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The Path of Most Resistance Part I
Jul. 26th, 2010 04:41 amAuthor Notes: The story is an in-between story, taking place after Let He Who is Without Sin... and before Things Past. It's the beginning of some of the canon departures I've mentioned, minor so far, that will build over time throughout the rest of the series. Some of the Jem'Hadar dialogue comes from In Purgatory's Shadow. Chronology between Julian's part of the story and Garak's isn't exact. I wrote it for flow, not precision of the lining up of events while they're apart.
Summary: Julian does his best to adjust to the harsh conditions of Internment camp 371 and convince his bunk mates that he's more useful alive than dead while Garak tries to adjust to a return to life outside of confinement and fulfill the obligation he made to attend the Bajoran conference on the occupation.
Author: Dark Sinestra
Date Written: July 2010
Category: Slight slash.
Rating: PG-13 for violence and adult themes.
Disclaimer: Paramount has always done a decent job of protecting their creative property, to the point I'm not tempted to try to pretend what's theirs is mine.
Word Count: 16,703
( Part One is here. )
Author Notes: The story spans events from Apocalypse Rising through Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places. I'm trying to fast forward events a little because trying to write six months worth of time for Garak in a holding cell in great detail just would not work, and Doctor Bashir's part in all three of the episodes covered was fairly minimal.
Summary: As events unfold around him, from the Klingon war to the ground breaking discovery of a downed Jem'Hadar ship, Julian feels frustrated to find himself on the sidelines. His progress with Garak stymied, he begins to question the entire relationship and what the future holds for him. Meanwhile, Garak endures his incarceration to the best of his ability and finds some of his own relationships challenged by his actions in the Gamma Quadrant.
Author: Dark Sinestra
Date Written: June 2010
Category: Slashy angst
Rating: PG for mild adult language and adult situations.
Disclaimer: No profit for me, no ownership of characters implied in the writing. I feel like such a broken record.
Word Count: 16,420
( Read part one here! )
The Necessity of Terror, Part I
Jun. 1st, 2010 08:52 amAuthor Notes: This story takes place during Broken Link. A bit of dialogue comes from the episode, and I also slightly altered the order of events toward the beginning for a better flow. If you haven't read the entire series, you may notice a few references to things that never happened in the show, specifically something to do with Doctor Mora and Garak's reaction to an Edosian orchid delivery. All of these references are to things that happened in Red Sky at Morning, the story I wrote that wasn't based on any episode and took place shortly after Vedek Bareil's death. Knowledge of that story won't impact understanding of this one except in regard to the background of those references.
Summary: Odo is struck with a mysterious malady that only a visit to his own people has the possibility to cure. Garak seizes the opportunity to find the answer to a question that has been plaguing him for far too long, an answer that may forever alter the dynamic between him and Julian. The fate of the entire Alpha Quadrant hangs in the balance.
Author: Dark Sinestra
Date Written: May 2010
Category: Slash
Rating: PG-13 for adult situations and violence.
Disclaimer: If I owned these characters, aside from being a happy little camper, I'd be trying to make money from them, and I'd own an adorable purple pimp hat. Hey, a girl can dream.
Word Count: 11,806
( The story begins... )
Of Moths and Flames, Part I
May. 11th, 2010 03:58 amAuthor Notes: This story takes place shortly after For the Cause ends and ends shortly before Body Parts begins. This time around, I pretty much just wrote around episodes, not including any of them directly. It worked better that way.
Summary: Garak finally learns of the mysterious daughter of Dukat's intentions and discovers that sometimes more knowledge simply means more complications. Swamped with work and facing some of the largest challenges of his career to date, Julian struggles to salvage what he can of his personal life while performing his duties and keeping his oaths. Can he manage, or has at least one of his partners had enough?
Author: Dark Sinestra
Date Written: May 2010
Category: Slash, Het
Rating: R for strong adult situations and sexual content.
Disclaimer: It's fanfic, which means not for profit, not about the author's original characters, yadda yadda. I think we all know the drill.
Word Count: 21,326
( Part I lies under the cut. )
Everything Old... Part IV, conclusion
Apr. 21st, 2010 08:34 pmJulian
The Infirmary
The entire situation seemed unreal. Murder aboard the station was extremely rare, usually the result of some underhanded or illegal dealing gone bad or the occasional result of domestic violence. He performed the autopsy with his usual sense of detachment because it was his job. However, it didn't stop him from thinking about the circumstances of the death and the ugly climate that had permeated the station in just a matter of days from Akorem's announcement. He didn't buy the will of the Prophets rubbish. In his private opinion, non-linear aliens simply had no concept of time or the consequences of jumbling the time line. Who knew why they brought Akorem to the present, or if they had any reason at all other than to see what might happen?
It didn't take him very long to be able to determine the cause of death for certain, broken neck from the fall leading to rapid asphyxiation from total body paralysis. Fortunately, it seemed as though he lost consciousness upon impact. He entered his official findings for the record, stripped out of the red scrubs, and put the body in cold storage for evidence in the murder case. He was down to one nurse and one medic for the shift, both of them grim and silent. He wondered if they'd try to put in for a transfer soon. He wondered if Starfleet would pull all of them out of the sector within the year. The only positive he had to focus on in the moment was knowing Garak was with Leeta. He couldn't think of anyone better suited to keeping her safe.
“Sir,” his nurse approached him hesitantly.
He glanced up from the report he was writing. “Yes?”
“Aside from the murder, we had an incident at lunch,” she said.
“What sort of incident?” he asked, thinking silently, What now?
“You remember a family had an appointment to bring their two children in for routine vaccinations?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
“Someone from a higher caste walked in complaining of a rash and became irate when we refused to see him first. He said he's going to file a complaint with the Bajoran government. I was wondering what our official policy is going to be on this?”
He wanted to hit something. He genuinely wanted to hit something, his fists balling tightly. “Our official policy, Nurse, is that Starfleet doesn't operate under a caste system. Since the majority of our Bajoran staff has quit, this is a Starfleet medical facility, and it will be run as such. Tell them next time if they have a complaint to tender it to Starfleet, because we don't look to the Bajoran government for guidance on how we conduct our business.”
She smiled slightly and nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, Sir!” she said. “Before I forget, we also received three more Bajoran resumes.”
“This should be good for a laugh,” he said. “Are they in my office?”
“Yes, Sir.”
He retreated to the back and sat at his desk. As he expected, all of them were Belans, Belan Dar, Belan Rasheek, and Belan Pema. Healer caste. “Oh, this is promising,” he said wryly. “Thirty years on a farm in Lonar Province. Experience with wild herb craft, harvesting and preparation. Or how about this one? No formal education, but eager to learn. Oh, quite possibly my favorite yet. 'I've always known I had a special calling. It's the Prophet's blessing that I now know what it is. Please give me the chance to fulfill my pagh path. You won't regret it'. Perhaps not, but I imagine my patients soon would.”
The male medic ducked his head into the office. “Sorry, Sir, did you say something?”
“I was just talking to myself,” he sighed, “apparently loudly. I'll try my best to keep it down.”
An hour later he was summoned to the wardroom. He felt guilty about it, but he was relieved to get out of the oppressive environment of the infirmary, if only for a little while. He met up with Dax on the way. She wasn't her usual mischievous self, rather quiet and looking tired. “You've looked better,” she told him.
“I was just thinking the same thing about you,” he said. “Short staffing?”
She nodded. “In the worst way. We've now got a backlog of at least half a dozen necessary experiments. That's not counting things that are lower priority. For some of the work, we don't have enough people to man all the stations, so we're having to double up and hope we don't miss anything important. I can't imagine what it's like for you in the infirmary.”
“You don't want to,” he said. “I'm down to a skeleton crew. I had three nightmares last night, all about the same thing. We're overrun with Jem'Hadar and Klingons, and there's a constant stream of people with horrific injuries being brought into the infirmary. The only instrument I have is an old fashioned scalpel which I keep waving around like a concert director, trying to get three zombies to do my bidding.”
Dax tried not to laugh but couldn't quite stop herself. “Oh, Julian, that's awful,” she said, wrapping an arm at his waist and lightly bumping the side of her head against his.
“If I weren't really that anxious, I'd find it funny, too,” he said. “I'm glad at least one of us can get something of entertainment value out of it.”
She released him before they entered the wardroom. He had been glad of the comfort. They both took their seats and realized they were only waiting for Chief O'Brien, Major Kira, and Captain Sisko. Commander Worf, Lieutenant Commander Eddington, and Odo nodded to them. None seemed inclined to speak, so Julian took his cue from them.
Captain Sisko arrived with the major and quickly took a seat. “Chief O'Brien can't get away for this, unfortunately. He's a bit understaffed.” He nodded his understanding at the various grunts and displeased looks from around the table. “I'm aware we're all suffering the same problem.” Kira looked strangely guilty and refused to meet anyone's gaze. “In light of this recent murder and the Bajoran government's inadequate response, I feel as though I have no choice but to fly with Akorem Laan into the wormhole and find out what the Prophets really want.”
A chorus of protests immediately rose from everyone else at the table with the exception of Kira. Julian couldn't believe what he was hearing. “Captain, as Chief Medical Officer I really must object. What you're proposing...”
Sisko cut them all off with a sharp chop of his hand. “I know,” he said sternly. “Every single one of you has a valid point, and I'm well aware of the risk I'm taking. I can't just sit by and watch three years of hard work and progress flushed down the toilet in a matter of days based on the words of some ancient poet from two hundred years ago. Now, the way I see it, the only ones who can tell us what they're really thinking are the wormhole aliens themselves. If I don't do this now, Bajor and this station are going to descend into chaos and possible civil war. I will be leaving within the hour. Commander Worf, you'll have the station.”
Although he looked reluctant, Worf nodded. “Aye, Sir.”
“As for the rest of you, I expect you to continue doing your very best with your short staffing and aid Mister Worf in any way you can. For good or ill, I'm hoping I can bring us an answer within the next twenty-six hours. Dismissed.”
No one lingered after the meeting, as none of them had the luxury of the spare time. Julian was in no mood to talk on his way back to the infirmary. He had no reason to trust the wormhole aliens not to do away with the captain altogether if they had decided to back Akorem. While he knew Worf was capable of short term command, he worried about the long term effects on morale of everyone being under such a stern, unapproachable task master, particularly with the staffing issues. He really wished that Miles could have made it to the meeting. The bluff engineer had a way of putting things into perspective that made even the worst case scenarios not look quite so bad.
They saw two more patients before his day was done. Fortunately neither arrived at the same time, so caste wasn't an issue. One had a broken finger that seemed to have gone untreated for a few days. He was less than talkative about the circumstances. Julian gave him an antibiotic for a mild bone infection that had set in, broke and set the bone properly, and gave him pain medication. He noticed a suspicious cut across his throat, long since scabbed over and healing. Of that the man refused to speak at all. The other patient was another rash case. He wondered if stress might be getting to some of the people, because he could find no easy cause of the skin irritation. He prescribed a cream and sent the itchy woman on her way.
As soon as his relief arrived, he hurried back to Leeta's quarters. She was dressed for work, and she and Garak had their heads bent over a game board. He drew closer and discovered they were playing kotra. “I had no idea you knew how to play kotra,” he said to Leeta.
“I don't,” she answered. “Garak is trying to teach me. Operative word, trying.”
“You're too hard on yourself, my dear. It's a complex game that takes years to master. You grasped the rules more quickly than many I've instructed in the past. Improvement comes with time and practice,” Garak said. He straightened his back and twisted a stretch, looking at Julian. “You seem to have news,” he said.
“I do.” He pulled up a chair and straddled it backward, resting his forearms on the back in a loose fold. “I can't say I think it's good news, I'm afraid. Captain Sisko is going to enter the wormhole with Akorem so that they can ask the wormhole aliens directly what they really want for Bajor.”
“Well, that's good,” Leeta said, glancing sharply at him. “If there's confusion, go straight to the source. Why do you think this is a bad thing?”
“What if their answer is that this is what they actually do intend for Bajor?” he asked. “What if they decide the captain is a dangerous distraction? They could do anything to him. We could never see him again.”
Garak broke in before things could get heated. “Let's...not excite ourselves with what ifs,” he suggested. “Captain Sisko has returned from all of his encounters with the aliens so far. They've never seemed particularly malicious or spiteful, just...mysterious, correct?”
Julian grudgingly agreed.
“Regardless of the outcome, one thing we will be able to say is that there will be no more confusion or potential for varying interpretations, assuming they return with an answer at all. In its own way, that is progress, Doctor.”
Leeta gave a satisfied nod. “I'm glad he's doing it,” she said. “I'm glad somebody has the guts to challenge the status quo. Considering you look like somebody dragged you down the Promenade behind a rampaging rakazo, I'm going to ask Garak to escort me to work and ask you to get some sleep,” she said, leaning over and kissing Julian's cheek.
He was too tired to argue. The three of them left the quarters together and parted ways in the H-ring. Julian promised he would talk to both of them later. At home he was too tired to remove his uniform, simply flopping into his bed and going dead to the world within minutes. The last waking thought he had was, Two straight days in this uniform without a change. Somebody's about to get a little ripe.
Garak
The Promenade
Garak had an odd sense of symmetry of events as he watched Captain Sisko ascend the podium before the Bajoran temple. His arrival back on the station the evening before without Akorem sent shock waves through the Bajoran populace that still hadn't settled. He imagined this speech was designed to do just that, settle the people and get them back on track, whatever that might entail.
As he listened to the mellifluous voice, he also watched the captain's expression and body language. He was relaxed, serene. He was a man no longer divided within himself. For good or ill, it seemed that Sisko had finally accepted his role as Bajor's Emissary. Although he wasn't sure what that meant for Bajor or indirectly Cardassia, Garak couldn't help but to believe that this was better than the alternative that had been presented. Seeing a caste system from the outside had opened his eyes to some ugly truths about his own people. For one of the first times ever, he felt grateful to be at a distance from his home world so that he would have the luxury of processing his newfound insight without being accused of sedition. At the end of the speech, he applauded right along with the Bajoran throng no less enthusiastically than the least among them. The caste system was no more.
Julian
Quark's Bar
Julian accepted his ale from Quark with a grin and turned to survey the crowd from his vantage. He still felt a small thrum of adrenaline from the fracas in the holosuite, he and Chief O'Brien against the entire court of the King of Leinster in a brawl to end all brawls. Others could say they looked ridiculous if they liked. He thought that he and Miles cut fine figures in their Irish warrior regalia. He couldn't believe how quickly everything had turned around. If anyone had asked him two days ago if he thought he'd be spending a fun evening with his friend, have a full staff at the infirmary, and no longer have to worry about some hothead murdering his girlfriend for looking at him wrong, he would have scoffed.
Keiko's intervention on behalf of her depressed husband just couldn't have had better timing. Of course, he would never let Miles know that he had been told how he felt. That would just embarrass him. The stress release of being able to cut loose and just have fun was pure balm to his spirit. He slouched shoulder to shoulder against the engineer and toasted Leeta with his tankard. She smiled brightly at him from her place at the dabo wheel and rolled her eyes playfully. You look silly, she mouthed.
“Looks like things are better for you,” Miles observed. “Bein' honest paid off, didn't it?”
Julian beamed at him. “More than you can possibly imagine.”
The End
Everything Old... Part III
Apr. 21st, 2010 08:25 pmJulian
The Infirmary
Julian rubbed at his eyes and sat back in his office chair with a deep sigh. So far it was shaping up to be a completely wretched week, the fights with Leeta and Garak, never seeing Miles, the captain's strange orb shadow experience, and now this. He re-read the notice given him by Nurse Frendel, as though the power of wishful thinking alone could change the text. “A carpenter?” he asked aloud, tossing the notice back onto his desk. He was losing his best nurse because the man's birthright was carpentry? He wasn't the only Bajoran to depart the infirmary since the new Emissary's decree, but he was by far the most valuable one. The worst part about it was he had already been instructed by the captain not to interfere with any of these departures. He wasn't even allowed to speak to the man about it except to wish him well. It was a waste of natural talent and an education. It was a travesty.
He ended his shift in a foul mood and tramped down to Quark's. What he needed was a good game of darts and a drink. What he found instead was Morn, who couldn't seem to hit the dart board to save his life. He had to give the Lurian credit for trying. However, he suspected he was doing it out of a sense of pity more than a desire to play. He could think of few worse things than being an object of pity of a bar fly. He held out hope that Miles would be able to make their usual holosuite reservation. Maybe they wouldn't be able to stay as long as normal, but it would be a nice way to unwind. He kept an eye toward the door while playing.
“Chief!” he called the moment he saw him. He turned to Morn and the two dabo girls who had been watching their woefully mismatched game. “Excuse me, please? I haven't seen Miles in a few days.”
Morn waved him off with an air of amusement and turned, putting an arm around each woman to guide them with him toward the bar. Julian hurried past him to meet the engineer further down the counter. They caught up with small talk. He felt a surge of hope when his friend ordered a drink. It meant he didn't intend to run off right away. He was going to bring up the holosuite when Quark saved him the trouble. He tried his best not to let his face fall at Miles' polite refusal. He didn't care about the waste of money. He wanted his friend back. Feeling selfish for it didn't help, nor did thoughts of Garak's accusations about how he used the man. Miles drained his drink in a hurry and left for his family.
Julian wondered if he shouldn't just get rip roaring drunk and let Morn help him stagger home at closing time. It seemed the right sort of night for it. Morose, he propped an elbow on the bar and rested his cheek on his fist. Mercifully, Quark left him alone except to take his drink orders. A couple of hours later, he caught a whiff of a familiar perfume just as Leeta discreetly claimed a seat next to his. She was dressed in one of her more conservative outfits, and he remembered she had this night off now. She rested both hands lightly on the counter, and he noticed a bandage on her left wrist. “What happened?” he blurted.
She glanced at him. “It's fine,” she said, tucking it into her lap self-consciously.
Quark took her order of spring wine and shot Julian a withering look as he said, “If he bothers you, let me know.”
“He's fine,” she said. “I can handle things myself.”
