually like zabo steak.”

She was so different from the major, from almost any Bajoran he had ever met with a rare few exceptions in his customer base. Why had he ever believed her to be shallow or lacking in intelligence? Because you never looked past the dabo girl costume or her pretty face, he told himself, knowing it to be true and having enough decency to feel bad at having made the judgment. “It's very tender when cooked properly,” he agreed.

“Do you think he loves Dax?” she blurted, blushing and looking down into her kanar glass.

He only just avoided the temptation to take it away from her. If she was already asking him such questions, the drink was undoubtedly going to her head. “I don't know,” he hedged, reluctant to hurt her. That in and of itself was so novel he had to ask himself why. It was likely because he had a genuine weakness for truly decent people. Tain would have laughed. He didn't care. The world was wider and more complex than the spy master had ever considered. He refused to feel shamed.

“Yes, you do,” she said darkly, her brown eyes glittering and reflecting candle light.

“The trouble with Julian,” he said carefully, not wanting to look into those large, dark eyes and yet not able to look away, “is that he always most wants that which he believes he can't have. I believe it's a failing in many human males.”

She nodded slowly and took a small sip of her kanar. “Not just human males,” she said a bit dryly. “Sometimes I wonder if I'm...this sounds so awful...if I'm wasting my time. Did you ever feel that way with him? Prophets, I shouldn't be asking you this.”

Don't scare her, he told himself, fully aware of just how intense he could be when something he had been after was suddenly presented to him. He dropped his gaze so that she wouldn't see the gleam in his eyes. “At times it was difficult for me to ascertain what he wanted,” he said. “I was never sure if the failing was in me or him.”

“I'm so glad you said that,” she said a little too loudly. “Sometimes it's almost like he's a different person from day to day, or...even minute to minute. I think I'm getting somewhere with him, and suddenly, he's gone. I mean, he's still there with me, but not up here.” She tapped her temple with a slim finger.

Intriguing, he thought. So it truly wasn't just him. He was too interested in what he was hearing to feel much in the way of satisfaction or relief about that. He knew he wasn't easy to live with. Even if this particular aspect of their relationship hadn't been his fault, there was plenty more that was. This wasn't about blame. It was about piecing together the puzzle that had eluded him for such a long time now. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said.

She took a few bites of the food, mulling as she chewed. “This whole time, I've been thinking it's me,” she said. “That I'm not...smart enough.” She hazarded a quick glance at him, her cheeks coloring a deeper red. “I know I'm no scientist, nothing even close in comparison to him or Dax, or to you for that matter, but if he was that way with you...”

“My dear, you're something I could never be,” he said gently, moved by her distress. “Open. I always thought it was because I wasn't open enough.”

They looked at one another across the table and again found they had an area of understanding. Garak felt another stirring of anger. Just who did Julian think he was, treating those closest to him like there was some failing within them that kept him from being able to love them the way that he professed he wanted to? No, damn it, if he truly wanted to, he would, so he must not want what he so often said he wanted. What did that mean? It didn't make sense in any context Garak could ascertain.

“I'm sorry I brought up something hurtful,” she said. “I really shouldn't be prying like this, or...dumping my problems with Julian on you. It's very thoughtless of me.”

“Don't apologize,” he said. “It has been enlightening.”

She nodded agreement and sighed. “Let's talk about something else. This is too depressing. I'm already angry with him for leaving us in the lurch. Finding out that whatever is wrong with him probably has nothing to do with me isn't helpful. I can't do anything about it.”

“But you can,” he said, pinning her suddenly with his gaze. “You can decide what you really want and move from there.”

She nodded again and polished off her kanar. “My head will hate me for this in the morning, but would you please pour me another glass?”

Julian

The Infirmary

He should have known that it was a bad break if his night nurse in charge felt it important enough for him to come. Setting the compound fracture properly took longer than he would have liked. Now that he had the unfortunate ensign set up with the bone regenerator, he felt that he was free to leave the young man to spend the night there. “Computer,” he said on his way out, “where is Leeta?”

“Leeta is on Habitat Level H-3, Chamber 901,” the voice intoned.

So she had carried through her threat, gone to dinner at Garak's without him. The thought bothered him a little, worse when he realized how late it was, close to midnight. Did they actually get along so well now that they could spend almost four hours alone together? Did he even want to insert himself into that situation? Doubtless, both of them would be angry with him, not without good reason. Wouldn't it be better to face their wrath individually rather than collectively?

“Ridiculous,” he said to himself, stepping into the turbolift. Tonight or tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. This was going to be unpleasant. He may as well get it over with. Perhaps he could get Leeta to leave with him in fairly short order, so he'd only receive a bit of Garak's temper that night. It didn't help that he was tired and out of sorts thanks to being ignored by Dax and Doctor Khan. He felt used.

He squared his shoulders once he faced Garak's door and pressed the chime. “Enter,” came Garak's smooth voice. The door hissed open, and he stepped inside only to find Garak seated on his sofa with a PADD and a kanar glass and Leeta nowhere to be seen.

“Oh,” he said, feeling awkward. “I...the computer said that Leeta was here. Did I just miss her?”

“She is here,” Garak said without looking up from the PADD.

“In the washroom?” he asked, lacing his fingers behind his back so that he wouldn't fidget with his hands.

“In my bed,” the Cardassian answered evenly. “I would thank you kindly not to disturb her. She had a bit much kanar and only just managed to fall asleep without becoming ill.”

“Oh,” he said again, unsure of what to say. “Is she...upset?”

“As I said, she is asleep,” the tailor replied, “so I rather doubt it.”

He bit back an angry retort. What were you expecting, a warm welcome? “Was she upset?” he clarified, really hating it when Garak retreated to playing the overly specific game.

“No,” he said, at last lowering the PADD to his lap and looking up at Julian “I managed to take her mind off of the situation. Believe it or not, Doctor, some people actually find my company enjoyable.” He polished off his kanar in an easy swallow and set his glass aside. “I'm afraid it's very late. I was just about to try to get some sleep, myself. I can assure you that I will be certain that Leeta is not late for work tomorrow. It's my understanding that Quark expects her in early since she took this evening off.”

The tailor was pulling out all the stops. He ground his teeth quietly. “I'm sorry for canceling plans at the last minute.”

Garak stood. “Don't trouble yourself,” he said. “You warned me that you were considering just such a thing. If I didn't heed you, I have no one but myself to blame.”

He wanted to face palm. He had forgotten that he had said anything to that effect in the heat of the moment a few days before. “I didn't mean it. Not really. I was angry, but this had nothing to do with that.”

“I'm sure your reasoning is simply fascinating. I am too tired to wish to listen to it. Now, if you'll excuse me, please? I would like to make a bed for myself on the couch.”

It was useless to try to argue when Garak was in this mode. The wall of overly polite refusal would not give way to reasoning or railing. In many ways, this was far worse than the berating he had been expecting. He worried about Leeta waking up the next day, possibly disoriented and confused, and being embarrassed at having fallen asleep in Garak's bed. Drunk. Because of him. He didn't have to be a mind reader to know that much. She almost never got drunk. “I could have Leeta beamed into her room,” he offered.

“And have her think I asked you to rid me of her?” Garak shook his head. “No. Leave her alone.” He narrowed his eyes, a slightly malicious gleam in the blue. “What are you worried about?”

He sighed, defeated. There was no way to answer that question without giving Garak ample ammunition to eviscerate him with sarcasm. By that look in his eyes, he knew that he would the moment he gave him the opening. “Not a thing,” he said, taking a step back and turning to leave. “Thank you for taking care of her. Again, I apologize for this evening. Good night, Garak.”

Garak inclined his head, a perfectly Cardassian gesture that revealed nothing at all. Oh, but that hooded look beneath his lids boded trouble. Julian knew that his discomfort that night was just the beginning of what the tailor likely had in store. He didn't even want to think of Leeta's reaction. All he knew for certain was that he had best avoid her while she had a hangover. Thanks a lot, Dax, he thought bitterly, knowing all the while that he truly had no one to blame but himself.

He tossed and turned in his own bed for most of the remainder of the night, finally dozing off a couple of hours before he had to be up and ready for work. The morning dragged, both due to exhaustion and his knowledge that nothing at all had been resolved. By lunch he decided that it was likely enough time had passed that Leeta's hangover would either be gone or manageable. He asked the computer her whereabouts, only to discover she was already at the bar. Garak mentioned she'd have to go in early, he thought. He hadn't realized how early.

He took lunch alone in the Replimat, half expecting Garak to make an appearance. The tailor never did. As he watched people going about their business on the Promenade, he found himself slightly envious of some of the aliens' more nomadic lifestyles. Wouldn't things be much simpler if he could move from place to place, preventing anyone from ever getting too close or even wanting to? In choosing Deep Space Nine, he thought that he had picked a perfect hiding place, from Starfleet, from his fiancée's pleas to return, from his parents' overbearing mannerisms and expectations. He thought no one would look twice at a naïve, somewhat goofy doctor who was a little socially awkward and chased women without ever catching most of them. He hadn't counted on running into people like Garak and Dax. He hadn't considered that going into hiding would be far lonelier than he imagined or that his own needs and desires would twist him in unexpected ways.

At the time that the relationship started, Leeta seemed like a refuge from his complications and pain with Garak. She was everything the Cardassian was not: open, readily kind, considerate, straightforward, and even somewhat simple. Why had he believed that just because she wasn't complicated and devious that she wasn't perceptive? Why did he always fool himself into believing that this time things would work?