The Ferengi nodded and retreated a couple of seats down from them, making a point of showing that he was well within earshot as he washed a few glasses and restocked various garnishes from jars on lower shelves. Julian was in no mood for Quark's posturing. He turned to stand and find himself a table.
Leeta stopped him with a light hand to his arm. “Are you sober enough to talk?” she asked.
He nodded and glanced over his shoulder toward the bartender. “Not with an audience, though.”
“No, of course not.” She accepted her glass from Quark and tipped her chin toward the balcony. “There are plenty of empty tables up there.”
“Lead the way,” he said, now regretting the number of ales he had already consumed. He wasn't drunk, but he wasn't exactly sober, either. He followed her up the stairs and forced himself not to watch her as she ascended. He pulled her chair out for her and seated himself against the wall, a habit he picked up from Garak somewhere along the way.
“I had a long talk with Garak a couple of days ago,” she said after he settled.
He tightened his lips slightly. He could only imagine what the tailor had to say after their last exchange. It couldn't have been good. “Oh?” he said as neutrally as possible.
“Yes,” she said, taking a dainty sip of her spring wine. “He's a hard person to stay angry with.”
Just great, he thought sourly. He won her over again so the two of them can present a united front. “Is he?” he asked more harshly than he intended. “I wouldn't know.”
She smiled faintly, her uninjured hand starting forward over the table top but stopping short of touching his. “I don't believe that. If anything, I think you know it better than anyone else.”
“I'm deeply ashamed of what I did to you,” he said. “I should have talked to you first. I shouldn't have used your trouble at the bar as an excuse to hide things.”
“You should be ashamed,” she agreed. “What you did was despicable. I have to think I share at least some of the responsibility for it, however.”
“What?” He frowned deeply. “No. You can't blame yourself.”
“I don't blame myself,” she clarified. “I do think that my stress and some other factors contributed to your feeling that you couldn't approach me about your doubts and confusion.”
Guilt made him want to deny that, too, but it was the truth. He looked down into his pint glass and shrugged slightly. He couldn't bring himself to agree aloud.
“I don't need you to spare my feelings. I think we've moved a little beyond that, don't you?” she asked, seeking his gaze. “What I want right now is your honesty.”
“All right,” he said quietly. “It's true. I didn't know how to broach the subject with you, and I was afraid that if I did, you wouldn't understand. You'd think I was trying to go back to Garak. I was afraid of losing you, but I didn't have the right to hang onto you under false pretenses or deny you the choice of whether you wanted to be in a relationship with someone who couldn't just stay completely away from his ex.”
Now she did touch his hand, her palm warm and soft. “If I hadn't talked to Garak, I'm not sure how much of what you just said I'd be able to believe. I'm not going to pretend I understand whatever bond the two of you have, but I do believe you when you say you're not trying to go back to the way things were for you. I don't think either of you understands it any more than I do, and that makes me feel bad for you. Being confused like that is difficult.”
“Thank you,” he said. He didn't know what to think of what she was saying. He couldn't tell where she was going with it, and he was afraid to ask after everything he had already put her through. “I really am sorry,” he said, sincere and pained.
“I know. I'm sorry, too. There haven't been many people in my life that I've ever trusted. You betrayed my trust. I need you to understand that.” Her grip on his hand tightened.
He wondered if it would be possible to feel any lower than he did in that moment. He shut his eyes and nodded. “I understand,” he said. He wanted to get out of there and away from her. He stayed put because he felt he owed her that.
“I really believe you do,” she said, releasing his hand and sitting back in her seat. She lifted her wine for another swallow. “I want to give us another chance.”
“I'm sorry. I don't think I heard you correctly,” he said, his head spinning from more than ale.
“You did. I don't want to leave you. I think what we have has potential. I'm not going to lie and tell you it's going to be easy or that I'll be able to trust you unquestioningly. You're going to have to be very open with me, particularly about the time you spend with Garak. Don't hide it from me or lie to me about it, and if your feelings change, you need to tell me.”
“You don't have to worry about that,” he said, his turn to reach for her hand. “I don't think he'll ever have anything to do with me again, and I'm not even sure I'd want him to.”
“For a doctor you can be very dim,” she chided him. “Neither of you is through with the other. I'm not sure what it would take for you to be. I don't think either of you knows.”
“Why are you willing to accept this?” he asked, reeling inside. It was beyond any expectation he ever had, and it genuinely didn't make sense to him.
“I know you're not spiritual, so I don't expect you to grasp my reasoning. It's...wrong...to interfere with the pagh path of another. You run the risk of stunting their spiritual growth and derailing them from their entire purpose. You and I have an enjoyable relationship, or at least we did before this came to a head. I get a lot out of it, and I like to think that you do, too. You and Garak have something else. I believe it's deeper than either of you realizes or is capable of acknowledging. I think it has to do with your souls, as your people might put it, and I don't care one whit if you don't believe in that sort of thing. I do, and it's why I can accept this. What I can't accept is more dishonesty. Are you willing to make another effort, or do you want to part ways?”
For a moment, he didn't trust his voice. Had he ever been treated with such genuine kindness and a lack of selfishness? He truly didn't believe so. She deserved so much better, and yet she wanted him. “I want to be with you,” he said. “I never stopped wanting to be with you. You have my word that I won't hurt you like that again.”
“I'm going to hold you to that,” she said, giving his hand a final squeeze and withdrawing from him. “We can talk more tomorrow. I'd like for you to try to talk to Garak tonight so that you can tell me what to expect then.”
“What if he won't talk to me?” he asked.
“Then you can tell me that,” she said, standing and moving to lean over to kiss his cheek. “Thanks for being willing to talk to me and work through this. I know it wasn't any easier for you than it was for me. Come by my quarters around noon. I'll be awake by then.”
“I will,” he said, also standing. If he was going to try to talk to Garak, he didn't need any more ale in his system. “I'll walk you part way.” She nodded, and they left together from the upper level exit. He still could hardly believe the conversation they just had, and he couldn't help but to wonder if he was possibly being played in some way. He quickly set that thought aside. Leeta was intelligent enough to do something like that, but she wasn't spiteful or petty. She wasn't the first Bajoran he had met with a stunning generosity of spirit. It was just the first time he had been the direct beneficiary of it.
His stop on the turbolift came first. He cupped her cheek lightly, bade her good night, and stepped off onto Garak's H-ring. He had no idea what he was going to say. He hesitated outside the quarters, finally biting the bullet and triggering the hail. What's the worse that can happen? He asked himself. The thought wasn't nearly as reassuring as he meant for it to be.
“Enter,” came Garak's voice, the tone the neutral equivalent of his business face.
Julian stepped inside, certain only of the fact that he didn't want to deal with Garak's facade. He took him in at a glance, the lounging robe, the PADD in hand, the tea to the side, and the bright, inquisitive gaze that revealed nothing whatsoever. He tried to call to himself the feeling he had the night he made love to the man, but it stubbornly refused to come. There was a thick wall between the two of them, and the top of it was barbed. So I impale myself, he thought grimly. “Leeta came to me,” he said.
“Is her wrist broken?” Garak asked.
“No,” he said, not having expected that. Garak had something to do with that? He narrowed his eyes slightly. “At least I don't think it is. She didn't come to me for treatment. She came to talk. What happened to her wrist?”
“You'd have to ask her,” the tailor said off handedly.
“I did. She was less than forthcoming.”
Garak shrugged and set aside his PADD.
Don't let him pick a fight, he told himself. “She said she talked to you. You can imagine my surprise when it seemed as though it wasn't another unpleasant conversation.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I imagine you were quite surprised.”
Sarcasm. Joy. “She didn't come out and expressly say it, but I have the impression that in part I have you to thank for the fact that she's not leaving me,” he pressed on with determination.
“So you're here to thank me?” he asked, tilting his head slightly.
He wasn't fooled by the mild tone of voice. He saw the glint in his eyes. “No. I'm here to find out if that last fight of ours was more than just another stupid fight.”
“She sent you?” he asked drolly.
“Yes,” he said, crossing to sink into the chair catty corner to the sofa. “If I had my preference, I would've stayed away from you at least a week before finding some pathetic excuse to crawl back into your good graces.”
“It's not like you to be so bitter,” Garak said, eying him curiously.
“It's been a rough week,” he said, coming off the ale enough to feel bone tired.
“The return of Bajor to the old ways?” the tailor asked.
Julian nodded, leaning forward and resting his face in his hands to shut out the light. “I think I'm going to lose my entire Bajoran staff to it before all is said and done. I just found out I'm losing Frendel. He was a lifesaver after Decla left, easily as competent as she was without the personality problems. Thanks to the Dominion threat, there aren't many in Starfleet medical willing to put in for an assignment here, and so far, brass isn't pushing the issue. That means an overworked, cranky staff who may or may not be able to handle a large influx of casualties should the worst happen.”
Garak sighed through his nose. “As much as it pains me to have to do this, I'll remove myself from your list of worries. I still think you were stupid to tell Leeta what you did, and some of the things you said to me afterward were ridiculous, but it looks to me as though you're experiencing enough of a coal raking that I don't have to do it myself.”
He laughed into his hands and finally lifted his gaze, squinting against the light. “You're insufferable, easily one of the most infuriating people I've ever met. I'd remind you, I'm a Starfleet officer saying this. I'd remind you further this is coming from me.”
“Two things I will keep firmly in mind,” Garak said, his eyes twinkling. “I'd offer to let you spend the night, but I think that would be pushing things with dear Leeta. If you hurt that woman again, I'm going to be more than a little angry with you.”
“You and I both,” he said, shaking his head. “I can't believe she wants anything to do with me. Or you, for that matter. I don't think I'd be able to be so forgiving, or allowing.” Garak eyed him oddly. “What?” he asked.
“Considering what you've forgiven and allowed me, I believe you may be underestimating yourself, dear.”
“Help me up,” he said, holding both hands out toward him.
Obligingly, Garak stood and pulled him to his feet. Julian allowed the momentum to carry him forward so that he rested against him, wrapping his arms beneath Garak's about his broad ribcage. He smiled against the side of his head when Garak returned the gesture and held him. “Leeta was right about you. You're difficult to stay mad at.”
Garak grunted softly. “Both of you are entirely too sentimental for your own good.”
“Then I suppose you're fortunate,” he said, turning to kiss his temple lightly. “Now, be a gentleman and send me on my way so I can go collapse into bed disreputably still in my uniform and sleep off the ale I drank while feeling sorry for myself.”
The tailor tangled fingers into his hair and kissed him so tenderly it stole his breath. “Get out,” he said without a trace of heat. “I don't like uninvited guests. You've bothered me enough for one night.” He kissed him a second time and guided him toward his door with an arm snaked low at his waist.
“You're a dreadful host,” he retorted in kind, fighting the smile trying to toy with his lips. “You didn't even offer me a drink.”
“You had more than enough before imposing on me,” he said.
Julian couldn't resist a nuzzle at the hollow of a neck ridge, one of his very favorite places. “All right,” he said as the door slid open, straightening and pulling away. “You've succeeded in kicking me out. I'll try to talk to you tomorrow.”
“Make sure you're sober first. I can't abide a drunkard,” Garak said very primly just before the door shut.
Smiling to himself, he started down the corridor. How an evening could begin on such a miserable note and end on such an uplifting one was a complete mystery to him, as was how he somehow managed to circumvent both of their defensiveness enough to get through to the tailor. “It's much harder to understand than temporal mechanics,” he said aloud and chuckled. Perhaps he'd sleep well that night after all. It would make dealing with the infirmary woes a little easier.
Garak
The Promenade
Taking a slightly late lunch, Garak had just left his shop when he heard a shriek. He trotted back through his doors to grab his weapon and advanced cautiously in the direction of the sound. Several Bajorans and a few other aliens were gathered in a small knot around something he couldn't see. He noticed the head of the station temple serenely descending the stairs just as the security detail arrived to drive everyone back.
Making himself inconspicuous, he waited and listened. When the crowd parted, he saw a vedek lying on the deck of the Promenade, his head at an angle that left no doubt his neck was broken. Garak's gaze tracked back to the temple head, Vedek Porta, he believed. He narrowed his eyes. He had seen that sort of serenity before, the calm conscience of the self-righteous.
Captain Sisko and Major Kira arrived. Garak didn't stay to hear the totality of Porta's confession. He didn't need to. Tucking his weapon discreetly into the back of his belt, he made his way past the crowd and ducked into the infirmary. A weary looking Starfleet nurse he knew by face but not name said, “If you're looking for Doctor Bashir, I think he went to have lunch with Leeta.”
“Thank you,” Garak said and beelined for the turbolift. Normally, he wouldn't consider intruding upon them. What he had seen filled him with an urgency he hadn't known in some time. By the time he reached Leeta's quarters, he had begun to jog. He rang the chime twice in rapid succession.
“Enter,” Leeta's voice came through the comm, sounding a little perplexed.
Garak stepped inside to see both of them seated at her dinner table, halfway through a meal. “I'm terribly sorry to interrupt your lunch, but both of you need to know Vedek Porta just murdered another vedek.”
“What?” they both said in tandem.
Julian started from his seat, and Leeta went pale. “Why wasn't I called?” Julian asked.
“Because it's a crime scene, and a dead man doesn't need a doctor,” Garak snapped harshly. He reined himself in. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that.”
“I thought Vedek Porta was a good man,” Leeta said, completely stunned.
“I think he thinks so, too,” Garak said dryly. “He showed no remorse either to Odo or Captain Sisko. I believe we're seeing more of old Bajor coming back to life.”
He was glad that both of them seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation. Julian glanced at Leeta. “I'm worried for your safety,” he said.
She looked as though she might be sick. “I am, too,” she said, lifting a hand to her throat.
Garak took his pistol from his belt and offered it to her. “I believe you'd do well to carry this.”
She shook her head. “No. I don't think I could hit the broad side of a telgos' behind if I was dead calm and had time to aim. I'd be more danger to myself than anyone else with one of those, but thank you, Garak.”
Garak glanced at Julian, silent communication passing between the two of them. “We're going to keep you safe,” Julian said.
She looked between the two. “Won't that get both of you in trouble? You're not supposed to interfere in local matters,” she said to Julian. “And your people have a treaty with mine,” she added to Garak.
“I don't consider your safety a local matter,” Julian said tightly. “If that means I get in trouble, then fine. I get into trouble. I'll sooner resign my commission and face the consequences than stand by and allow some pompous idiot to abuse you just because you don't have a D'jarra.”
“I'm not known either for being particularly cooperative or obedient among my people,” Garak said lightly. “They've come to expect me to be an embarrassment. I'd hate to disappoint them.”
“This is all so insane,” she said, clasping both hands tightly in her lap and twisting her fingers. “I've always been proud of my people and how it seems like no matter what happens, we manage to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep going. This going backwards is shameful. I can't imagine that this is what the Prophets intended for us, separation from potential allies like the Federation, subjugation of large segments of our population, not by an outside threat, but from within, people turning away from life paths they find fulfilling and rewarding to follow the dictates of their names. Maybe it was different when it had always been that way. People were used to it. But this?”
“I can't see Captain Sisko standing by and allowing this to go unanswered,” Julian said.
Garak joined them at the table without having to be asked. “What can he do? He willingly stepped aside as Emissary. He no longer has any more influence than any other Starfleeter on the Bajorans. The way I see it, things are going to get much worse before they get better. Those who can't or won't abide by this return to the old ways will be pitted against those who have something to gain from it. It'll be a holy war before all is said and done.”
Leeta nodded reluctantly. “He's right. We were only just starting to unify a little bit under First Minister Shakaar. A large part of the reason my people were willing to accept progress toward Federation membership was because of Captain Sisko's status as the Emissary. Now that Akorem is back, Kai Winn's influence has expanded by leaps and bounds. She has never been supportive of outsiders interfering with Bajor's development.” She glanced at Garak. “You'd better keep that weapon of yours close for your own sake. I don't know how much longer the treaty with Cardassia will be honored at this rate or what they might decide to try to do to you if it's broken.”
“My safety has never been much of a certain thing,” he said with a shrug. “I'd advise you not to travel alone. I'll make myself available to you while Julian has to work. My schedule is more flexible than his. You should also have a talk with Quark. I know he won't allow that nonsense in his bar. It would be bad for business.”
“When I'm off, I'm at your disposal,” Julian added.
“Normally, I'd find this whole, 'protect the woman' attitude annoying,” she said, trying to smile and not quite succeeding. “Considering the situation, all I can say is a heartfelt thank you. I mean...I can't live like this indefinitely, but I can start saving up money to leave. Lissepia isn't such a bad place, I've heard.”
“Give Captain Sisko a chance to try to resolve this before making plans to move,” Julian said. Garak privately thought his faith in the captain might be overblown but was wise enough to keep his own counsel about that. “As you said, your people have weathered terrible times and come out stronger in the end. Maybe this won't go as badly as it seems it might.”
“Maybe,” she echoed as uncertainly as Garak felt.
Julian looked to each of them. “I hate to do it, but I need to get back to work. I'm sure they're going to want me for the autopsy. If I hear any news one way or the other, I'll let you two know.” He stood and hurried out of the quarters.
“Would you like some lunch?” Leeta asked.
“Strangely enough, I've lost my appetite,” he said.
She nodded. “Me, too. Would it bother you if I went to the back and rested for a while? I feel a headache coming on. I want to try to head it off before I have to get ready for work. You're welcome to help yourself to the replicator if you get hungry later, and I've got all sorts of books on PADDs. I feel...ungracious...leaving you out here like this when you're doing me such a favor.”
“Nonsense. I'm not here in the capacity of house guest, so don't feel as though you're obligated to treat me as such. I may rest, myself, on your couch. If I'm asleep when you come out to leave for work, awaken me.”
“I'll do that,” she said, standing and quickly clearing the table. Garak got out of her way and settled himself on the sofa. She paused behind him, pressing a light hand to his shoulder and giving a squeeze before heading into the bedroom and shutting the door. Despite what he told her, he knew he wouldn't sleep. His supposed safe haven was no longer safe. For all of his cleverness, his refuge had become a trap, and he had no idea what to do about it.