He knew the signs. He had done this dance enough that it was impossible not to recognize them, the probing questions and looks, the suspicions, the accusations of distance, secrecy, all the more damning because they were true as true could be. Just a few months into the relationship, it was already starting. Now there was Garak to contend with. Who knew what Garak was putting in her head, or why? He had gone from being pleasant to confrontational recently, probing in the same way he did when they were together, only now he was much harder to distract or put off. What was Garak gleaning from Leeta? He wanted to put a stop to the association, but he knew that if he even tried, it would instantly make both of them more suspicious, not less.

He jabbed at his food without much appetite. Last night was a disaster of such enormous magnitude he didn't know where to start to try to mend the rifts. He knew Garak well enough to know that his stonewalling the night before concealed at least some degree of hurt, in addition to wounded Cardassian pride and violated sense of propriety. Garak took invitations to his quarters and to others' very seriously. Julian's last minute scrapping of the plans was both personal and cultural insult that he knew Garak took even more personally because he knew that Julian was aware of the customs.

Leeta was like most Bajoran women he had met, not at all a pushover and very quick to make her displeasure known when she felt insulted or belittled. Not only had she likely viewed his sudden change of plans as a rude breach of etiquette, but also as a message that Dax was more important to him. What if it's true? he wondered. Did he have the right to pursue Leeta when he wasn't willing to make her his first priority? He had pretty much accepted the fact that he and Dax would never be more than friends. It didn't make him value or love her any less.

He rubbed both hands down his face and stared at his congealing food. What to do now? How to make this up to either of them? He wouldn't be allowed to have a personal conversation with Leeta while she was working. He didn't want to get her fired, and he knew that was exactly what Quark would do if he caught so much as a whiff of suspicion that Leeta was using work time for personal pursuits.

That left Garak. He also knew from long experience that the longer he allowed something to fester with Garak, the more resistant to reconciliation the Cardassian became. There was no way that Garak was going to approach him first. He stood and took his tray to the recycler, dumping it and the uneaten food, and made his way to the tailor's shop.

Garak glanced up from his position behind his counter, his expression instantly shifting from shop keeper solicitous to an unreadable mask. “Do you have a rip in your uniform or a commission you would like to request?” he asked, his tone oddly flat.

“No,” Julian said. “I...”

Garak cut him off. “Then I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I'm working.”

“Garak, please,” he said, not liking the plea in his own voice. “I just want to talk to you about last night.”

The tailor graced him with a look that reminded him of a stern uncle, using his physicality and age to excellent effect. “This is neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. I trust you don't intend to force me to embarrass both of us by getting security involved?”

He knew this was no mere threat, and he also knew that the fact that Garak would mention involving a third party meant that he was very angry indeed. “When would be a good time, and where could we meet?” he asked, doing his best not to sound offended.

“After work, if you wish, you may walk me to my quarters,” he said. “I trust you'll make good use of that time. You are not welcome to join me once I get there.”

He nodded. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than being told Garak would be busy or otherwise occupied for the next year or so. “I'll see you then,” he said, fervently hoping that no medical emergencies arose. While Garak was normally understanding about work delays, he felt he was on a very short rope this time around.

To the best of his ability, he set aside his concerns for the rest of the afternoon. Ensign Tyler had been released that morning with the instruction to take it easy for a day or two on the newly mended leg. Ensign Powers was responding to the antibiotic, but slowly. Julian spent much of the rest of his work day checking him for any other underlying medical conditions that might make him prone to such infections or explain the resistance to the drug. It was a mystery he still hadn't managed to solve by the time he knew Garak would be getting off work.

He gave the young man reassurances that he was doing well and that, hopefully, his stay in the infirmary wouldn't last much longer, updated his night nurse on everything that had happened during the day, and left so that he could catch Garak as he closed. Instead of entering the shop, for he had a distinct feeling that he was not welcome, he waited just outside. When Garak stepped out and keyed the lock, Julian joined him at his side.

“I know I insulted you,” he said carefully. “I also know that anything I say regarding the reason why is going to sound like an excuse. Perhaps it is an excuse. I made a decision to prioritize a request from Dax over our dinner arrangements, not because I thought I would enjoy myself more with her and Doctor Khan, but because...she was worried enough to make the request, so it worried me.”

Garak inhaled deeply enough that Julian saw his nostrils flare slightly. He didn't respond to this, although by his posture and the way he held his head, Julian could tell he was at least listening. He seemed to expect to hear more.

“If she...missteps with this woman...both of them could be exiled from Trill, and their respective symbionts will die. As her friend, how can I sit back and not help her? Garak, if I thought your life was in danger, I'd go to great lengths to save you, no questions asked. Is it so terrible that I'd do the same for others I love?”

“Love,” the tailor snorted, coming to a halt to wait for the turbolift. “You use that word a great deal. I wonder if you know what it means.”

“That's really hurtful, Garak,” he said, frowning.

“Shall I tell you of hurtful?” he asked, eying him from beneath the flare of his eye ridges, a flash of blue in a sea of gray. “All the people in your life who care for you, scrambling to arrange themselves to the proper configuration to capture and retain your interest. Some of us not open enough. Some of us not smart enough. Those of us with enough dignity not to want to mold, twist, and turn to your every demand find ourselves watching you retreat.” He stepped onto the turbolift.

Julian found himself suddenly reluctant to follow, every word a lash. However, he did. “I don't understand what you mean,” he lied.

Garak smiled without humor. “I believe you do. Of course, Dax is different. She's safe. She doesn't want you.”

“That has nothing to do with...”

Garak held up a hand. “My dear Doctor, it has everything to do with this. And for the record, you are a complete idiot. You're going to let a woman who genuinely loves you and is worthy of your generous and kind nature slip right through your fingers. I can see that as plain as the hair on your head. What I can't see is why.”

He had been expecting barbs, sarcasm, and convoluted logic. He hadn't expected what amounted to some of the most brutal honesty he had ever received, not just from the tailor but from anyone. Every time he thought he finally understood how Garak operated, the tailor changed the rules and how he played the game. He didn't know what to say to that. It ached so much to hear it laid out in black and white that he wasn't sure he'd trust his voice, anyway.

“You want my forgiveness? For all it matters, you have it,” Garak said with a shrug.

“What do you mean for all it matters?” he asked, somehow managing to make it sound normal.

“I mean it doesn't change anything. Whether I'm angry with you or not, you're going to do what you do. Sometimes, I still even manage to enjoy your company. We have that,” he said. The turbolift dropped them off in the H-ring corridor.

He wasn't sure how to take that. On an instinctive level, he found it upsetting. It sounded as though Garak was giving up something or perhaps just giving up on him. “It sounds as though you're saying it doesn't matter what I do. You've made up your mind about me, as though...you're just accepting some design flaw.” The tailor's smile cut him to the quick. That was exactly what he was saying. Flawed. I suppose the joke is on me. No matter how much tampering they did, they couldn't fix what was fundamentally broken. He stopped walking. “I suppose I should be appreciative of your honesty,” he said. “It's so rare.”

A few steps ahead of him, Garak stopped and turned to face him. “Careful, Doctor. Keep talking like that, and people will suspect you're bitter. You can't have that, can you?” He turned and started to walk again, his voice carrying over his shoulder, “If I were you, I'd try to talk to Leeta sooner than later, unless, of course, you're trying to drive her away. Good evening, Doctor.”

Garak had managed to strike a part of him he thought he had shielded beyond reach. He was a teenager all over again, discovering that his parents had changed him because he wasn't good enough before. Even after the change, he wasn't good enough. He was just different. He made a strange, hiccuping sound and recognized it as the prelude to a sob. It took all of his control to clamp that down and push it away. What good would it do? Even if Garak heard him, came back, and felt inclined to be comforting, it wouldn't change a thing. He couldn't tell him the truth, and as long as the secret lay wedged between him and everything or everyone he wanted to touch, there would be no true closeness, no rest from the burden. Was this truly why he couldn't let go of Dax, because she was one of the only safe loves he had ever had, the only one smart enough to see him for the trap he was and keep her own distance?

He retraced his steps down the corridor, stepped onto the turbolift, and had it carry him to Leeta's H-ring level. They both had access to one another's quarters. He decided that he would simply wait for her in hers rather than constantly have to check if she was off work yet or where she was. He keyed in the code, only to have the lights on the panel remain red. He keyed it a second time, although he knew he hadn't made a mistake the first time around. She had changed the code. “Great,” he muttered. Stubbornly, he turned his back to the wall, leaned against it, and slid down to a seat. He believed that if he retreated to his own quarters, she wouldn't give him a chance to come back. He hated what Garak had said to him about losing her, and he was determined to prove him wrong. I'm not broken, damn it, he thought fiercely.

It was awkward being passed in the corridor by people who knew him at least on sight. He could tell by the curious looks they wondered what had happened, why he was sitting out there like that. It was physically uncomfortable, too, but he doggedly stuck to his plan. It was well after midnight, and the corridor had been empty and silent for hours before Leeta finally appeared, hobbling and carrying her heeled shoes in one hand by the straps. She stopped some distance from her door when she saw him. “It's late,” she said flatly. “I'm tired. Go home.”

“I'm afraid if I do that, you won't let me come back,” he said, standing stiffly and taking a few steps toward her. “Can we please talk?”