Everything Old... Part II
Apr. 21st, 2010 08:05 pmGarak
The Promenade
He didn't often have reason to use the skills he developed at the Bamarren Institute, the rare ability to hide in plain sight, but it was exactly what he did as more and more Bajorans gathered outside the temple to hear their new Emissary for the first time. Someone needed to keep an eye and ear out for Cardassian interests. Who knew which way the wind might blow with a different hand guiding the hearts and minds of the volatile and sometimes fickle people? He didn't see Captain Sisko in the crowd, wise of him, he thought, yet Odo and Major Kira stood above the throng on the second floor. Of the Starfleeters, all he saw were a few in security gold. He didn't buy this feigned indifference. He imagined there were several nervous officers scattered throughout the station, probably watching the activity through the security feeds.
The crowd broke into applause. Garak saw the man of the hour emerge from the temple doorway and ascend the podium set up for him. After the applause, a hush fell over the gathered, and Akorem began to speak. The more Garak heard, the more disquieted he felt. Here we go again, he thought, his reptilian eyes going flat at the talk of the great wound of the occupation and the return to the old ways.
The old ways, he thought contemptuously, the last refuge of the unimaginative and those lacking vision. You can't erase the past. If you try, you'll never even learn from it. As uneasy as the old man's words made him, the crowd's reaction was worse. They were divided, some shouting and clapping their enthusiasm, others whispering and glancing at one another with furtive body language.
He had heard and seen enough. For all the good it would do him, he determined he would report this back to the civilian government. They needed to understand that the climate on Bajor was shifting abruptly, not for the better. If they were wise and truly serious about the treaty, they should have sent a permanent liaison or made use of him for the job. He knew the people. Some of them even trusted him.
When he reached his shop he closed and locked the doors. He didn't want interruptions. He quickly compiled his report and sent a scrambled, encrypted transmission. After he was done, he decided to leave the shop closed for the day. He didn't like what his instincts were telling him. He hadn't survived as long as he had by ignoring them. He made good use of the time in his stock room, working on orders until quitting time.
On his way past the Replimat, he heard raised voices. His first instinct was not to get involved, but he recognized one of those voices as Leeta's. Stepping around the tables and chairs that were scattered at the entrance, he made his way further in just in time to see a man shove her out of her chair. “Hey!” she cried out more in surprise than pain, glaring at the man from the floor.
“It's not my fault you don't know your place,” the Bajoran sneered.
Garak approached so swiftly and silently that neither noticed him until he was practically on top of the now seated man. “Do you know the place for those who physically assault others on this station?” he asked pleasantly.
“If you know what's good for you, you'll stay out of it, Cardassian,” the man sneered.
“Or what?” Garak asked. “You'll shove me, too?” Although his tone of voice didn't change, he bored a hole in the man with his gaze. He noticed Leeta climbing to her feet in peripheral vision, not breaking his eye contact with the antagonist.
“I don't need this,” the man said, standing abruptly and flinging the chair aside. “Who wants to eat here with the stench of spoonhead in the air?”
Garak caught himself committing the features and clothing, even the earring, to memory and watching his path on his way out. Shaking himself from a bad habit and a worse impulse, he turned to eye Leeta. Although she attempted not to look shaken, he could tell that she was. She was also rubbing her wrist. “Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded tightly, her expression conflicted. “Thank you,” she said stiffly.
“Leeta,” he began, but she cut him off.
“Garak, please don't,” she said. “I'm not ready not to be angry with you.”
He nodded. “I understand. At least let me have a look at that wrist.” She bit her lip, indecision flickering in her eyes, glanced toward the infirmary, and suddenly thrust it toward him without a word.
He probed carefully with his fingers and manipulated it in its full range of motion. She winced painfully as he bent it back. “I think you have a sprain,” he said.
“Can you wrap it?” she asked.
It was on the tip of his tongue to send her to the infirmary. He knew she wouldn't go before it ever got out. He nodded assent. “You'll have to come with me to the shop.”
She gestured for him to lead the way. He could feel her at his back as they walked, an angry presence, a burr of rough edged energy in his bio-electric periphery. Had he not known her as well as he did, he believed he couldn't have tolerated allowing her to stay behind him. He led her into his stock room and pulled out his emergency med kit.
“Have you talked to him?” she asked the question to his back.
“Yes,” he said, turning with the self-adhesive wrap.
She held her arm out to him. “I'm sure the two of you will be very happy together,” she said, her voice brittle and glass edged.
He carefully began to wrap the already swelling joint. “You'll have to tell me if it's too tight,” he said gently. He sighed, the conversation unwelcome but owed to her. “We're not together. We haven't been together since he left me.”
“Don't lie to me, Garak,” she gritted. “It's insulting.”
“I'm not lying,” he said, lifting his gaze to meet hers and holding it as surely as he held her wrist in one hand while wrapping with the other. “You're more angry at the deception than you are at anything else. I can tell that much.” He finished with the bandage and tested the hold then settled his free hand atop hers, sandwiching it between his. “I wasn't pretending to be your friend. I don't expect you to understand or to forgive me, but I do want you to know that.”
“You lie to all your friends?” she asked, pulling her hand back gingerly.
“Yes,” he said, “particularly the ones of which I'm fond.”
“I don't understand that,” she said, sounding more confused than angry.
“I know you don't,” he said, having no intention of explaining or justifying himself to her.
“I wish I could tell when you're lying and when you're telling the truth. If you're actually some huge jerk pretending not to be, I know this isn't going to matter to you, but I don't want things to be this way. I don't want to feel knotted up inside or like I was used and made a fool of.”
“I don't believe that Julian was using you. If he has been using anyone, it's me,” he said without any self-pity or rancor.
“Why would you allow that?” Her anger returned, but he wondered if it was directed at him at all.
“I prefer it to the alternatives,” he said simply.
“I really want to stay mad at you,” she said. “It's harder than it should be, particularly when you save me from self-righteous fanatics.”
“Was that incident because of Akorem's speech this morning?” he asked.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I'm caste-less, the lowest of the low. It didn't matter that he had almost the entire place to choose from. He decided he wanted my specific chair and table. According to the old ways, that means I'm supposed to turn it over to him without a word of complaint. I shouldn't even make him sully himself by having to address me or look directly at me.”
He frowned, no stranger to social stratification or what being at the bottom of the heap was like. He recalled all too well his work with Tolan in the Tarlak sector and the way they were so often ignored as though invisible by those paying their respects at the grand statues of the legates. “I think you need to be careful,” he said. “It may be different on Bajor, but on Cardassia, it's very difficult for those of low to no status to get justice for wrongs done by those who outrank them in importance. Today it's shoving out of a chair. Tomorrow it could be shoving out of an airlock.”
“I've worked hard for everything I have. All my life I've worked hard. Now, some poet from the past comes along and declares none of that matters. I don't matter, just because I don't know my family name. The very occupation he says we need to heal from produced that situation for me, and hundreds if not thousands more just like me. Pretending it never happened may work fine for those of a D'Jarra they find desirable. It does nothing for the rest of us except piling upon yet another indignity and unfairness.” She stopped talking abruptly and focused on him again. “I have no business bringing all of this up to you. I'm sorry.”
“No, I'm sorry,” he surprised himself in saying. It emerged from a part of him that rarely voiced itself, a part that Tain had never touched but Tolan had carefully cultivated, so carefully that not even Mila was aware of his efforts.
She seemed to sense that he spoke of something larger than either of them or their recent division. “I didn't think I'd ever hear that from a Cardassian in a way I could believe.” She touched his cheek lightly with her undamaged hand and let it drop back to her side again. “If I ask you to promise me something and you do, can I trust you to keep your word?”
“You do realize that I could very easily lie about that,” he warned her.
“Yes, I do,” she said.
“Ask,” he said abruptly, intensely uncomfortable with what had just happened and wanting to distance himself from it as quickly as he could. Tolan's path led to rocky ground and uncertain footing.
“Promise me that if you think Julian is getting serious about trying to come back to you, or you think you really want him back, you'll tell me,” she said.
“You're going back to him?” he asked.
“I haven't decided. I'm still furious with him and hurt, way more hurt than I was by you. I won't pretend to understand what it is that pulls you two toward each other, and I really don't want details.” She paced the confines of the stock room and turned back to face him from a greater distance. “But even angry, I know he wouldn't do something like this lightly or on a whim, and neither would you. What do you know of our beliefs?”
“A bit,” he said. He knew more than he wanted.
“Then you know that a pagh's path can sometimes be convoluted and confusing and that sometimes paghs can be bound in ways that are impossible to ignore. It doesn't matter if you and Julian believe in it or not. That doesn't mean you aren't bound in some way.”
He found the talk frustrating. It made him want to shake her. “Please, don't make excuses for us,” he said earnestly. “If you want to go back to Julian and give him another chance, do it because it's what you want. The same applies for if you wish to have me as your friend. See us for who and what we are. Don't use your beliefs to mitigate what either he or I did to you with the deception.”
“I'm not,” she said. “I know it sounds that way to you. As you said earlier, I don't expect you to understand. Will you just promise to do as I've asked? Can you respect me enough to be honest with me if things change or deepen between you two?”
“Yes,” he said. “I promise I'll do that if the two of you are together at the time it happens, not that I expect it.”
“Thank you,” she said. “May I ask one more favor for now?”
“Of course,” he said.
“Would you please walk me to Quark's? I know it isn't far, but I...I suppose I'm still a little shaky from being assaulted like that.”
“I will. I think you should press charges, though.”
She shook her head. “I don't even know who it was.”
“I got a very good look at him. I could easily identify him, and I saw what he did to you. That may be the new law of the land for Bajor, but there are still rules of conduct on this station that don't allow for that sort of violence. If you don't press charges, what's to stop the next one from coming along and doing the same thing or worse?” They walked out of his shop together, and he paused to have the computer lock up.
“I could do that, yes, and then he or his friends could find ways to retaliate. I know how these things go, and I suspect that you do, too. While I appreciate your indignation on my behalf, I think I'll be better off letting it drop.”
She had a point. More frustrated than he was that morning, he walked her in silence the rest of the short distance to Quark's. She visibly relaxed when they passed through the wide doorway. Garak knew that for all of his flaws, Quark wouldn't tolerate foolishness like what happened in the Replimat in his bar. She was safer there. “If you change your mind, just let me know,” he said.
“I will. I'll let you know if I decide to talk to Julian, too. Do you think he actually cares about me?” she asked, somehow looking younger in her sudden vulnerability.
“Yes, I do,” he said, not needing to lie.
She nodded and withdrew from him, heading toward the back to prepare to start her shift. He watched until he could no longer see her and turned to go, much warier on his way home than he had been in a very long time. The entire way he mulled the assailant and the situation, a plan forming that he was positive would earn Odo's ire should he ever learn of it. He supposed he'd have to make certain Odo never found out.
After ordering a mug of hot rokassa juice from his replicator, he sat at his terminal and got to business. The security files were harder to hack than the last time he poured through them. He had to credit Odo for staying on his toes and idly wondered if it was he or Quark who had tripped some alarm last time prompting the change, or if perhaps the changeling simply did it out of paranoia. He searched criminal files going all the way back to the end of the occupation and didn't see a mugshot of his man. It didn't mean he wasn't a criminal, of course. It simply meant he hadn't been caught for anything aboard the station and wasn't notorious enough on Bajor to be flagged.
“Going to make me do this the hard way,” he murmured, sipping from his mug. “I believe I'm going to take offense at that.” The next set of files was easier to access, but the database was tremendous, and he had no simple way to narrow it down other than to key in some very broad parameters, adult male, brown hair, brown eyes, Bajoran. Pictures flipped by on his screen at a speed that would suit a Vulcan. Garak never blinked, watching them all. Almost two minutes later, he said, “Computer stop. Go back ten files.” A slightly younger version of his culprit appeared on his screen. After all of that, it was nothing to discover where he lived. A search of information on his quarters told him that at least officially, he lived alone. It was no guarantee.
“Now,” he said, feeling very satisfied, “let's see where you work and who you work with. Family, either on the station or on Bajor...” Between speaking, he hummed lightly, thoroughly enjoying himself.
Much later in the evening, he left his quarters with a small satchel slung over his shoulder. All was quiet in the H-ring, the lights low, the deep rumble of the station a soothing background noise he barely noticed. It was convenient that they shared the same ring. It made his job of getting there less likely to draw attention. He felt alive all over, every sense keyed and heightened. This was always a dangerous game to play, regardless of the target.
Once outside the quarters, he fished a small tricorder from his bag and ran it. One life sign behind the wall where the bedroom should be, no movement to speak of, slightly lower respiration, temperature, and heart rate than one would expect of a Bajoran who was awake. Asleep. So obliging. It almost puts me in a more forgiving mood, he thought. Almost. He turned it off again and tucked it neatly back into its separate pouch, the entire bag compartmentalized to prevent anything from clacking together inside.
Cracking the door code and disabling the internal computer interface was nothing. He slipped silently into the dark quarters and waited. Did the hiss of the door awaken his quarry? He knew that some Bajoran's hearing was so keen as to seem unnatural to his people. He heard no stirring from the room beyond. The wait allowed his eyes to adjust to the starlight illuminating the quarters from the port and gave him time to take what he needed from his satchel by feel alone. Messy, he saw. He had to pick his way carefully around clutter on the floor. Oh, how he loathed disorder! His opinion of the man fell further.
The bedroom door was open. He stepped through it very quickly and to the side, hugging the wall. Doorways were a danger zone, the place where one was most likely to be spotted. He saw a pale face above a rumpled blanket, the man asleep on his back. He smiled closed lipped and stepped forward. The first magnetic clamp in his thinly gloved hand clicked very softly as he set it into place at the underside of the bed platform. He froze and watched the slack face. Not even a twitch, he thought, still waiting a bit longer to be certain. Extending a fine wire from its tight spool, he snapped it into place in the small slots on the clamp designed just for that purpose and circled the foot of the bed, allowing the wire to extend and retract again to accommodate his movements.
At the other side, he supported the wire gently beneath the fingers of one hand while setting a twin clamp with the other, still no reaction from his quarry. His next move was fast and precise, allowing the wire to pop down onto the bare neck while securing another end beneath the other clamp and using the snip on the spool to cut it to length. As expected, the man snapped awake from the sudden sting, only Garak's firm hand at his shoulder preventing him from slitting his own throat.
“I see I have your attention,” he hissed softly.
“Computer, lights!” the Bajoran croaked in a panic. Nothing happened.
“No,” Garak said, tutting him. “We can't have that. You see, there's a place and time for everything, wouldn't you agree? Darkness suits this sort of activity.”
“I don't know who you are, but I swear you'll pay for this,” the man growled. Although he attempted to sound menacing, Garak could hear the underlying waver in the bravado.
“Oh, how rude of me not to introduce myself,” he said. “I'm the spoonhead. I'm surprised you couldn't tell by the smell, but I suppose your sensory lapse is understandable due to the circumstances.” He saw the chest rise sharply with the man's semi-panicked inhale. Good. He did fear Cardassians. Garak honestly didn't care why. “I'm going to take my hand off your shoulder. You'd be very wise not to try to move much. There's a wire across your throat taut enough to slit it if you try to sit up and thin enough to slice your fingers off if you're foolish enough to pry at it. You are, of course, welcome to test this for yourself.”
He released his pressure and squatted back on his heels so that his face would be at the bed level, watching intently. “I'm glad to see you're not as stupid as your actions earlier this evening led me to believe.”
“So this is revenge for that tun'jarra?” He sounded incredulous and a little outraged on top of his obvious fear.
Garak chuckled low, an ugly sound. “Oh, no. You completely misunderstand. You see, I found the Emissary's speech quite inspiring. All that talk of a return to the old ways. Do you know that my people have something of a caste system, too? Hearing that talk made me homesick. It made me realize that I've been untrue to my calling, settling for the dull life of a simple tailor. Would you care to guess what my 'D'jarra' is?” he asked liltingly. Nothing but shallow breathing followed his query. “No?” He pressed gently on the wire with a gloved finger.
“Y-you're an assassin,” the man yelped.
Garak let up. “Rather crude, not entirely accurate, but close enough for my purposes, I suppose,” he said in a way that voiced disappointment. “You could, of course, report me to security. Once I leave this room, I have no real control over what you do. Knowing Odo, he's going to want more than your word to have me arrested, particularly after Leeta tells him how I prevented you from doing her further harm. As efficient as he is, a thorough investigation will still take him at least twenty-six hours, possibly more because I'm very good at covering my tracks. Do you have any idea what I could do in twenty-six hours? Think of the collateral damage of our little disagreement, your work detail in maintenance, cute little Jerra Revan in Dahkur Province.”
The man swallowed heavily and a thin line of black appeared on his throat, all color leached from the room in the pale starlight. It trickled downward toward the mattress, and Garak watched him twitch. “Please,” he said, all bravado gone, only naked appeal left. “What do you want from me?”
Garak leaned closer so that his breath would tickle the large curve of ear. “I've known people like you,” he whispered. “Frustrated little people who covet the power of others but don't have the...initiative...to seize any of their own. This return to the old ways must seem like a windfall from the prophets for you, an excuse to tread on those lower on the rung by accident of birth or misfortune of the occupation. The way I understand it, and please, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm hardly a scholar of Bajoran history.
“Yes, those of lower caste and the tun'jarra, those with no status at all, are expected to defer to their so-called betters, but you have a duty to them not to abuse them. I suggest you study your own texts, or I may find myself completely overwhelmed with nostalgia and have to pay your friends a visit before I come back to see you again. Do we understand each other?” he asked.
“Yes,” the man said, his voice now starting to shake. Garak could see a sheen of sweat on the pale face. The stress of the situation was beginning to wear his victim down.
“Another thing,” he said. “I find the term 'spoonhead' to be quite hurtful, and I can't seem to keep myself from lashing out when I'm hurt. Do you think I should see someone about that? Is it...normal?”