She brushed past him and punched in her new door code, heading inside. Since she didn't tell him to stay out or immediately close the door in his face, he followed. She tossed her shoes to the side, careless of where they landed, and crossed into her bedroom, stripping out of her dabo costume in view of him and digging a pair of pajamas out of her dresser. He knew there was no attempt at seduction in her actions. Her posture and mannerisms said she was so tired and out of sorts, she simply didn't care if he was there to see or not. She leaned in her bedroom doorway with her arms folded tightly beneath her breasts.

“I made a mistake last night,” he said. “I suppose if I'm being completely honest, not just last night. I... You're important to me. I know I don't always say so or act like it, but it's true. I hate that I hurt you or made you feel you're anything less than the amazing woman that you are.”

“You talked to Garak,” she said, her voice still sounding flat, unimpressed.

“You've made quite an impression on him,” he said. “He called me an idiot, and he was right.”

“There's a switch, a Cardassian standing up for a Bajoran to a Starfleeter,” she said without a trace of humor.

“Give me another chance, please?”

“To do what? To blow me off for Dax? Give me one reason I ought to.”

“I'm with you, not Dax,” he said, taking a step closer.

“Funny. You don't act like it,” she retorted, unrelenting.

“I can change my work schedule, start taking night shifts, at least part of the week. You have to admit that at least some of the problem is that we don't have a lot of time,” he said evenly. “I want more time to spend with you. I truly do.” He shrugged helplessly. “Dax...I'm just...it's so rare I can actually do anything useful for her. I'm worried sick for her safety, Leeta. It's not a matter of choosing her over you. If situations were reversed, don't you understand I'd go running straight to you without a second thought? It was the situation I was choosing, not Dax.”

“I want to believe that,” she said, hurt creeping into her voice. “I really do, but every time I think I'm making progress with you, you go all distant again. Tonight you're here begging me for another chance. Tomorrow you're just as likely to get that look you get and bury yourself in some research. I'm trying as hard as I can.” She reached up quickly to wipe a tear away.

“I know. There's nothing wrong with you.” He closed the rest of the distance between them and reached for her. She allowed him to embrace her, both of her arms tucked in and her hands resting curled against his chest. “It's hard for me sometimes. I'm trying, too.”

She rested her cheek against his shoulder, her breath tickling his neck. “Garak said you did the same thing to him,” she said.

He closed his eyes. That hurt. So they had been talking about him. “He's not lying,” he said.

“Don't be mad at him for saying it. He was trying to make me feel better, but it didn't. It means there really isn't anything I can do about this with you. It's not me. I can change me, or work with problems. I can't change you.”

“I can,” he said, wanting to believe it. “Just...I'll try harder. I learned a lot about myself when I was with Garak. Things...were hard with us, but I want this to work. Please.”

She pulled back a little so that she could look at him, her expression solemn. “I want this to work, too,” she said. “You're such an amazing man. You're not like anyone I've ever been with. Half the time, I can't even believe you're with me at all. I have to pinch myself.”

“No,” he said, leaning to rest his forehead against hers. “Please, don't say that. You deserve every bit of love and happiness I can give you. I'm not better than you, or some prize. If you've been talking to Garak, then you ought to know that. I'm sure what he had to say wasn't all flattering.”

“For someone so smart, you really are stupid,” she said a little cryptically, leaning up to kiss him, a lingering, somewhat sad kiss that she broke before it could become more. “If you want to stay, you can, but don't expect anything more than sleep. I've been up since ten this morning, had a positively sickening hangover, and a horrible double shift.”

“Garak was quite the fierce protector last night,” he said, moving with her into her bedroom and starting to strip from his uniform. “I stopped by to try to patch things up. He was adamant that I leave you alone. I hope it wasn't too awkward this morning?”

“Not at all,” she said, climbing into bed and watching him blearily. “He was a perfect gentleman and actually very kind this morning. You should be glad he's Cardassian,” she teased. “Otherwise, he'd be hard to resist.”

He smiled slightly and climbed into the narrow bed with her, settling in. “You never have said much about the occupation or how you feel about Cardassians in general.”

She stiffened slightly. “Nor will I. Please, don't take it personally. It's just that I prefer to look forward, not back. Garak...is very different from the Cardassians I knew. I'd like to leave it at that.”

“Of course,” he said, pulling her close. “I won't ask again.” He waited a few moments for a reply, only to realize that she was already asleep. Exhaustion made him soon follow.

Kira

Dozaria

Kira was furious. Ever since they had awakened and gotten underway again, they had done nothing but argue about the girl, Ziyal. In the end, as far as she could tell, what it boiled down to was Dukat wanting to protect his own worthless hide and career at the expense of his daughter. How could someone who could be moved to open tears at a loss after so many years be determined to exterminate the only link he had left to a woman he loved? How could he love being a Legate more than he loved his own flesh and blood, his own daughter?

I won't let you do it, she thought fiercely, glancing at him out of the corners of her eyes. They were back to walking side by side again, neither trusting the other at his or her back. She wasn't eager to take his life, as she might once have been, but she knew she wouldn't hesitate if he forced her to it. Once more she thought back to something Garak had said. Don't rely on his better nature to keep him from behaving inappropriately. He doesn't have one. That was turning out to be truer than she could have imagined at the time.

I shouldn't have been in such a hurry, she thought. I should've given Garak a chance to find out what was going on. Then we wouldn't be in this mess. Really, though, if Garak knew about the girl, would that make things any better for her? Couldn't he be every bit as dangerous as Dukat? She wouldn't put it past him to hurt a relative of Dukat's just to get to the Legate. She wouldn't even put it past him to kill one. Cardassians! She thought yet again in utter exasperation.

It looked to be about mid-afternoon when they finally saw a change in the desert landscape, and not for the better. Harsh cliffs abutted the flat plane of sand. According to Kira's readings, their goal lay somewhere beyond the cliffs. “Looks like we're in for some climbing,” Dukat said in a matter-of-fact way.

“Looks like,” she agreed.

Toward the base, it was somewhat easier. The rocks were well eroded by the scouring wind and sand. They were able to find small channels cut into them and follow them. It took them out of the brunt of the weather and gave them some respite. However, as they gained elevation, the climb grew harder and more treacherous. Every hand and foothold had to be tested before either could trust their weight to it. Even so, sometimes a hold that seemed solid would suddenly give way, leaving them panting and dangling until they could find more support. Twice the only thing between Kira and a precipitous drop to her death was a strong, gray hand clasped about her wrist. She saved her breath and her thanks until they were on a ledge near the top and could take a quick breather.

“You know you should follow the three points of contact rule,” he chided her after he caught his breath.

She glared at him. “That's easy for you to say when you're all arms and legs. There were times I had to stretch, because there was nowhere else I could reach. Thanks for looking out for me.”

“We are in this together,” he said.

She heard something beyond their perch and motioned to him to be quiet. Glancing up, she gestured that they should finish the climb. This time, she managed to make it ahead of him and dart into cover. He did the same, and she fished a pair of binoculars out of her pack. She watched activity near an obvious mine shaft then handed the binoculars over to Dukat so that he could have a look. After a beat, he said, “The Breen? What are they doing here?”

She told him about the dilithium concentrations she was getting on her tricorder readings. They determined that the Breen must have been using the survivors to mine it. Dukat's entire posture stiffened suddenly. When he refused to answer why, Kira took the binoculars from him and had a look herself. She saw a girl with mixed Cardassian and Bajoran features carrying water near the mine entrance. “It's her,” she said.

“My daughter,” he said, his eyes never leaving her, even though he no longer had the binoculars. He took them back.

Kira gave quick thought to what they were going to have to do. She didn't think that she and Dukat alone would be a match for the Breen. They were going to need reinforcements. She also thought that perhaps she saw a way to ensure the safety of the girl. She quickly told Dukat that she'd stay behind and watch while he left in the runabout for Deep Space Nine. To her irritation, he refused, telling her that she could go instead. They quickly reached impasse, and then he did what she had been expecting him to do at some point or another ever since the mission began. He stopped cooperating altogether.

“There's no way I'm leaving you alone here,” she snapped.

“Then I suggest we devise a plan to rescue the prisoners together,” Dukat said. “You need me, Major.”

Damn him for being so stubborn! He was going to get both of them killed, and then where would his precious career be? She knew she couldn't force him to leave and there was no chance of her staging a rescue on her own. “Maybe I do,” she finally conceded, “but if you hurt that girl, I promise I'll kill you.” Let him stew on that, she thought, not even slightly bluffing. She could tell from the look in his eyes that he knew.

“Well?” he asked. “What are we to do?”

“Oh, that's rich,” she said. “You're going to refuse my direct orders and then turn around and pretend this is still my mission because you have no idea what to do.”

“You're wasting time, Major,” he said tersely. “We can fight all the way back home if you like. For now, you need to focus.”

She narrowed her eyes. He was dangerously close to getting punched in the mouth. “Fine,” she said tightly. “We're going to need the element of surprise, which means we're going to need a couple of those uniforms. Let's see if we can lure those outside guards into an ambush and go from there. We have no idea about their patrol patterns or anything else. I hope you realize you're putting us at a horrible disadvantage.”

“You're free to go get reinforcements,” he said.

“And let you kill your daughter while I'm gone? No chance. I already made that clear. I'm done talking about this. Let's go,” she said, starting to move stealthily closer to the mine. They'd be lucky if any of them survived this, she thought angrily. If they did get out alive, she decided she probably would send a complaint to the Cardassian military as he had suggested, for all the good it would do.