“N...no. I mean yes! I mean, you don't need to see anyone. I...I apologize for offending you,” he said in a rush.
“Apology accepted,” Garak said, sliding one hand down the man's arm until he reached his hand and bracing him at the shoulder with the other. He loosely clasped his fingers around his index finger and gave a sharp jerk. The Bajoran howled in pain, Garak's hand at his shoulder preventing further, graver injury to the pinned throat. “You sprained my friend's wrist,” he said coldly. “Shall I convey an apology to her as well?”
“Ye-es,” came the ragged reply.
“I'm happy to see you're more reasonable than I expected,” he said. He released the clamp closest to him and circled the bed to release the other, tucking everything neatly back into his pack. He wasn't at all surprised that the man didn't move. His eyes glittered as they tried to follow Garak's movements, but it was obvious to the Cardassian that it was too dark for the man to see him as anything more than a disconcerting shadow. “I'm leaving now. I do hope that you'll set a good example for all of your friends in how to behave toward those of lesser status than your own. The very best way to teach is by example. Good night.”
He exited as quietly as he entered and took as much care returning to his quarters as he did upon leaving them. He knew there was a possibility his victim might do something stupid and actually file a report. It would be a shame if it came to that, as he didn't make idle threats. All in all, he believed the excursion was successful, even if it truly had left him feeling a bit nostalgic.
Everything Old... Part I
Apr. 21st, 2010 07:45 pmAuthor Notes: This story is set during the episode Accession. It was one of the creepier episodes to me, the whole idea that on the word of one person speaking with supposed divine authority an entire society could be taken back two hundred years and return to a form of oppression that rivaled the occupation in its own grim way. It seems to me that DS9, unlike some of the other Trek series, just keeps getting more relevant over time, not less.
Summary: Bajoran society is rocked to its foundations by the return of Akorem Laan from the distant past to replace Captain Sisko as Emissary to the Prophets. Not a single part of the station is left untouched. Julian battles staff shortages and his own internal demons as he attempts to set things right with Leeta. In a climate of hostility and paranoia, no one is safe, not even Garak who sought to make Deep Space Nine his haven, only to find that havens can quickly become traps.
Author: Dark Sinestra
Date Written: April 2010
Category: Slash, Het
Rating: PG-13 for adult situations and violence
Disclaimer: If I could claim them I would, but then you guys would get mad at me because they're really Paramount's. Paramount, I know the economy is tough and MGM is in huge trouble, but please don't sue. I have nothing but the voices in my head.
Word Count: 18,215
Don't throw the past away.
You might need it some rainy day.
Dreams can come true again,
when everything old is new again.
–Peter Allen, “Everything Old is New Again”
Julian
O'Brien's Quarters
After nearly an hour of packing away cable, burnt out parts, randomly appearing single socks and other articles of clothing Julian didn't really want to touch, much less look at too closely, he straightened and fixed Miles with a curious look. “Remind me again how I got roped into helping you clean up this mess,” he said.
The chief snorted. “You helped make it. Besides, how many times have I let you crash here, crash being the operative word, after so much drink you couldn't find your own quarters, much less walk yourself there?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Julian sighed and reached for a bolt small enough to choke Molly, tossing it into a box with all the other junk. He was trying his best not to have a bad attitude. It wasn't about the cleaning, after all, but about the reason for it, the return of Keiko and Molly on a permanent basis, Keiko's botanical survey on Bajor over after its extension. Miles was the only person on the station who truly shared his sense of fun and interest in the history of the British Isles and the culture surrounding it. They both knew that their nights of spending hours in the holosuite fighting the Battle of Britain or Quark's playing darts were over. “You'll be glad to see them,” he offered. He realized he wasn't going to succeed in making himself happy about the situation. It didn't mean he couldn't make Miles feel better.
“Of course I will,” Miles said. “I'm tired of bein' shocked every time I see Molly at how much bigger she is and how many more words she knows. An' Keiko an' I have a lot of catching up to do. It'll be good for all of us.”
“Exactly,” Julian said, forcing a smile. “I suppose it means I'll be spending more time with Leeta, too, particularly now that she's not being worked half to death by Quark.”
Miles paused halfway in the act of tossing a part and pinned him with a keen look. “Y' don't sound too happy about that.”
“Nonsense,” Julian said, turning away from him and looking for something else to toss in the box.
The Irishman snorted. “Don't give me that. Julian, I know you too well. Every time I bring Leeta up lately, you act strange. Things not goin' well? The times I see th' two o' you out, you seem to be havin' a good time.”
There was no way he could tell him the truth about Garak and what he had been doing. Miles hated Garak too much ever to give him objective advice. Worse, rumors could spread. He didn't want Leeta hearing about his indiscretion from a third party. However, the temptation to say something, maybe something less specific, was strong. “We should lift the sofa,” he said, “and check under it. Molly could reach a hand under there and find something unsafe. Or Keiko might try to move it while cleaning and realize you weren't as tidy as she thought.”
“Uh huh,” he said, shaking his head. “Bein' cryptic won't let me help you. I have a successful relationship, even though we've had our share of problems. It's somethin' I do happen to know a little somethin' about.” The two of them lifted the sofa and set it back. The floor beneath seemed to be breeding its own special colony of dust tarantulas interspersed with random bits of circuitry, screws, and bolts. Both men made a face. “Hold that thought. I need to clean this up.”
While Miles went to fetch the cleaning tube, Julian picked out the bits of metal from the filth and tossed them. He mulled whether he wanted to say anything, and if so, what he wanted to say. He knew he'd have to take care. Miles read him better than he gave him credit for. Underestimating him had already once come back to bite him. He wasn't in the habit of making the same mistake twice, except when it came to Garak, apparently. As far as the Cardassian was concerned, he had long ago lost count of their myriad mistakes or how many times they repeated them with creative variations.
After the mess was clean and they had the couch back in place, he said, “I suppose I'm just a little confused. On one hand, I really care about her. On the other, I don't know that I want the same level of commitment she does.”
“You're not confused,” Miles said with a shrug. “It sounds like you're clear about what you want. Have you been that clear with her?”
He shook his head, his eyes sliding guiltily to the side.
“Well, that's the problem,” Miles continued. “You can't lead somebody on in a relationship like that. If y' don't feel what she feels, you owe it t' her t' tell her and let her make her own decision about whether t' stay or move on.”
“You're right,” he said, nodding. “It's not fair to keep her focused on me with a false premise. I just...how do you tell somebody that?”
“Th' same way you told me,” Miles answered. “Straightforward an' honest. An' don't sit there an' feed her that line about bein' confused. I have yet t' meet a woman that doesn't have a bullshit meter that'd put any one o' ours t' shame. Now, I appreciate all th' help.” He turned and walked over to his sideboard, opened the cabinet beneath, and pulled out an unopened bottle of single malt. Turning, he offered it to Julian with a smile. “Been savin' this one for a while. I want you t' have it.”
“Thank you, Chief,” he said, genuinely touched and taking the bottle.
“Be off wit' you, then,” O'Brien added humorously. “I need t' start gettin' ready. These clean quarters won't mean a thing if I show up at th' airlock lookin' like a wild heathen.”
“No, I imagine not,” the doctor said with a low laugh. “I'll catch up with you soon. Congratulations about their return.”
“Thanks,” Miles said.
If both of them were slightly forcing their smiles, Julian wasn't about to be the one to bring it up. He left in a hurry, the cool neck of the Scotch bottle a comfortable feel in his hand. He let the bottle swish against his leg as he walked for the turbolift, deep in thought. He contemplated what Garak would do and immediately set aside that line of thought. He already knew what Garak would do, the same thing he had been doing, carry on as though nothing was wrong or going on, a lie of omission. If asked, no doubt he'd come up with a very facile lie of commission, too. That wasn't the way to go, and he knew it.
He was almost to the turbolift when he realized he had left behind his bomber jacket. “Damn,” he said aloud. He decided he'd go back for it some other time. Miles was probably already in the shower. He didn't need to delay him any further than he already had by staying hours longer in the holosuite than they intended. He returned to his quarters to change into more appropriate clothing and put away his gift before going to Leeta's quarters for dinner. She always teased him about his costumes to the point that if he could avoid wearing them around her, he did so.
He dressed nicely and went through several speeches in his mind while he got ready. None of them sounded right. Was hurting her the right solution? Wasn't there some way to be somewhat truthful without blurting it all out? It wasn't as though Garak was a threat. He was perfectly fine with their arrangement, not pushing him to leave Leeta or make a decision. What if she pushes? He wondered. Would he be willing to give up what he was doing with Garak to stay with her? He didn't know, and he suspected that his uncertainty was a self created smoke screen to shield him from an uncomfortable truth.
By the time he reached her quarters, his palms were sweating. He hailed her and stepped inside to find the table set and food being put out. She smiled brightly. “You have perfect timing,” she said. “I didn't want to try to hail you since I knew that the chief's family is coming back tonight, but I was really hoping we could eat together before I had to go on shift. Did you have a good time?”
“We did,” he said. “We stayed too long and almost got Miles in a bind with cleaning up, but it was worth it. Do you want any help with anything?”
“Just eating the food,” she said. “Go ahead and have a seat.”
“You're in a good mood,” he observed, unsure if that was a good or a bad thing in light of what he wanted to say. She might receive things a little better being in a good mood, but he'd feel worse for having destroyed it.
“Things have been so much better at the bar lately. You have no idea how much stress that was off my shoulders. I'm even going to be able to start setting aside a little every month now. A few of us are talking about trying to start an investment pool. Just us Bajorans. I know better than to try to do business with any of the Ferengi. They'd rob us blind and smile at us while doing it.”
“Couldn't Rom give you some pointers?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Rom is a brilliant engineer. Money isn't his strong suit. If it was, he wouldn't have been stuck working for Quark all those years. Once we have enough saved up, we intend to contract with somebody from the Ministry of Finance to help us decide what parts of the economy would be the soundest investments. I've heard that exports stand a chance of becoming a large growth sector.”
She was so animated and enthusiastic, her dark eyes shining like twin gems. He struggled with himself to start the conversation he knew they needed to have. “I hate to change the subject abruptly,” he said, “but there's something that has been on my mind for a while now that I need to talk to you about.”
“I'm listening,” she said, her expression growing more wary at his tone of voice. “I hope this isn't about my not wanting to borrow money from you or not wanting to talk much about my past.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Although...I wonder if my attitude hasn't contributed to that reluctance.”
“What attitude?” She tilted her head and took a bite of her food.
He supposed he had been too good at hiding his distance and keeping his secrets. She really hadn't noticed anything, which made it all much more difficult to discuss. He had two false starts before asking, “Do you ever get the feeling we may be taking things a little too quickly?”
“Not really,” she said with a one shouldered shrug. “We haven't even talked about moving in together or anything that drastic. Until recently, my work schedule kept us from seeing more than a couple of hours of each other at a time. Have I done or said something that makes you think I have unusual expectations of you?”
“No,” he said carefully. He took a bite, too, and chewed it slowly, stalling as much as working up his courage. “We've never discussed...being exclusive, though.”
She set her fork down and wiped her mouth with a frown. “You're right. We haven't. Julian, my job puts me in contact with a lot of men, and there's a level of flirtatiousness that's required of me to do the job well. I haven't extended that flirtatiousness beyond the parameters of the job or accepted any invitations to dates, not to say that there haven't been plenty. I was under the impression you wouldn't be happy if I did, and quite frankly, since we've gotten a little more serious, I haven't been tempted. Have you?”
“I...” He took a deep breath and held it a moment before letting it out in a whoosh. “Actually, yes, I have,” he said.
She folded her arms. “How long have you felt this way?”
He wasn't sure how to answer that question. “For a while now,” he said. “I've wanted to bring it up before, but while you were going through everything with Quark, I didn't feel like it was the right time.”
She seemed to give that some thought, the direction of her focus turning more inward. “I suppose I should thank you for that,” she said. “I was under enough stress then. That's true. What do you want? Why are we having this conversation? Are you asking me for permission to see somebody else while you're seeing me, wanting to find out where I see us heading? I'm having a hard time understanding where you're going with this.”
“I wanted to be honest with you,” he said, barely able to hold her gaze.
“I got that. To what end? Julian, this vagueness isn't like you, and given the subject matter, that makes me uncomfortable. Are you trying to break up with me? If you are, just say so.”
“No, I'm not trying to break up with you. I don't want to. I like what we have, but...I just...I'm not sure I'm ready for it to be exclusive.” He knew he was bungling this badly, knew he was being a coward.
“Who is it?” she asked the question he had desperately hoped that she wouldn't. “Dax?” Her voice sharpened with the name.
“No, not Dax.” He had a sneaking suspicion she'd find that easier to swallow than the real culprit. “It's...Garak.”
She let out a little bark of a laugh that didn't sound even slightly amused. “Wow,” she said, staring at him. “You do realize that's a bit more than just not being exclusive, don't you? Wanting to go back to your ex?”
He shook his head. “I don't want to go back to him. I...I know that doesn't work.”
“You know what else doesn't work?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “How do you humans put it? Having your bread and eating it, too?”
“Cake,” he muttered.
“Right,” she said, her eyes flashing hotly. “Thank you for that. I'd hate for you to misunderstand me. Having your cake and eating it, too. You want to string me and Garak along until you can make up your mind what you want. That doesn't work for me. Not at all, Julian. Garak doesn't strike me as the sort who'd accept that, either. He deserves better.”
“He...has accepted it,” he said, wincing inwardly.
Her mouth dropped open with an utterly incredulous look. It took her a few moments to gather herself enough to speak. “You discussed this with him first?” she asked, her usually soft voice whip crack sharp.
“It wasn't exactly a discussion,” he breathed.
She stood abruptly. “What exactly was it? No, on second thought, don't you dare answer that. I don't need details.” She marched for the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked, standing also and stepping away from the table.
“None of your business, but I can tell you one thing. I want you gone by the time I get back, and take your things with you if you don't want them incinerated.”
Garak
Private Quarters
Garak hadn't been home five minutes when the door chime drew him from changing his tunic to something more comfortable. He finished tying the lounging robe before inquiring who was at the door and admitting her. “Ah, my dear, what a pleasant surprise. I was just...”
She didn't let him get more out than that, crossing to him swiftly and striking him open handed on the cheek. The sharp crack of it seemed to ricochet in the close quarters. Her fury was palpable. “How dare you?” she said through gritted teeth. “How dare you smile at me and pretend to be my friend while doing Prophets know what with Julian behind my back?”
Garak worked his jaw and surreptitiously tongued his lower molars to make sure none of them were loose. She packed quite a belt. He was glad it hadn't been a fist instead. “Do you want a facile justification,” he asked, “or would you simply like for me to allow you to vent your rage?”
“The sad thing is,” she said, drawing herself up ramrod straight, “that I really liked you. I truly believed you were my friend. And while it hurts me that you would do something with my boyfriend behind my back, what hurts the most is that you'd keep smiling at me to my face and acting like nothing had changed. I'd at least be able to respect you if you spited me openly. The thing that makes me sick? I've defended you. You have no idea how many times the other girls have said things to me about the time I've spent with you, how many times I've said, 'He's not like the other Cardassians. He's a truly decent man.' I guess the joke's on me, and I really am as stupid and naïve as they said I was for ever trusting you.” Without another word, she turned on her heel and left him there, the hiss of his door an anticlimactic punctuation to her departure.
He sighed and rubbed absently at his still stinging cheek. He hadn't wanted to hurt her, and if Julian had been able to keep his mouth shut, it wouldn't have happened. “Humans,” he growled under his breath. “Sentimental fools, every last one of them.”
Too annoyed to focus on reading, he set up his kotra board so that he could run through several advanced strategy exercises. He needed something interactive and challenging to keep him from stewing over the situation. He was certain that Julian would be along, if not that night, then some time soon, to bemoan what had happened. If he was to get through such a conversation without a completely venomous attitude, he knew he had to distance himself from his reaction. The sad thing is, he thought as he moved the first piece, I liked her, too. He had no expectation that she would ever understand or believe that he could view someone as a friend and do underhanded things to or around them. Few ever did understand such things about his people.
As he moved the pieces across the board, he envisioned warships in three dimensional space, strikes and counter-strikes, bold captures, unconventional maneuvers. How differently might his life have gone had he been in Central Command? Despite the fact that he loathed so many of the old money military leaders, there was a certain appeal to a well executed plan, simple on the surface and layered beneath. Such thoughts led to a memory of Tain's last moments aboard the bird of prey before Odo knocked Garak out and stole him away. “He overreached,” he murmured to himself, knocking one of the last pieces gently off the board with the one he held in hand. “Forgot what he was. Who he was. There were many reasons for the Order not to possess military equipment, not simply because it would've made us too powerful.”
That Cardassia was gone. Frustratingly, he didn't know enough of what had risen to take its place to know whether this was a reason to be glad or worried. He hadn't been impressed by what he had seen so far. They seemed too mired in internal power struggles to deal decisively with external threats. They had never been more weak or vulnerable in his lifetime, quite possibly. He realized he had lost taste for his exercise and set his piece aside. Going to the bar was out of the question. Leeta deserved her space without having him in her face. He'd have to give her some time to heal from that hurt before returning to Quark's during her work shift.
Luckily, he kept himself stocked with kanar, rising and crossing to pour himself a drink. He was on his third when Julian chimed his door. It crossed his mind to leave him out there. Such passivity, however, really wasn't his way. “Enter,” he said more sharply than was his wont.
Julian crossed his threshold and stopped just within, letting the door shut at his back. “I suppose she came to confront you,” he said after taking a quick look at his demeanor.
“Yes,” he said.
“What did she say?” he asked hesitantly.
“She thanked me for taking you off her hands, because she has secretly been wanting to date Rom for months,” he answered with cloying sarcasm. “What do you think she said, you idiot?”
Julian winced. “I deserved that,” he said.