Getting into position took far longer than it did for them to attract the attention of the two guards, disable them, and obtain their uniforms. After seeing the creatures, Kira was reluctant to wear anything they had been wearing, but it had to be done. She and Dukat made their way inside, disabled a third guard, and made contact with some of the Bajoran and Cardassian prisoners. Then as far as Kira was concerned, everything went to hell, thanks to Dukat's stubbornness and duplicity.

She found herself trapped in a firefight with more Breen while he ran down a side corridor in search of Ziyal. Only the arrival of the Cardassians he sent away to get more prisoners saved her and the woman, Heler. She didn't have time to react to the sad news that her friend Lorit had died in a cave-in two years prior. She had to reach Ziyal before Dukat did, or at least before he had a chance to kill the girl. She sent the prisoners toward the front of the mine shaft, promising to meet them there, and took off in the direction she had seen Dukat run.

She found a downed Breen, only to almost have her head taken off by phaser fire. Kosst, she thought, diving for cover and returning fire. At this rate, she'd be fighting her way through all of the remaining guards. Would she be too late? Taking a gamble, she suddenly directed her fire at a spot above the Breen's head. Several rocks dislodged and fell atop the unlucky alien. Just to be sure, she darted forward and finished it off. She didn't need a wounded enemy flanking her.

She continued running mostly blindly, unsure of where to go next. On instinct, she followed the main passageway, not turning off at any branches. There were no more downed Breen to give her any clues. Prophets be thanked, she thought when she heard voices from up ahead, one of them unmistakably Dukat's. She stepped into a small chamber with a well, seeing Dukat ahead of her with his rifle already raised and a glimpse of the girl beyond him. “Dukat, no,” she said sharply.

The confusion in the girl's voice as she questioned what was happening broke her heart. This girl was an innocent. She didn't deserve this. Kira trained her rifle squarely on Dukat and tightened up the slack on the trigger, having every intention of shooting him dead on the spot if he so much as twitched wrong. She'd deal with the traumatized girl later if it came to that. Still, she hoped that she could reason with him and tried her best. It looked as though he wasn't going to listen to reason.

Suddenly, the girl cut in again, sounding devastated. “The Cardassian prisoners...they told me this would happen,” she said, “that you'd never let me go home, but I didn't believe them.”

“Ziyal, run!” Kira barked, desperate to get the girl out of there, out of the line of danger.

“I used to dream about you coming to save me,” she said to him, ignoring Kira. “It's what kept me alive.”

“Ziyal,” he said, his voice thick with anguish.

Good, she thought fiercely. You should feel terrible for this!

Looking resigned, the girl straightened herself a little. “If I can't be with you,” she said, “I'd rather die.”

Watching like a hawk, Kira saw the rifle tip waver then lower. The girl approached him slowly and wrapped her arms around him. Kira tensed all over again when he thrust her back to arms' length. For Prophet's sake, be a father! she thought, her finger still taut on the trigger.

“Let's go home,” he said softly, pulling her in and holding her close.

Kira let out a sigh of relief. “I hate to interrupt this,” she said softly, “but we're not safe yet. We have to get out of here.”

They both nodded and Dukat turned, all business once more. The remaining Breen guards weren't difficult to dispatch. The hardest part left to them was walking the weakened prisoners back through the punishing desert landscape to the runabout so that they could get underway.

Kira kept to herself for the most part, trying to come to terms with the fact that a hope she had held to for over six years had been dashed. Her good friend was dead. She was happy and grateful to have been able to rescue the rest of them, but she worried about the girl. Would Dukat's resolve remain true? Would he stand by his daughter, or was she yet in more danger? What would happen if he took her to Cardassia? What would they do to her, to him? She didn't want to think about it, but she couldn't help it. Something about the simple dignity with which the girl had faced her father touched and impressed her. It had obviously touched Dukat, too. Was there a chance that he could learn something about the occupation from all of this? Could he change?

Stop it, Kira, she told herself in exasperation, the runabout on auto pilot and her presence at the controls little more than for show, as well as an excuse to stay away from Dukat. What does it matter if he changes? Does it make him any less responsible for all of his crimes? No, she thought a bit sadly, but if change doesn't matter, what does that mean for someone like me? She didn't have a good answer for that.

She was glad to get back to the station and back to normal. She was also glad to hear that he had decided to be the father that Ziyal deserved, despite the possible consequences. As she watched him walk away, another familiar voice caught her attention, and she turned to find Garak approaching her from the stairs leading to the second level of the Promenade. “I can't tell you how relieved I am to see you back in one piece,” Garak said smoothly.

I'll just bet, she thought with some amusement. While she no longer believed that Garak loathed her, she was under no illusions that he felt any real attachment beyond what might be useful for him. “Your advice...helped,” she said.

“I'm glad,” he said. “Once I discovered why Dukat was going to such lengths to accompany you, I feared for your safety.”

“You...know?” she asked. She realized she shouldn't have felt so astonished, but such things did stretch Garak's claims of being nothing more than a tailor beyond the bounds of credibility.

“Indeed,” he said. “Truthfully, I'm surprised he's bothering going back to Cardassia. There will be no welcome for him there.”

Something about the way Garak said that gave her pause. “I don't suppose you would have anything to do with that?” she asked, frowning.

“Do?” he asked, staring at her as though she might have been dropped on her head as a child. “Why would I have to do anything? He's taking a half breed back to Cardassia Prime and acknowledging her as his own. If anyone is doing anything to ensure his utter ruin, it's Dukat. Cardassian society doesn't need my hand to guide it in that matter.”

“That 'half breed', as you call her, is his daughter,” Kira said tightly. “A very brave, very intelligent girl. I'm not going to stand here and listen to you insult her, Garak.”

“You misunderstand me,” Garak said impatiently. “What I think doesn't matter. The fact remains. There is no place on Cardassia for such a child or for one willing to claim her.”

She had heard enough, turning to walk away from him. “Then all I can say,” she said over her shoulder, “is more's the pity for Cardassia.”

Garak

The Promenade, second level

Garak watched Kira retreat, feeling quite pleased with himself. He hadn't done much; it was true. Dukat had made his own bed for years, unwisely cultivating all sorts of enemies, people with very long memories who weren't quick to forget such slights as Dukat was famous for meting out. All Garak had done was nudged a few people in the right direction. No one would be surprised when Dukat came home with Ziyal in tow. There'd be no hiding her, no being discreet. He could hardly wait to hear of the fallout. It was, of course, a shame that the girl would be hurt in the process, but she would have been regardless. No one on Cardassia would ever accept a half breed of any race, Bajoran or otherwise.

A familiar tread had him turning. “Ah, Doctor, good afternoon,” he said pleasantly.

“I saw you standing up here gazing out the star port and thought I'd come say hello,” Julian said amiably. “What has you in such a good mood?”

“Haven't you heard that Major Kira returned safely from her mission?” he asked.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” the doctor said, looking slightly skeptical. “I wasn't aware you had a particular fondness for the major.”

“Don't be silly,” Garak said, waving a hand. “A friend of a friend. I'm sure you understand.”

“Right,” he said, looking amused.

“Why do I get the feeling you don't believe me?” the tailor asked, adopting a mock wounded posture.

Julian chuckled. “I can't imagine why,” he said. “Since you're in such a good mood, I suppose now would be a good time to ask you if you'd like to come to dinner some time this week.”

“Our lunches aren't enough for you these days?” he asked, arching a brow ridge.

Julian colored slightly and looked away. “Actually,” he said, “this invitation isn't coming just from me. Leeta wanted me to invite you.”

“She did?” he asked, genuinely surprised. “Whatever for?”

“How did she put it? She wants to get to know someone so important to me better. So, will you come, or not?” he asked.

“Do you actually want me to?” Garak asked in return. “You seem reluctant.”

“Well, you have to admit, it's a little awkward,” he replied.

“I can't imagine what could be awkward about having dinner with your ex and your current romantic interest,” Garak said dryly.

Julian pressed his lips together in a way Garak still found endearing beyond words. “I'd like for you to come,” he said. “She has been pressuring me about this for a while now. The only reason I haven't asked sooner is because...well, I didn't want to hurt you.”

Garak smiled. “You're a dear boy, but I assure you, I'm quite beyond that now. Why not? What night were you considering? I'll be sure to keep my calendar clear.”

“You are?” he asked then shook his head. “Forget I asked that. I'm glad to hear it. Anyway, we were thinking three nights from now?”

“Delightful,” he said, not buying the “glad to hear it” part for one second. He had seen how Julian's face fell. It was brief, but it was there. The question was did he want to do something about it? That would call for some serious thought. He had been making every effort to keep their friendship at just that level, but he had to admit that at times it was difficult. Was it possible that the two of them had grown and changed enough to make revisiting something more a good move?

“What?” Julian asked warily. “What are you thinking?”

“Beg pardon?” he asked, all innocence once more. “Oh, I was simply wondering if I should bring anything.”

The doctor eyed him a beat longer than necessary if he believed him. Garak was fairly certain that he didn't. He did know him quite well, after all. “If you'd like to bring something to drink or a dessert, I'm sure Leeta would be happy with that. I trust your judgment.”

Garak smiled widely. “Ah, my dear doctor, I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that,” he said. Yes, this had shaped up to be quite a nice day. He decided that when he was shopping for a host gift for Leeta and Julian, he'd also get a little something for Quark and Major Kira. If nothing else, it would keep them guessing, which as far as he was concerned was exactly how it should be.

The End