“Oh, please,” Garak sighed, throwing up a hand. “If you came here to feel sorry for yourself or to use my anger as a way to flagellate, I'd just as soon you left. I'm not interested in coddling you or satisfying your masochistic urges to flay your conscience. You are quite possibly one of the most selfish people I have ever known.” He paused to let that sink in. “I would remind you that I am Cardassian as I say this. I would remind you further that this is coming from me.”
“I know cheating on her was selfish,” Julian snapped.
“Cheating on her? Yes, that was selfish, but I'm talking about telling her. Why would you do such a thing? You hurt her for no good reason except to assuage your own guilt.”
“That's not true. I...I wanted to give her the choice,” he said.
“What choice?”
“I didn't want her being with me on false pretenses. If she wanted to be exclusive, and I didn't, it wasn't fair of me to trick her into staying in an arrangement that wasn't what she thought it was.”
“I see,” Garak said, shaking his head in disgust. “Much preferable for her to be miserable and know this truth of yours than happy. So, what brought this on? Did she ask you to move in with her? To marry you? No, wait, I know. She wanted you to move to Bajor with her.”
“I don't appreciate your sarcasm. She didn't do anything. This was my decision. Miles said...”
“Ah, Miles. It all makes such perfect sense now. Did you tell him about us, too? Should I put a call to Dax so that the entire station can get in on this?” So much for kotra taming his fires. He just had to get contemplative about Cardassia before the doctor arrived.
“No, I didn't tell him about us. I just told him I didn't think I wanted to be exclusive to Leeta. Look, I don't understand why you're acting like this. If anything, I thought you'd probably be relieved,” he said, his brows low over narrowed eyes.
“Relieved that you hurt an innocent woman who never did anything to either of us? If that's your view of my habitual emotional state, I'm shocked you want to be in the same room with me alone,” he said, setting his empty kanar glass down on his table. “I realize this may be difficult for you to understand, but try. You and I have both said on numerous occasions that when we step into the confines of a relationship, it doesn't work. Did it ever occur to you part of the reason I allowed what I allowed in the dressing room was because you were in another relationship, not in spite of it?
“I can tell by your expression that it did not,” he continued. “I have no intention of flaunting a connection to you in front of Leeta, or anybody else on this station. The only thing this changes is that I'm now concerned that I made a mistake in allowing what I did, both because of its consequences for Leeta and your appalling lapse in discretion. I trusted that you'd be able to handle yourself. I couldn't have been more wrong.”
“I can't believe you! How dare you stand there and get self-righteous with me? You're as guilty as I am.”
“No, Doctor, I'm not. I would never have told her just so that I could make myself feel better about deceiving her, and that's where you and I differ tremendously.”
“Don't 'Doctor' me, not right now,” Julian snapped, his eyes flashing.
“Fine, Julian,” he said, already tired of this and wanting him to leave. “I can only surmise that you came here either hoping that I'd be glad to hear the news and therefore amenable to offering you...comfort,” he laced the word with a subtle hint of contempt and innuendo both, “or to attempt damage control. Either way, I have no interest in being cooperative tonight.”
“You're not the only one thinking I made a mistake,” Julian said spitefully.
Garak's smile was more of a sneer. “Now it's my turn to get some honesty?” he asked. “You're wanting to take a little kilo of flesh on your way out the door?” He spread his arms. “Do your best. Take a parting shot.”
“You'd have to have a heart for me to hurt it,” he said. “I'm done with this. Sorry I bothered to try to give you the courtesy of being informed.”
The tailor laughed harshly. “That's rich. The day I need to get my intelligence from you is the day I'll make sure somebody puts me out of my misery for being useless, ineffectual, and blind. If I wanted to spy on your people, do you honestly think I'd have ever approached a mere doctor? You didn't even have the foresight to understand your own girlfriend well enough to know she'd come straight to me after your pathetic confession. Why don't you run along while you still have a few tatters of dignity to trail behind you, or is it already too late for that?”
Julian stalked from the quarters without another word, his face stiff and pale. Garak snorted another soft, derisive laugh at his back just as the door was closing. Not six hours after Julian's breach with Leeta, and already the two of them were back in familiar territory. He hoped the little idiot had it in him to patch things up with her. It was the only way he saw himself being able to abide his company at all after this.
Julian
The Infirmary
Julian watched Major Kira and Captain Sisko escort his most recent patient out of the infirmary, the three still deep in conversation. “Akorem Laan,” he murmured. He had read the man's poetry when he was working to familiarize himself more with Bajoran culture. He was quite good, but more remarkably, he was a tremendously important literary figure in their history. Having seen Kira's reaction to meeting the man, he likened it to getting to meet Sir Francis Bacon, or perhaps Lord Byron.
“Do you think it's true?” one of the Bajoran day nurse's questions cut into his thoughts.
“What?” he asked, glancing away from the door and over to her.
“That he's the Emissary,” she said a bit breathlessly, her hazel eyes wide.
“I don't know,” he answered honestly. To the best of his ability, he had avoided talk of the captain's role in Bajor's spiritual life. As an officer and a member of Starfleet, the entire thing made him somewhat uncomfortable. He couldn't imagine how much worse it had been for the captain for these past few years. If Akorem's story was true, perhaps the wormhole aliens had decided that a Bajoran would make a better Emissary after all. “What I do know,” he said, offering her a slight smile, “is that whether he's the Emissary or not, we still have work to do today.” Taking the hint, she smiled and nodded, getting back to her duties.
The rest of his work day was relatively uneventful, although he believed he'd be hard pressed to encounter anything else quite as remarkable as having a patient beamed into his infirmary not just from a solar ship like the captain and Jake had piloted to Cardassian space but from over two hundred years in the past. It was events such as this which reminded him of one of the main reasons he chose Deep Space Nine as his post. For a little while that day, he felt as he did the first time he set foot on the station, excited about all of the possibilities.
As the end of his shift drew to a close, Nurse Frendel arrived. Julian told him of their unusual patient and stressed the need for discretion. Frendel seemed quite excited by the news, but there was something else in his dark eyes, a sort of mirth Julian had rarely seen. “What is it?” he asked the man. “You look like someone with exciting news of your own.”
“Well,” the Bajoran said with an easy smile, “you didn't hear it from me, but I have it on very good authority that Mrs. O'Brien is pregnant.”
“Really?” Julian's eyes widened. “That's wonderful news! Thanks for telling me, and mum's the word. I don't know where the rumor came from.” Grinning, he signed out and left for the evening, heading down to Quark's. He knew that Miles would be getting off soon, too, and likely passing by there. He wanted to have the opportunity to congratulate him. As soon as he saw him, he snagged him and dragged him into the bar for a drink.
As was so often the case when pregnancies were announced, it seemed practically everyone had an experience or opinion, from Quark reminiscing about Nog's childhood to Worf's incredible discomfort with memories of delivering Molly, something that surprised Julian to no end. Yet, it was Miles' attitude that surprised him the most. Instead of the excitement he expected, the man seemed more apprehensive, possibly even disappointed. He understood his reasoning, having wanted more time with Keiko for going out and doing adult things. At the same time, he recalled his own lonely childhood and how often he wished for a sibling. Molly would be happier in the long run. He suspected the chief would, too, once he became used to the idea.
He watched him leave and turned back toward the bar. Quark made his way back down and leaned closer. “For a man about to become a father for a second time, you'd think he'd show a little more enthusiasm,” he said, “instead of crying and moaning about not having enough time to spend with his fe-male. Don't get me wrong. Mrs. O'Brien is...delectable...”
“Quark!” Julian said, scowling.
“Oh, don't start,” Quark snorted and waved a hand dismissively. “Just because I hit on her that one time. I wasn't myself, mind you. Would you like for me to start reminding you of what they said about you and Major Kira after that little incident?”
“No, I wouldn't,” he said firmly. “Besides, I wasn't talking about that. You don't go talking about another man's wife that way. It's disrespectful.”
“Almost as disrespectful as cheating on your girlfriend with your ex,” Quark whispered, widening his eyes for emphasis. “Oh, yes, word gets around quickly on this station, Doctor. I don't think I need a lecture on morals from you, thank you very much. Hurting one of my best workers. If her productivity drops, I should find a way to charge you for it. I've been looking into the possibility.”
Julian dropped his voice low, too. “Don't stand there and pretend you give a damn about Leeta, or anyone else in this bar,” he hissed. “You were more than happy to let her get evicted before your entire work force rebelled. I wonder what the FCA would think about your real solution?” He glared daggers.
Quark put a hand up to his chest. “No need to get riled,” he said. “Nobody else will hear about what you did to Leeta from me. I was just making a point.”
Julian glared a moment longer. “So was I,” he said tightly, slapping payment to the bar top and walking away. He needed to get out of there before Leeta came on shift anyway. He didn't want to upset her worse than he already had.
Just as he exited, Nurse Frendel hailed him over his comm. “I'm sorry to disturb you, Doctor, but I need to speak with you in the infirmary.”
“On my way,” he said, actually glad of the distraction. He found the man waiting for him in his office. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked, having the door shut behind him so that they could have some privacy.
“It's not a problem, Sir, but we've just been informed that the new Emissary is scheduled to make his first public speech tomorrow morning on the Promenade in front of the temple. I know that usually at least twenty-six hours are expected for non-emergency rescheduling of personnel, but I thought, well...I hoped that we could make an exception for the Bajoran nurses and medics scheduled for tomorrow.”
Julian nodded. “Yes, in this case, I don't see why not. Call Nurses Walzcek and Dubois and Medic Tarsen, and see if they can come in and cover for Jondell, Rankar, and Pol for the morning. If not, we can probably get away with being understaffed for an hour or two, unless there's an emergency.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Frendel beamed.
He turned for the door and paused. “This really means a lot to you, doesn't it? I don't think I've ever seen you so enthusiastic about anything.”
“Permission to speak freely?” the man asked.
“Of course,” Julian nodded. “You know I prefer my staff to speak their minds.”
“Yes,” he said, “but I also know you're not entirely comfortable with our belief system, particularly as it pertains to your captain. I've always tried to respect that.”
“I appreciate the consideration,” he said, “but it's not necessary. If I've given the impression that I don't want to hear your opinions regarding the captain, then I apologize. You're a damned good nurse. I wouldn't be able to keep this place running the way it does without you, which means I respect your opinions, even those that don't pertain directly to the infirmary.”
The Bajoran relaxed somewhat and smiled again, this time with more warmth. “Thank you, Sir. That really means a lot to me. I respect you, too. Like most of my people, I've been pleased with the fulfillment of some of our prophecies of late. Your captain is important to us, but not without some controversy. I'm...relieved...that it seems perhaps the Prophets have sensed our confusion and division and sent us someone that all of Bajor can rally behind. No offense, Sir.”
“None taken,” Julian said. “I confess the concept has caused me some personal discomfort and is also controversial with Starfleet. If Akorem is the new Emissary, there's a good possibility that many of these problems and conflicts will be solved.”
“That's what I'm hoping,” the nurse said fervently.
Julian smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “On that we're in full agreement. Make the schedule shifts, and contact me if there's any major hitch or an emergency. Otherwise, good night for real this time.”
“Yes, Sir,” the man said, following him out of the office much more relaxed than when he entered.
The Radicals, Part III--Conclusion
Apr. 15th, 2010 05:41 amThe Promenade
The picket line outside Quark's that morning caused quite a stir. The entire area was abuzz with rumors and gossip. Julian saw Leeta prominently to the fore with Rom and gave her his most encouraging smile. He had to admire the workers for taking a stand, particularly the Ferengi for whom this could be an utter disaster. It quickly became apparent that getting any work done was going to be difficult, especially when Miles showed up, fired up and enthusiastic about the stir.
“C'n you believe it?” the Irishman asked. “A real, honest to goodness strike right here on Deep Space Nine, and it's all because of you.”
“Me?” Julian widened his eyes. “Hardly. You were there when he came in to talk about it. I didn't even remember saying anything to him about unions. I was probably just trying to make him feel better or get him to stop complaining. I was tired that night.”
“Whatever your intentions, it was the right fuel to throw on the right fire at the right time. Look at 'em. I bet we'd get a better look from the second level.”
Nodding, he followed the engineer up the stairs, the two of them positioning themselves with a good view of the striking workers below and the second level entrance. “I wonder why they didn't block this one off, too?” Miles said.
“I would imagine Captain Sisko had something to do with that,” Julian replied. “I don't think it would be legal to allow them to close the bar off entirely.”
“Probably not,” the engineer agreed. “I'm surprised he's allowing as much as he is.”
“It's a fine line to tread, not infringing on their rights or Quark's and not interfering with an alien society. Makes me glad I'm not a captain,” he said. “As upset as I've seen Leeta at Quark at times, I'd be tempted to run him off the station, the bar be damned.”
Miles snorted a chuckle. “So, you'd say you've started feelin' more protective of Leeta lately?”
Julian eyed him warily. “I said no such thing.” To get him off the subject, he pointed at a Tellarite walking past. “What do you think? In, our out?”
“Huh?” Miles asked.
The Tellarite walked into the bar from the upper level. “Oh, too late!” he said, grinning. Miles returned the grin, catching on. They made quite the entertaining game of it until Worf unexpectedly walked inside. Before he could even think to stop him, the engineer started off after him. “Where are you going?” he asked, hurrying to catch up and not liking where this was heading.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the lower light in the bar. The scene was almost surreal, as what few customers there were all seemed to be served by identical clones of Quark. It distracted him to the point that he tuned out Miles' conversation with Worf to try to see what was actually going on. One of the Quarks rippled with static, a tray he was bearing crashing to the floor in a messy spill of drinks. Another Quark cried out, “Not again!” and hurried over to the site with a large rag.
Holograms, he realized. He's using holograms. He had to give it to the bar owner for ingenuity, however flawed. Worf's roar snapped him back to his true reason for entering the bar. He looked over just in time to see the Klingon lunge at Miles. “Hey!” he snapped, quickly trying to interpose himself between the two before things got ugly. He couldn't tell who did it in the confusion that followed, but the next he knew, he was flying over a table and falling to the floor head first. He managed to get his hands under him at the last minute, taking a grazing blow instead of a full on face plant.
“No fighting in the bar!” Quark bellowed from the first floor. “Security! Security!”
He didn't resist the Bajoran officer who hauled him to his feet, gruffly checked his forehead, and snapped him in holding cuffs. To his relief, neither did Worf or Miles. Odo marched the three of them out of the bar with such a look of disgust that he felt like a misbehaving teenager. It was completely humiliating. The security chief held his tongue until he had them in his office, only then whirling on them. “If I lock the three of you in one holding cell, will you beat one another senseless?” he asked.
“No,” came three muttered replies, not a one of them able to look Odo in the eyes.
“Pity,” Odo said. He shoved them into a cell and removed their cuffs, leaving them without another word.
He knew that if he looked at either one of them, he'd say something he'd regret. Setting his jaw, he stood at parade rest in front of the energy barrier. The other two joined him, and that was how the Captain found them not much later. “I don't believe what I'm seeing,” Sisko said.
Julian could hardly believe it himself, particularly when Miles tried to blame him for his injury. It wasn't serious. His pride was hurt far worse than his head, but it was the principle of the matter. He didn't allow the accusation that he got in the way to stand unchallenged. In the end he wasn't surprised to hear that all three of them would be cooling their heels in the cell together overnight. “I hope you're proud of yourselves,” he said coldly after the captain had left, and he staked his claim to the bunk. Those two idiots could sleep on the floor for all he cared. Miles looked at him and seemed to think better of trying to talk. That suited him just fine. It was going to be a long sixteen hours.
Garak
Garak's Clothiers
Garak had to admit that what was bad for Quark's business had turned quite profitable for him. Deprived of the bar, people were more inclined to shop and gossip. He had only to look outside his door to see the picket line. What he had missed but was told about by several different customers with great glee was the arrest of several Starfleeters by security earlier in the day. The figure varied from two to seven, for reasons that ranged from brawling to vandalism of the bar. He found the latter claim difficult to believe. In nearly every story Worf was implicated, with the other officers and personnel changing with each wild tale.
The only name that truly interested him was Julian's. He left his shop for a late lunch, only to see Leeta beckon quickly to him. He veered her way, greeted Rom cordially, and leaned in close to listen to her whisper. “I heard Julian got hurt,” she said. “Could you find out for me, please? I'm worried, but I can't leave the picket line.”
“I was trying to find that out, myself,” he assured her and squeezed her shoulder. “I'll return when I have news.”
“Thank you, Garak,” she said, smiling and offering him a slip of latinum, “and thanks for not patronizing Quark's Bar.”
He held up a hand palm out, refusing the money. “You don't have to pay me for that.” Several strides down the Promenade had him at the infirmary. Not surprisingly, the nurses were completely mum about the rumored incident. They wouldn't confirm that Julian was injured or that he had been involved in anything, only saying that he wasn't there. Undaunted, he continued on to security. Odo stopped him at the office. “If I were you, I'd stay out of it,” he grated the moment he saw him.
“I have no wish to be involved in anything, I assure you, Constable,” Garak said smoothly. “Leeta is worried about Doctor Bashir. Someone told her that he had been injured. Can you at least tell me if he is all right?”
Odo nodded grudgingly. “He's fine. Anything else, you'll have to ask him in the morning.”
Both of Garak's brow ridges lifted in surprise. He was to be incarcerated for the entire night? That was something he never thought he'd see. He inclined his head respectfully and stepped back out onto the Promenade. Who would have suspected that this strike of Rom's would have such far reaching effects? He was dying to know who started it and how Julian got involved. That would have to wait. He returned to Leeta and told her what little he knew. She didn't seem to take the news that Julian would be held overnight well, her eyes flashing, but she thanked him nonetheless. He took his late lunch and cut it short so that he could be sure to be present for the heavier traffic of customers. He left for his quarters long before the picket line was due to dissipate, his curiosity not enough to override his hunger and fatigue.
Private Quarters
He was already in his pajamas when his door chime rang. Throwing on a robe, he asked the computer who was at his door and reluctantly answered when he discovered it was Rom. The waiter seemed more agitated than usual. Garak couldn't be quite sure if the agitation was for a good or bad reason. Ferengi grimaces could sometimes be difficult to read. He didn't let him in far. “I hope you don't intend to make a habit of this,” he said irritably.
“No, but Doctor Bashir and Chief O'Brien are locked up, and Odo won't let me talk to them,” Rom said.
So the rumor about O'Brien was true. It couldn't have happened to a better man, Garak decided, although he still wondered how Julian got tangled up in that mess. “What do you need?”
“Brother tried to bribe me,” he blurted excitedly. “That's good, right?”
“It could be,” Garak conceded. “However, consider your brother. If he's down to offering you money, it also means he's getting desperate. Desperate people sometimes do dangerous things.”
“I'm not afraid,” Rom said staunchly. “I think we're really making progress. I need to call a meeting. Sorry for barging in like this. I just wanted a little advice from someone I trusted. You may not know a lot about strikes like the chief and the doctor, but you've never led me wrong.”
Some of Garak's irritation receded. “Well,” he said a little less crossly, “allow me to offer you cautious congratulations on your progress, then. Remember what I said. Don't get over-confident.”
“Garak,” Rom said, “I don't think I'll ever have that problem. Good night!”
He couldn't argue with him there. “Good night,” he said, smiling faintly at the door for a couple of seconds after the man retreated. Interesting times, he thought. Interesting times indeed.
Julian
Private Quarters
The door chimed just as Julian finished zipping his new turtleneck. He took a deep breath and let it out. He had done a lot of thinking during his night of incarceration, and he knew he had a lot of things to explain to Leeta. “Enter,” he said, emerging from his bedroom and facing the door with resolve.
Leeta skip walked over to him and hugged him tightly then stepped back to look at him, both hands to his shoulders. “I'm glad you're all right,” she said. “I was worried about you. I wanted to come see you today in the infirmary, but Rom says it's really important we keep our united front.”
“I'm fine,” he said. “You didn't need to worry. I...there's something I need to talk to you about.”
To his surprise, she kissed him fully on the lips. “You don't have to explain, silly. I know why you were in the bar. I think it's really sweet that you and Miles were trying to keep Worf from crossing the strike line. I'm proud of you for standing up for what you believe in, even though it cost you. You're not in too much trouble, are you?”
He gave a weak smile. “No. No, I'm not.” There was no way he could approach her about Garak when she was looking at him that way. It would just have to wait. “So, are you hungry? And do you want to eat in, or go out?”
She smiled slowly and guided him back toward his sofa with her hands sliding down to his chest. “I'd say...” she said, pushing him down and straddling his lap with a grin, “let's eat...in.”
It wasn't until hours later that they got around to replicating food. By that time, he was ravenous but feeling no urge to complain. Her energy and enthusiasm had been very infectious. Smiling to himself, he loaded up a tray of finger foods and started toward the bedroom with it, still naked and feeling deliciously sated.
“Infirmary to Doctor Bashir,” Nurse Frendel's voice came over the comm.
“Bashir here,” he said. “Go ahead.” Leeta appeared in the bedroom door with a look of concern.
“We need you right away, Doctor. It's Quark. He's dying.”
Leeta hurried forward and took the tray out of his hands, staying out of his way while he rushed into the bedroom to dress in his uniform. “I'm on my way,” he said, hopping on one foot while thrusting a leg through the trousers. He was still zipping up as he said, “Bashir to Ops. I need a direct beam to the infirmary, now.”
The moment he arrived, he got straight to work. “Status report,” he said, moving to run his hands under the disinfecting beam. “What happened?”
“Constable Odo found him being beaten by two Nausicaans. One of his lungs is filling with fluid, and we haven't been able to stop it from collapsing.”
He nodded, barking orders left and right and taking a quick look at the biobed feed. “We're going to need to vent it. I want him fitted with a neural caliper right now. Let's induce a coma before shock finishes him off.”
As he donned his surgeon's uniform, he considered how fortunate it was that Odo found the bar owner when he did. Ferengi weren't the most hearty of species to begin with, and a beating from a Nausicaan was nothing to sneer at. It took close to three hours of careful, painstaking work to extract the rib and bone fragments that had been driven deeply into the lower lobe of his left lung. Only then did he feel comfortable trying to address the damage to his eye socket. Just a little more force, and Quark would've been blinded in one eye and possibly suffered brain damage.
He finished up and straightened his aching back. “All right,” he said, looking at his surgical team. “I feel it's safe to say he's going to make it, but let's not get cocky. Good work, all of you.”
They nodded and dispersed to their various stations, and he retreated to the back to strip back down to his uniform and clean up. Nurse Frendel joined him. “I've had word sent to his brother,” he said. “Is there anyone else we should notify?”
“No,” Julian said. “Let Rom handle that, and needless to say, no visitors right now. If Quark remains stable when we remove the caliper, I'll consider letting Rom see him. Make sure you let me talk to him first if he comes when I'm not in the front. I won't have him upsetting our patient.”
The nurse nodded and left him to finish cleaning up. He felt a twinge of guilt, considering he was the one who put the whole union idea into Rom's head in the first place, but he didn't actually blame himself. Quark had brought this on his own head with his behavior.
Julian checked back in on Quark before retreating to his office to work up his report. A couple of hours later, he believed his patient was stable enough to be awakened. They removed the caliper and monitored him closely. After another twenty minutes or so, Quark's eyelids fluttered, and he opened his eyes. “How are you feeling?” Julian asked.
“Like I've been trampled by Morn on his way to a two for one drink special,” Quark rasped.
Julian smiled wryly. “Well, it's good to see your humor is intact.”
“I'm not joking, Doctor,” Quark said.
“No, I imagine not.” He explained to him all of the damage he had suffered and told him of what he knew of the situation from Odo's end of things. “All in all, you're very lucky to be alive.”
“When can I get out of here?” the Ferengi asked.
Julian stared at him and shook his head. “When I say so, and not a moment before. No visitors, either. What you need to do right now is to rest. I'll check back in on you later to see how you're doing.”
He left the recovery room and heard Rom's raised voice from the entrance lobby. Hurrying down the short hallway, he shooed his people back to their stations. Rom drew himself up to his full height and met Julian's gaze squarely. “Brother and I have unfinished business,” he said.
Julian sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, beckoning Rom back with him to his office. He turned to face him once they had some privacy. “I'll let you see him,” he said, “on one condition. Don't get him agitated. Those Nausicaans nearly killed him. I won't stand by and let you finish the job with stress after operating on him for over three hours. Understood?”
Rom nodded. “I never wanted any of this to happen,” he said flatly, “but I'm not sorry for it.”
Julian nodded slowly. “I understand. Rom, I...admire...what you've done with this. I know it has been difficult, particularly with the Liquidator aboard the station making threats. As a Starfleet officer, I can't officially take sides or weigh in, but off the record...well, I think you should be proud of taking a stand, regardless of how it all turns out.”
The Ferengi eyed him a bit strangely before nodding. “Thank you, Doctor. I never expected to hear that coming from you.”
“I suppose we're all allowed to surprise each other now and then,” he said with a crooked half smile.
“I suppose so,” Rom said. “I'd like to see Brother now.”
“Of course,” Julian said, showing him the way.
Garak
Garak's Clothiers
Garak hummed to himself as he hung some of the newest wares in his window displays. The new fabrics were not only a joy to work with but were proving very popular. He hadn't been so busy with orders since the trouble started with the Dominion. It was past closing time. He should have left over an hour before, but it didn't hurt to put in extra hours now and then. He felt eyes on him from behind and turned to find Rom standing in his doorway, dressed in Bajoran maintenance worker's overalls. He finished arranging the dress he had in hand and stepped away from the display. “I wish you had told me you intended to do this,” he said smiling. “I could've given you a much better fit with that uniform.”
Rom grinned. “I'll get an alteration with my first paycheck,” he said.
“So tell me,” Garak said, beckoning him toward the back for some tea and privacy, “are the rumors true? The strike is settled, the Liquidator sent off with some...creative bookkeeping, and the workers' demands met under the table?”
“One of these days, I'm going to figure out your sources,” Rom said. “Yes, it's true. The union is dissolved, but they don't need it anymore.”
“They. So you've cut all ties to the bar?” Garak asked. “Two red leaf teas,” he ordered from the replicator and turned to hand Rom one.
“Yes,” Rom nodded. “I should've done it a long time ago.” He sipped his tea thoughtfully and took the stool Garak pulled out for him. “I guess somewhere in the back of my mind, I just always held onto the idea that one day I'd be what's expected of a good Ferengi.”
“And now?” Garak asked, also taking a sip of tea.
“Now I just want to be paid for what I'm good at,” he said. “I'm a very good engineer. My methods may be unorthodox compared to what the Starfleeters or Bajorans are used to, but I can make do with a lot less than what they provide and do a lot more than what they expect.”
“I always did have faith in you,” he said, genuinely happy for the man and privately proud of his progress. It was a long time in coming.
“I know,” Rom said with a nod. “You're one of the first who ever did, and I won't forget that, Garak. I want to tell you something else. Leeta kissed me.”
He was thankful not to have been taking a sip of tea in just that moment. Rom might have wound up wearing it. “She did?”
“Not on the lips. Just on the forehead, but it's a start. She respects me now. You gave me good advice on that, too. If there's ever anything I can do in return, I want you to let me know. I mean it. You've been a good friend. I want to return the favor.”
“My dear man,” Garak said, “you already have, many times over. Now, please don't embarrass me any further with this...startling honesty. It's almost more than I can stomach.”
Rom snickered and stood, offering him the mug back. “All right,” he said. “It's time for me to go gloat a little to Brother, anyway, and let him serve me for a change.”
“That sounds like a marvelous idea,” the tailor said. “When I finish up here, I may even come watch the fireworks.” There were worse ways to spend an evening, he decided as he put the mugs in the recycler. If someone as tradition bound as a Ferengi could become a radical and throw off the shackles of his societal expectations to follow his dreams, who was to say that Garak couldn't practice being radical in his own way and seize contentment when it presented itself, even if only for an evening? A marvelous idea, indeed, he thought and hurried to finish his displays so that he could do just that.
The end.
The Radicals, Part II
Apr. 15th, 2010 05:40 amGarak
Garak's Clothiers
He had no idea how late it was, and he didn't really care. The shipment of Deltan fabrics had arrived earlier that day. The colors and textures were so impressive that he had started to experiment with them right away and stayed through supper and beyond, peacefully ensconced in his stock room at his work table. His outer doors chimed, and he paused, scissors in hand. Who would approach him after hours? Glancing to the wall chronometer, he did a double take. Quark's would already be closed by now. Had he truly been so focused that he lost all track of time? It had been over two years since that had happened for a good reason. The door chimed again.
Frowning slightly to himself, he palmed the phaser he always kept close, tucked it against the back of his thigh, and approached the entrance. He relaxed when he saw Rom on the other side of the doors. “Computer, open shop doors,” he said. Rom hurried in, glancing over his shoulder as he did so. Not liking the look of that, Garak added, “Close and lock shop doors. Engage opaque mode.” The wide doors slid shut with a loud hiss, the lock clicked, and then the Promenade beyond was shut out completely behind a milky white sheen. “What is it?” he asked. “Is someone after you?”
“No,” Rom said, looking apologetic. “I didn't mean to make you nervous. I just wanted to be sure Brother wasn't watching.”
“It's very late,” he said, not in the mood for foolishness. “This couldn't wait until morning?”
“Uh, not really,” Rom said.
Sighing inwardly and reminding himself to be patient, he gestured Rom toward the back. “All right,” he said. “You may as well have some tea with me while you're here. How are you feeling, by the way? I heard about what happened to you.”
“I'm better,” he said. “Doctor Bashir fixed me up. Instead of tea, could you make it snail juice? Tea will make me jumpy.”
Garak privately thought Rom already looked jumpy. He wasn't sure what difference tea would make. “Of course,” he said and set aside his weapon. He replicated the vile smelling drink and his own preferred tea and passed Rom his mug. Once they were both seated on stools, he looked expectantly at his friend and waited to hear what all of this was about.
Rom took a couple of gulps of his snail juice first. “Have you ever done something you've always been told is wrong, but you know is right?” he asked anxiously.
A moral question? he thought with some surprise. He's asking me a moral question? He couldn't quite wrap his mind around that at first. “Are you quite certain you feel all right?” he asked.
“No. I feel terrible. My stomach is all in knots. I don't feel like I can get enough air, and it seems like the room might be spinning a little,” the waiter confessed.
Garak set his tea aside. “It sounds as though we ought to get you to the infirmary,” he said, concerned.
Rom shook his head. “No. I'm nervous. More nervous than I've been in my life. More nervous than I was when Nog was taking his pre-entrance exams for Starfleet.”
“That's pretty nervous,” the tailor said, eyes widening.
“You're telling me!” Rom exclaimed and took another gulp from his mug.
Actually, you're telling me, Garak thought, painfully slowly. He reached for his tea again and took a small sip.
“Brother has gone too far,” he said.
He should have known this had something to do with Quark. Garak held up a hand. “If you're about to let slip some dreadful arms deal or something that will get me questioned by Odo or Worf, please stop right there,” he said.
“No, much worse than that,” Rom continued in a rush. “He cut all our pay because of the Time of Cleansing, and he probably won't raise it again even when it's over.”
“I see,” Garak said neutrally. He had long thought that Quark deserved more than a little comeuppance for his treatment of his family and employees, but he had never felt it was his place to say much of anything, to Rom or anyone else about it.
“According to Ferengi law, I'm not supposed to do anything about it,” Rom added dejectedly.
“No,” Garak said agreeably, “I can see how workers' rights have the potential to eat into profits.”
“That's just it,” Rom said. “He's already making a ridiculous profit margin over the rest of us. He's...he's just being greedy.”
It took every ounce of self-control Garak had not to laugh aloud. The complete absurdity of the situation combined with the late hour and Rom's genuine outrage over Ferengi greed was almost too much for him. “What do you have in mind?” he asked, hoping he didn't sound too breathless. He knew Rom would pick up on it much easier than he would.
“Doctor Bashir mentioned...” the Ferengi paused and swallowed audibly. “He mentioned a union.”
Suddenly, it didn't seem so funny anymore. Frowning slightly, Garak leaned toward his friend. “Rom,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “far be it from me to...discourage anyone...from standing up for himself. We Cardassians are known for drawing lines in the sand and making those who cross them pay dearly. In the process, we understand that there's a good chance that we might be the ones to pay.”
Rom nodded slowly. “Go on,” he said.
Garak exhaled softly through his nostrils. “Once a line is drawn, you don't always have the option to erase it. If you're going to do something this drastic, think long and hard about what you have to gain versus what you have to lose. It's my understanding, limited though it may be, that you could lose everything doing something like this, not just now, but forever. Your people's...enforcers...could literally hound you to the far corners of the galaxy and make your life a living hell.” He knew more about what that was like than he cared to reveal.
“True,” Rom said with a thoughtful nod. “But...my life is a living hell now. I almost died because Brother wouldn't give me time to go see the doctor. This time, it's not just me who's suffering. Leeta could lose her quarters, and Frool's back hurts so much sometimes he can barely stand, much less walk. All my life, Brother has found ways to make me miserable. He almost ruined Nog's chance to get into Starfleet Academy. If I hadn't figured out what he did, he would've.”
“I remember that,” Garak said. “I'm not telling you not to do it. I'm telling you to be sure before you make the move. Drawing a line and holding it takes resolve. If you plan on bringing others into it with you, they'll be counting on you the same way your son has for most of his life.”
Rom's blue eyes glinted with a forcefulness Garak had only seen in them twice before, once on Nog's behalf and once on his when he was being kept from Julian by Lisane. “I failed my son too often,” Rom said quietly. “I made him ashamed of me. I don't want to be someone my own son is ashamed of anymore.”
“It sounds to me as though you've made up your mind,” Garak observed.
“I suppose I have,” he said, setting his mug aside and standing. “Thank you, Garak.”
“Don't thank me yet,” the Cardassian cautioned him and walked with him to the doors. He watched him leave with a purpose to his odd, shuffling gait. Smiling very slightly to himself, he decided that at that particular moment he wouldn't want to be in Quark's shoes.
Julian
Private Quarters
Pressing his lips together, Julian eyed the table setting. Was it too elaborate? Maybe the central pillar candle was a bit much. He plucked it out of the mixed greenery and flowers. Now the centerpiece looked a little flat and lopsided. “Damn,” he muttered, setting it back in place. Why couldn't it have been a little shorter? He decided to trim it down himself and was on his way to the back for his spare medkit when his door chimed. Garak was uncharacteristically a half hour early. “Damn,” he said again. He brushed his fingers quickly through his hair, tugged his navy tunic hem and called out, “Enter!”
Garak stepped into the quarters, an eye ridge rising at the sight of the decorated table. “Is this a special occasion?” he asked, offering Julian a small tin of Bolian krellfish, the delicacy wrapped neatly in decorative paper. “Am I under dressed?”
“No,” he said, taking the tin with a nod and smile of thanks. “And no, you look impeccable as always. I just...well, I realized that I've gotten a little lazy when I've invited you over. It doesn't have to be a special occasion for things to look nice.”
“I've often thought the same,” Garak said approvingly.
“You're early,” he said as he sat the gift aside and stepped toward the replicator.
“Am I?” the tailor asked innocently.
Julian glanced over his shoulder and snorted softly. “I can only assume that you wanted to catch me off guard.”
“That is one interpretation, isn't it?” he replied mildly as he moved to take a seat. “Don't mind me. I won't get in your way.”
Snorting another half laugh, he began replicating the meal and taking the dishes over to the table. “You'll never guess what happened today.”
“Rom started a union,” Garak said.
“You know, I am bound and determined one day to get my hands on a piece of news or gossip before you do,” he said with mock exasperation. “How did you hear about it?”
“I have my ways,” the tailor said smoothly. “I'm assuming Leeta told you?”
“Yes, well...and Rom. He came to ask me and the Chief for advice.”
“He came to the Chief as well?” Garak asked, glancing at him in surprise.
Ha! He thought triumphantly. At least one piece of the puzzle he doesn't have. “Not specifically, no. Miles was in the infirmary today, and apparently he knows a lot about the issue. One of his ancestors was in a famous labor dispute in the States.”
“I trust he's not ill?” Garak asked with just a little too much enthusiasm.
“You really don't like him, do you?” he asked, setting a final platter on the table and moving to light the candle.
“I'd be willing to say it's entirely mutual, wouldn't you?” Garak asked reasonably. “If you must know, I think he's a bigot.”
“Coming from a Cardassian, who thinks all other races are inferior,” Julian retorted. He was hard pressed to believe that Garak saw no irony in that.
“I never thought you were a bigot, too,” Garak said, standing and turning to face him. “What else are we Cardassians? Cruel, sly, underhanded, brutish, power mad. Am I missing anything?”
“I didn't mean it that way,” he said, frowning.
“Didn't you? There are very few races that I know of to be true hive minds, the Borg most readily coming to mind. Do you truly assume that after all the years I've spent living among others, not just here but across the galaxy, I have learned nothing? That my way of thinking has gone completely unchanged?”
“It's just the way you talk about my literature and culture in comparison to yours...”
“Please!” Garak scoffed. “You act as though you're handing me something rare on a gold pressed latinum platter and become offended the moment I don't value it the way you think I ought to. Have you ever once, even once, made serious effort to appreciate my people or my culture in their own context without painting it in broad strokes of judgment from your values?”
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't know you saw it that way. If I have done that, it hasn't been intentional.”
“Lack of intent is a flimsy excuse. The effects are the same.”
Julian nodded slowly. “Will you please come sit? If we're going to fight, we may as well do it properly, over food.” He saw some of the tension drain from the Cardassian's posture and inwardly smiled. He had learned a few things about Cardassians over the years, too, at least his Cardassian. Once they were both seated, he continued the conversation. “Are you saying you truly don't see Cardassians as a superior race?”
“I'm saying I'm capable of judging individuals based upon their own merits,” Garak retorted, tucking his napkin carefully into place to protect his rust and silver tunic. “Whenever your Chief O'Brien looks at me, it's painfully obvious that he is seeing an archetypal Cardassian, and not just any archetypal Cardassian, but a Cardassian during war time. He has never made the slightest effort to get to know me as anything else. Would you please pass the salt?”
Julian complied. “To be fair, Garak, you've never made any effort to get to know him, either.”
“What incentive do I have for that?” he asked, liberally salting his food. “He glares at me with those beady little eyes and gets red blotches on his cheeks.”
Trying not to laugh, the doctor said, “His cheeks are always red.”
“Never redder than when glaring at me,” Garak asserted and fixed Julian with a mockery of the expression he was referencing.
He couldn't help himself. That tipped him over the edge. Tossing his head back, he gave a hearty laugh. “That was actually quite good, which is disturbing given how little the two of you resemble one another.”
“It's all in the eyes,” Garak said primly.
Happily, he seemed content to move on to other subjects. Both were in agreement that while forming the union was the right thing to do, it seemed a risky venture. Julian was surprised to discover how much Garak actually liked Rom. Although he knew the two of them were on friendly terms, he had always assumed that Garak was simply being charitable, or perhaps accepting company he wouldn't otherwise if he wasn't so lonely. More than ever, he realized that he had allowed his sense of rejection to color the way he saw the waiter and wondered if it was too late to try to mend that fence.
“I've been meaning to ask you something, and I keep forgetting,” Julian said during a natural lull. Both of them were almost fully done with their meal, just picking lightly at the plates.
“Oh?”
“Yes. Dukat's daughter, Ziyal, has been asking me questions about you. What do you want me to say?”
“The same thing I always say, Doctor,” Garak said lightly. “Tell her I'm a simple tailor and really not all that interesting.”
“That's what I've been saying,” he said. “I don't think she believes me.”
“Then be more convincing,” the Cardassian said with a pointed smile.
“I'll try. So, did you save room for dessert?”
“I'm afraid not,” he said and pushed back from the table. “Shall we clear it off?”
“Yes, let's,” he agreed. The two of them made quick work of the dishes, and Julian blew out the candle, the scent of soot briefly filling the air. He glanced at Garak who was now heading over to take a seat on his sofa and felt a small twinge of misgiving. Short of trying to pick another fight or actually making a move again, he could think of no other way to pique his interest. Was it possible that Garak didn't want him much but was being accommodating just because it was better than always being alone? Did he think he was doing Julian a favor? It was a disturbing thought. He gave the table a quick wipe down and set the rag aside, moving to take up the other end of the sofa. “We haven't read together in a while,” he said.
“Did you have something specific in mind?” the tailor asked, perking with interest.
“Not really, but it's something we've both enjoyed in the past. I know you like poetry,” he offered.
“Some poetry,” Garak clarified dryly.
“We can stay away from Shakespeare,” Julian said. “There are plenty of poets to choose from. How about...I'll search the archive first, read one to you, then you can pick one you like and read it to me? You can read Cardassian poetry to me if you prefer.”
“You never seem to understand it,” Garak said. “We'll stick to Terran poets. Go ahead.”
“All right,” he said. He reached to his side table and picked up a PADD, hoping that Garak wouldn't be able to tell he already had something specific in mind. He couldn't comfortably express his unease with the one sidedness of their arrangement, but perhaps he could send him a message this way. “Here's one by Edna St. Vincent Millay called 'Ebb'.
'I know what my heart is like
Since your love died;
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.'”
“How very dreary,” Garak said with a shake of his head, leaning over to take the PADD. “Why are so many Terran poems so pitiful and full of woe?”
“I don't know,” he said a little shortly.
“Oh, right. You liked that one,” the Cardassian said with a shake of his head. “What I meant to say, of course, is what a lovely expression of the destitution of broken love.”
“You don't have to be sarcastic. If you don't like it, you don't like it,” he said impatiently. “Will you please choose one now?”
It took Garak much longer, not surprisingly, for he was unfamiliar with most of the poets and poetry from which he was asked to select. To Julian's surprise, he chose Robert Frost. “Lodged,” he said.
“The rain to the wind said,
'You push and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged—though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.”
He offered the PADD back without further comment. Julian took it but couldn't help but to glance at him. Was he sending him a message the same way he had chosen to do? Without looking back to the PADD, he said, “Emily Dickinson. 'My River'.
'My river runs to thee.
Blue sea, wilt thou welcome me?
My river awaits reply.
Oh! Sea, look graciously.
I'll fetch thee brooks
from spotted nooks.
Say, sea,
Take me!'”
“What are you doing?” Garak asked.
He frowned and set the PADD aside. “I was looking for a way not to be completely humiliated, but it looks as though that plan is a wash. Do you not want this? Would you rather I not...come to you?”
“Have I given any indication of that?” he asked.
“Aside from the fact that you haven't once made a move since our arrangement, despite numerous opportunities? No, you've given no indication of that. You were perfectly agreeable and cooperative several nights ago,” he said, disliking the sarcastic edge in his own voice.
Garak stood and crossed to the star port. “Your problem is you don't know what you want. Whatever you get isn't enough, until suddenly it's too much. The line is never in the same place. In fact I never see it until I've already crossed it. Don't speak to me about humiliation.”
I do know what I want. I simply can't have it, Julian thought. He knew Garak had a valid point. He stood, too, and moved to stand beside him, their reflections ghostly images against the dark star field, as though neither of them was truly there at all. “Did I humiliate you in the dressing room?” he asked softly. “Do you wish you had told me no?” When Garak didn't answer, he stepped behind him and slid his hands over his shoulders, clasping them loosely and drawing the Cardassian back against him. He breathed lightly over his right neck ridge and caressed his cheek to the side of his head. “You can tell me no now,” he murmured close to his ear.
He met Garak's gaze in the faded reflection, lowered his lids, and lightly lipped the shell of his ear. This was how he wanted it? The only way it would happen? So be it. If Garak could swallow his pride, Julian could, too. He caressed down his arms and tucked his hands beneath them to embrace him across his chest, hands spread flat and warm. He smiled to himself when Garak lifted his hands and caressed his palms over the backs of them, lightly twining fingers and holding him there. He continued to rub his cheek against the side of his head, feeling the ridges of lower ear and jaw and then the very outer edge of an eye ridge against his temple. His light growth of whiskers rasped scale so softly he wondered if he imagined the sound.
Garak turned his face into his slightly, and when he glanced back at the port, he could see the man had his eyes closed. He kissed the long dimple of his cheek, reached up to turn Garak's head more so that he could kiss the corner of his mouth. He tightened his embrace when Garak tried to turn. Not yet, he thought. His fingertips traced lightly down the long line of throat, from beneath his chin to the hollow. It struck him how much trust that took to allow without so much as a flinch or cracking an eye. He realized that Garak told him these sorts of things all the time, only he was too busy focusing on his many rejections to see where he was accepted.
All right, he thought, turning him. Talk to me... He pressed parted lips to parted lips, fit himself against his lover like a puzzle piece, and gave a languid twine of tongue. As their breath mingled and they fell in closer upon one another, he felt the slower rhythm of Garak's heart thrumming powerfully enough for the beat to penetrate both layers of tunics. Nothing about that rhythm spoke of apathy or humoring him. Nothing in the fingers digging deeply into the muscle of his back said that Garak didn't want. Didn't need.
This was the only way he could ever set aside the inconveniences of his genesis. Was Garak listening as closely? He carefully opened the throat of Garak's tunic, just enough to slide his tongue into the teardrop indentation of scale over sternum, his lips finding a perfect fit to their curves at its apex. Garak's breath stirred his hair, harsher now, and a broad hand cupped the back of his head, encouragement and affection both. He felt it as surely as he felt the fingers sifting the curls at his nape.
Taking the tunic open further, he slipped his hands into the warm air between cloth and flesh before it had the chance to dissipate, offered his greater warmth in its place. He knew every ridge and scale as well as he knew himself, but he relished these reintroductions and treated this one as though it were the first. Lightly scraping his thumb nails beneath the lower edges of each pectoral ridge, he gave Garak his mouth again. He could feel the wall of passive acceptance starting to crumble in the way the Cardassian devoured his offering. It wasn't his goal, but he had no intention of rejecting whatever was given, regardless of what he might be asked to pay for it afterward.
Garak unfastened his tunic, and he allowed it, helping him shrug it free, but when it seemed as though the tailor might pause to fold it neatly, he stilled his hands with a firm grip and smiled his approval against his lips when he tossed it aside instead. Those hands knew him, too, so intimately, exactly where and how to touch. He pressed into the palms shamelessly, arching and shifting. The slightly rough skinned touch was electric enough that at times he wondered if it was more than imagination, if there wasn't a physical difference that accounted for it.
He unfastened Garak's belt and held both loose ends, playfully pulling the tailor against him at the waist, went for a third dizzying round of deep kissing. Garak moaned and suddenly wrapped him so tightly in both arms that he could hardly breathe. He knew he had breached another barrier, but he felt no triumph. He dropped the belt and returned the embrace. Was Garak listening? Did he know he strove to meet him there, wherever he was?
“What are you doing to me?” the tailor whispered harshly against his lips.
Julian saw the same fierce eyes he had seen in the mirror that day and stilled in his arms. “Do you want to stop?” he whispered back.
“I ought to,” he murmured more loudly.
“That's not what I asked,” Julian said gently.
“No, I don't want to stop, damn you.”
Julian accepted the harsh kiss that followed, but instead of rising to it and meeting heat with heat, he did as Garak had several nights before, received until he felt the anger ebb. He unfastened the thick tunic the rest of the way and pulled the edges around his sides, once more trapping heat. He loved the slightly convex curve of broad belly scales against his skin and sidled in as closely as he could, tucking his face into the natural indentation formed by a neck ridge and nuzzling until he felt Garak shiver. “You smell good,” he murmured. “You always smell good.”
“Regular baths do wonders,” Garak said a bit breathlessly.
He smiled against his throat and nipped him lightly. It was good to see his humor returning. Whatever crisis point the tailor had just reached seemed to be on the retreat, or he was coming to terms with it. “I'm about to give you an excuse to take another one,” he said, taking the man by the hands and leading him into his bedroom. Somehow they always made do with the narrow bed and made it a big enough world to contain them.
Julian continued to listen, more attentively than ever before. He found care in Garak's control, ardor in the exploration of his pleasure, and as he kissed the closed eyes and allowed him to take him in the most intimate way, chest to chest and with his legs wrapped about the tailor's waist, he believed he understood why this was up to him. The secret lay in the closed eyes. Garak was vulnerable. He held him tighter in the realization. I'll take care, he thought silently. I will, even if you never know.
He gave himself over to the intimacy of the moment, and when it crested, he allowed it to fill and then empty him. He held to Garak when he tried to roll to the side, only relaxing after he was sure his lover would remain atop him. In long strokes, he trailed his fingers to either side of the dorsal ridge, each caress downward with the pattern of scale growth.
“I'm crushing you,” Garak protested quietly.
“Luxuriously,” he affirmed with a lazy smile.
“I should go soon.”
“Soon, yes,” he said agreeably, “but soon isn't now. Just relax.” Perhaps that was easier said than done. This time he allowed his partner to roll to the side, but he kept his hands on him, dropping one down for a languid caress of outer thigh, the strong leg draped over him as much by necessity as convenience. “You make me wish I was a poet. Then I wouldn't have to borrow others' words to bridge the gap that opens between us the times we forget ourselves.” He glanced over, relieved to see that Garak's eyes were open, not shut, and he was singularly focused upon him with almost unnerving intensity. It was better than the alternative.
“Being a poet doesn't help,” Garak said wryly. “Trust me. You'd just find other ways for inadequate appeal.”
He stopped himself on the cusp of taking the statement personally. “Believe me, my dear tailor,” he said, squeezing his thigh lightly, “there is nothing inadequate in your appeal.”
“And still you manage to surprise me at times,” he said, reaching to brush a damp curl from Julian's forehead. A moment later, he rolled to his other side and sat up.
Julian did nothing to prevent him. He watched him walk to the wash room and waited patiently for him to take his shower. Shifting to his back, he propped his head in a hand and considered what he had discovered just by letting go of his agenda for once. Garak was right. He never did consider his cultural concerns divorced from his own judgment. He spent so much time and energy being on guard against the constant barrage of barbs that he never realized that they could only pierce him if he gave them something to hit. This new approach of his had yielded some surprising results. He hoped that he could remember this in more heated moments of rancor.
When Garak returned to the bedroom, he sat up and reached out to him. “Come kiss me good-bye,” he said.
Agreeably, Garak did as he was asked, leaning over to do just that. “Not good-bye,” he corrected him, “but good night.”
He found the correction very encouraging and wisely chose to keep the fact to himself. He was sleepy enough that he was gone to the world by the time his door hissed for Garak to exit. He slept undisturbed until morning.
The Radicals, Part I
Apr. 15th, 2010 05:38 amAuthor notes: This story covers the episodes Return to Grace through Bar Association. Some of the dialogue with a few modifications comes from Bar Association, but mostly not. The three poems included in the story are attributed accurately within the story itself and are the creative property of their respective estates.
Summary: Shortly after Garak is faced with the prospect of co-existing on the station with the daughter of his hated enemy, Gul Dukat, everyone is given much more to worry about. Quark's Bar is rocked from within and without, and Deep Space Nine is thrust directly into the heart of a contentious labor dispute. Lines are drawn, tempers flare, and at least one station denizen nearly pays with his life.
Author: Dark Sinestra
Date Written: April 2010
Category: Slash, Het
Rating: R for strong sexual content, adult situations, and implied violence.
Disclaimer: None of the boys and girls are mine, but they are very cooperative in the situations I play with, alter, or outright concoct. I should probably be grateful.
Word Count: 14,555
Julian
Garak's Quarters
“You'll never guess who was on the station today,” Julian said as he reached for a slice of bread from the shared platter at the center of the table between him and Garak.
“Gul Dukat,” Garak said with a gleam in his eyes that even after all this time of knowing him gave Julian pause.
“Yes,” the doctor said, a little disappointed that his news apparently wasn't all that newsworthy to the tailor. “How did you know? He wasn't here long enough...”
“I've been keeping tabs on the gul,” Garak replied. There was that look again. It seemed centered on that very particular word, “gul”.
It made sense now. Garak had been particularly offended when he learned of Dukat's promotion to legate. Naturally, he was taking great satisfaction in his fall. He studied the tailor while he chewed his bread. Was there more to it than that? Had Garak had some clandestine hand in the situation? He wouldn't doubt it. He knew better than to ask. “So then you know that Major Kira left with him, I assume?”
Garak nodded, chewing his food and swallowing before speaking. “I wouldn't worry about the major,” he said. “She knows how to handle him.”
“In part thanks to you,” Julian said, smiling slightly. He would never tell Garak, but he was pleased that the Cardassian and his Bajoran colleague seemed to have come to an understanding of sorts. He had seen them be almost cordial on more than one occasion after Bareil's funeral. “Since my interesting news isn't so interesting after all, what about you? Anything noteworthy happen today?”
“I don't know yet,” the tailor said. “Often the true significance of events fails to reveal itself until some time down the line.” He paused and wiped his mouth, a mischievous twinkle in blue eyes.
Julian shook his head and smiled wider. Since Garak's disturbing instance of “Starfleet honesty” in the Infirmary a couple of weeks before and their uncomfortable confrontation later that day, the tailor had been back to his old self, more his old self than the doctor could recall in a very long time. He didn't delve too deeply into the facade. He didn't want to know how much of it was for his benefit, for Garak's, or for an unknown purpose at which he couldn't begin to guess. Nor did he want to know how much of it was real. Just as the fiction of the holosuite had provided distraction and stress relief, this fiction of theirs did much the same, at least when he was actually in the man's presence.
“You're not wolfing your food like a ravenous beast,” Garak observed lightly. “Are you ill?”
“No,” he said, automatically taking another bite at the prompting. “I was just thinking.”
“That's one of the things I actually like about your guttural language,” Garak said. “The way that so many of your words have layered meanings. For example, I could say at this moment that you are ruminating, and it would apply to your food as much as your thoughts, or that odd concept, 'food for thought'. Come to think of it, you humans place a tremendous emphasis on food.”
“You've never said you like my language before,” he said, surprised. It was rare for Garak to give any sort of compliment unprompted, or when he didn't want something. He narrowed his eyes slightly. “What are you angling for?”
He widened his expressive eyes. “Your paranoia knows no bounds,” he said approvingly. “In this case, you're wrong, but I do admire the thought process.”
“Someone has had a certain influence on me,” Julian said dryly. He dunked a torn piece of bread into the hearty broth of his beef stew. In more ways than one, he thought, feeling some of his light mood drain away. He thrust that thought aside, refusing to break a promise he made to himself about tonight, that he would enjoy the moments for what they were, divorced from context and devoid of greater meaning. For two weeks, he had treated Garak as nothing more than a friend and acted as though the day in the dressing room was a fluke when they both knew differently. Was that why Garak bantered with him so easily now? He knew that if he waited long enough, Julian would come to him again? That thought alone was enough to send a small tingle through his belly.
Garak continued to eat and allowed him his silence, a rare thing. Conversation and food seemed almost inseparable to the man. Nonetheless, he could feel his eyes on him. He wondered how much of his internal musing showed on his face, if he'd be able to pinpoint the shift in mood and focus. He wondered if this time, Garak might seduce him? Now it was more heat than tingle. He swallowed heavily and took a long drink of synth ale. Partially to fill the silence and partially to try to distract himself from that line of thinking, he asked, “How long ago was Dukat demoted?”
“Oh, not terribly long after he arrived on Cardassia with his daughter,” Garak replied casually.
“That's something I don't fully understand,” he said between bites of stew. “How is it that practically everyone knows that a Cardassian male in the military will have mistresses on his excursions, but as soon as there's actual evidence of it, everyone turns on him? It all seems a bit...hypocritical to me.”
“There was an ancient earth culture known as the Spartans,” Garak said.
“Yes, I'm well aware of that,” Julian replied, resigning himself to yet another convoluted answer that might or might not reveal anything of what he wanted to know.
“Quite a fascinating people,” Garak continued. “As part of a male's training on the way to adulthood, he was deprived of all but the barest of necessities, expected to endure the harsh winter in nothing but a threadbare cloak, and given such meager rations that if he expected to survive, he was forced to steal food.” He took a lengthy pause to take a bite, take a drink, and wipe his mouth. Julian suspected he enjoyed holding his attention like that, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn't interrupt him. “If, however, he was caught, he was taken to the steps of the temple and beaten until the flesh of his back hung from him in strips.”
Julian winced at the visceral image the tailor painted. He had never studied that part of Earth's history in depth. He wondered when or why Garak had, knowing that if he asked, Garak was likely to stop telling him anything. He was so stubbornly contrary at times. However, as the silence once more dragged, he asked, “That's it? That's all you're going to say?”
Garak let out an impatient huff of breath. “I would think that's all I needed to say. I went so far as to relate it to an episode from your own people's history.”
“With all due respect, my people aren't Spartans, and we don't have much in common with them.”
Garak widened his eyes again. “I'll say,” he murmured.
Julian frowned. “All right. So what you're saying is that it's not the act that's frowned upon nearly as much as getting caught?” At Garak's expectant look, he knew he was supposed to take it further than that. “Getting caught, or...allowing evidence of the indiscretion to surface...shows a lack of subtlety and decorum, thereby insulting the foundations upon which your society is built and proving the man unworthy of his family.” Garak had started to smile when Julian added, “But I don't see what that has to do with the Spartans.”
The smile instantly turned to a displeased frown. “I don't know why I bother,” he said with a mock look of long suffering. “I've told you more than enough about our society for you to make the connection if you'd just think.”
“Survival,” he said suddenly. “Practically everything your people do or say boils down to that at the most fundamental level, so a blunder of that magnitude made off world and brought back would show that the individual is dangerously reckless and can't be trusted to look after his own. The Spartans would have frowned on a boy incapable of taking care of himself without getting caught. He'd be not only a danger to himself but possibly his entire unit.”
This time the smile blossomed without reserve. I could almost die for that smile, he thought. It was one he almost never saw, certainly not since he split from the tailor what seemed a lifetime ago. “I wish you'd do that more often,” he found himself saying aloud.
“Do what?” Garak asked, the expression already nothing but a memory.
“Smile that way. You have no idea what it does for your face,” he said.
A faint shadow passed over the Cardassian's expression, so fleeting Julian wasn't completely certain he had seen it. “I'll keep that in mind,” he said smoothly.
He wished that he could ask him to tell him about that shadow, whatever thought might have prompted it. They weren't that kind of together, though. He sensed it would be a violation of the unspoken rules. As they finished their companionable meal, he came to the realization that if he wanted anything to happen between them that night, he was going to have to initiate it.
He waited until they were cleaning up to make his move, a touch to a strong, gray hand as they both reached for the same dish, a look, a kiss. Garak yielded to him readily, but it was the way sand or water might yield, pliant yet impossible to hold in a tight grasp. He knew without being told that although he had full access to that amazing body that was both familiar and alien at once, that was all he had access to. Anything else was as closed as the clothing shop after hours. He pretended it was enough, and he left shortly after it was over. He couldn't bear the way Garak's eyes seemed to lay him open in silent regard once they lay sated and panting in near darkness. It felt too much like accusation.
Garak
Private Quarters
Settling his palm into the cooling spot on his mattress so recently vacated by his lover, Garak half dozed, dreams interweaving with his waking solitude. Some of the faces that emerged in the darkness were welcome, others not so much, victims and colleagues, lovers, friends, classmates, frozen in their youthful state in perpetuity in his mind although he had grown beyond them. He envied their optimism and ambition, their clear eyes, unclouded and unblemished by the doubt that only harsh experience could bring. The hot sun of the Cardassian system created mirages in the badlands that shimmered and dissipated. His bedroom star port reflected his room back at him almost as well as a mirror, the light level just high enough to show him his own curled form on his bed, a leg thrust from beneath the covers bunched at his waist. For one disorienting moment, he saw both equally, and the dream faded away.
He made no attempt to divine meaning in the shards of memory his mind presented to him as it slowly unwound from the day. The fact that it all came to him without the usual accompaniment of a migraine was a welcome change. He stroked his fingers down the mattress lightly then turned onto his back. “Computer, lights off,” he said. His room plummeted into darkness until his eyes adjusted to take in the starlight. He idly wondered when or if Julian would figure out that he alone held the reins to their trysts and what he would do when he did. He wondered if he would understand the significance of it, something he doubted. For all of his intelligence, he was still hopelessly human. Grunting softly to himself, he closed his eyes. Moments later, he was asleep.
Garak's Clothiers
A few days later, it was business as usual. He was particularly pleased with the fabric selection coming out of the Deltan system this season and could hardly wait to get his hands on the lighter silks. As it was nearing closing time, he worked to complete his order, not expecting customers. He glanced up to see Major Kira standing just inside the doorway, her expression a strange mixture of apprehension and determination. Lacing his fingers lightly together on his counter top, he offered her a pleasant smile. “Good evening. Is there something I can do for you?”
She strode closer, her black eyes fiercely focused. “I'm going to be blunt,” she said. “Gul Dukat's daughter has come to live on the station. I want you to stay away from her.”
Taken aback, he allowed none of it to show. “Major,” he said with laughter in the word and held up his hands, “I can assure you that I want nothing to do with a Dukat. You needn't worry.”
She looked skeptical. “Please,” she snorted. “I know how you feel about him, and I know how Cardassians operate. His daughter would be a perfect opportunity for you to get at him, and I'm here to tell you now that if you do, if you hurt that girl in any way, I'll toss you out an airlock and work the details out with your government after the fact. I doubt most of them would miss you.”
He should have been annoyed. Instead, it felt good to be viewed as a Cardassian for a change, teeth and all. He favored her with a much sharper smile. “You'd be welcome to try,” he said pointedly. “Is there anything else? A dress for First Minister Shakaar to remove in record time?” The rumors had been making the rounds. He wasn't above using them.
Her lips and jaw tightened, and her eyes flashed. “No. Leave my personal life out of this.”
“Then I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I have business to finish, and the hour is late.” He let her get halfway out the door before adding, “I should thank you for the warning about the girl.”
She stopped and turned. “What's that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“She may be half Bajoran, but she's half Cardassian, as well, and she has spent a good deal of time with her father.”
“Ziyal is a sweet, kind girl who has been through hell. You watch what you say about her and who you say it to,” she snapped. Whirling on her heel, she left before he could say more.
He turned his attention back to his computer and caught himself smiling. He believed that he might genuinely have reason to be concerned about their new guest. It could make for some very interesting times. He wondered how disturbed the major might be if she learned she just made his day and smiled wider.
Julian
The Infirmary
So much for getting off on time, the doctor thought as Leeta and two Ferengi waiters rushed in carrying an unconscious Rom. “What happened to him?” he asked while two nurses hurried over to help get him settled on a biobed.
Looking furious, Leeta said, “He collapsed in pain. He said his ear has been bothering him.” She pointed to one of the large ears. “That one.”
“All right,” he said, glancing at the trio. “We'll take good care of him. It would be helpful if you gave us some room.” He shot Leeta a look that promised they'd talk later, but for now he needed to focus on his patient. She nodded silent understanding and helped to usher the two curious Ferengi out ahead of her.
Activating the bed and scanners, he watched the information scrolling by on the screen. He frowned, his brow furrowing. This was a serious infection. “Get me...two ampules of thelidrazine,” he said to one of the nurses, “and twenty milligrams of drozanacin.” Addressing the other nurse, he said, “I'll need a telescoping otoscope. I want to get a better look in that ear.”
He took the ampules and squirted the clear contents onto Rom's tongue. The liquid instantly absorbed. He then gave him a hypospray of the drozanacin and took up the scope. After a moment, he frowned again. “There's some sort of...gunk...in here. Flush it out, please.”
Stepping back, he allowed the nurses to do their jobs and took a blood sample for an analysis. “His yellow bodies are very elevated. This is no new infection.” He initiated a full body scan to check for organ or circulatory system damage. “Striations in the lower lobe of the secondary liver,” he said absently for the diagnostic recording.
“Doctor, his ear is clean,” the first nurse to have arrived said.
“Good. I'm going to need 30 milligrams of azropanethol in a deep tissue syringe.” He glanced at the second nurse. “Unfasten his clothing and sterilize his abdominal skin.”
While the two hurried to do his bidding, he returned to the ear and activated the otoscope. No wonder he passed out, the poor bastard, he thought. He had rarely seen a more inflamed ear canal in any species. He was surprised that the tympanum hadn't yet fully ruptured. Rom had to have been in agony for quite some time now. Retracting the scope, he set it aside and took the syringe. As soon as Rom was prepped, he delivered the injection to offset the damage done to his liver by the raging, now systemic infection.
“Give him a mild sedative,” he said. “I don't want him awakening just yet, not until we can get some of this inflammation under control. If he awakens when I'm not here, I want to be called immediately.”
“Understood, Sir,” both nurses said.
He continued to run some tests on the patient until he was sure there wasn't any more hidden damage. It angered him that anyone would allow himself to get in such a state without ever darkening his door. The man quite literally could have died within just a matter two more days. What was he thinking?
A few hours later, Rom's body responded sufficiently to the medication to allow him to awaken, and a bit after that he had enough strength to sit up and respond to Julian's questions. He still didn't like the look of that ear. He liked even less what he heard, that the infection had been painful for a full three weeks and that Rom's reason for avoiding coming in for an examination was because of his work contract with Quark. Without even thinking, he said, “What you people need is a union.”
Rom looked at him as though he had just suggested that he should surgically remove his lobes. “A what?” the waiter asked.
“You know, a trade guild, a collective bargaining association. A union. Something to keep you from being exploited,” he replied.
“You don't understand,” Rom admonished him. “Ferengi workers don't want to stop the exploitation. We want to find ways to become the exploiters.”
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. “But I don't see you exploiting anybody.” As Rom hurried out, he called after him, “Don't forget! First thing in the morning, I want you back in here so I can check that ear.” He couldn't be sure if he heard him or not, but given Ferengi aural acuity, he believed it likely.
The staff had already long since shifted over to the graveyard shift. It was past time to leave if he wanted the chance to spend any time with Leeta before she would be getting to bed. He keyed a final entry on Rom's chart, said his good nights, and hurried to her quarters so that they could have a meal together, her late supper.
“How's Rom?” she asked the moment he came through the door, her brow furrowed anxiously.
“He'll live,” he said. “Barely. I can't really discuss his case, but I can't believe that Quark would be so careless with his own brother.”
“He doesn't care,” she said tightly, gesturing for him to have a seat at the already set table. “He claims that when he's at the bar, he's not family. He's just another employee.”
They each took their seats and began serving themselves. “Even so, one of you could die in conditions like that. You know, I've tried very hard not to make much of an issue of how much you work, but I'm starting to think it's not such a good idea.”
She frowned at him. “And what exactly is it I'm supposed to do?” she asked.
He blinked at her. “Well...anything. Anything is better than that. Work at one of the kiosks, or...or...the temple. I don't know about employment opportunities around here.”
She pressed her lips together. “Obviously,” she said flatly.
“Leeta, I'm not the enemy here,” he said, holding up his hands. “I'm trying to help you.”
“I don't recall asking for your help,” she retorted, dumping a scoop of food onto her plate hard enough to splatter it slightly.
“You're as bad as Rom,” he said without thinking, instantly regretting it.
“What's wrong with Rom?” she demanded, glaring.
“Look, forget I said anything. I don't want you going to bed on a bad note, OK?”
“Too late,” she said, still glaring. “Go ahead, Julian. I want to hear this. You've never liked him.”
“I've never liked...?” he asked, incredulous. “He's the one who doesn't like me. He hasn't liked me from the start. I have no idea why. To my knowledge, I've never done anything to him.”
“And you just can't stand the thought that somebody doesn't think your Prophets sent, can you?” she asked. “Is that it?”
Where was this coming from? Now he was glaring, too. “Fine, you want my honest opinion? Here it is. He's an utter milquetoast. He allows Quark to run roughshod all over him without ever doing anything to stop it. He cringes and wheedles, complains, and sneaks around, more so than most Ferengi I've met, and that says a lot. He seems to be waiting for the universe to drop the bar miraculously into his lap without ever having to do a thing for it. Is it any wonder that Nog wanted to get as far away from him and that bar as he could?”
Leeta had gone pale, her eyes seeming larger and darker than usual because of it. “How easy for you to judge,” she said quietly. “Coming from a life of privilege, in a prestigious medical program where your biggest regret was mistaking some gangly nerve for some stupid fiber, or whatever it is you like to tell every single person you meet. Rom has been on his own with Nog since Nog was a little boy, had his heart broken by Nog's mother, and everything he has done since then has been to put food on their table and to ensure that his son has more choices in his life than Rom ever did and knows above all else that he's loved and it's not his fault his mother left. You have no idea what it's like to be abused and beaten down every day of your life, and while I hope to the Prophets you never find out, I'm extremely disappointed that you can't have a little more empathy for someone who has been.” She stood abruptly from the table and headed toward the bedroom.
“Leeta,” he called after her, half rising from his seat.
“No,” she snapped. “Stay there and eat. I'm not hungry anymore, and I don't want to talk to you right now. I'm too angry.”
He settled back in the chair, his appetite gone, too. However, he knew if he didn't eat, it would just make her angrier. She went through the trouble of preparing the meal and setting the table for him. It wasn't fair, that anger of hers. She had no idea what his life had been like. How could she? You've never told her. That thought just made him more irritated. He wolfed down the food without tasting it. A few moments later, the bedroom door whooshed shut, locking him out. “Marvelous,” he said with dripping sarcasm.
He started clearing the table. As he did so, he thought about what she had said and her seemingly disproportionate fury. What if that hadn't been about Rom at all, or at least if it was about more than just Rom? She had always been very vague when it came to her past, never revealing much more than the fact that her family was killed when she was very young, and she was placed with another family. Obviously, they never adopted her, or she'd have taken a family name. She never even mentioned their names. Did they treat her like Quark treated Rom? Worse? “You're a damned fool is what you are,” he said aloud in disgust.
He was no longer angry with Leeta at all. He felt ashamed, and not just of his reaction to her anger, but of how harshly he judged Rom. There was more than a little truth to her accusation that he took the Ferengi's dislike personally. What if it wasn't all that personal? What if Rom resented what he saw as Julian's advantages? The privileged upbringing Leeta mentioned with such heat? He decided he'd apologize to her the first chance he got, hoping that she wouldn't make him wait too long to see her again.
He returned to his quarters, changed out of his uniform and took a long shower, then dressed in comfortable pajamas and climbed into bed with a PADD to catch up on some of the latest medical publications he saved for sleepless nights. The next morning, he saw Rom as promised, treating him more respectfully than he had in the past. He hoped that Leeta would come by the Infirmary when she awoke, or that she'd answer his hail to meet him for supper once he got off. He had no such luck.
After spending some time in his own quarters after hours, he decided to go to hers. He normally didn't let himself in when she wasn't around; however, he believed the longer she stayed angry the less chance they'd have to get the issue ironed out properly. He changed into the spare pajamas he kept there and settled into bed, determined to stay awake. His sleepless night prior made that more difficult than he anticipated, and he fell asleep long before she was due home. He awoke to the feeling of the bed shaking in utter darkness. “Leeta?” he asked groggily, reaching a hand to the side.
She jerked away from his touch. “Go back to sleep,” she said, her voice choked.
“What? No,” he said, concerned, and reached for her a second time. Her shoulder felt hot to the touch. “What's wrong? Is this about yesterday? Why didn't you awaken me?”
“Don't worry about it,” she said. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“I'm really, really sorry. I was completely out of line. Please, talk to me. I can tell you're upset.”
“Upset?” she asked, her voice cracking. “I'm ruined is what I am. I have...no idea...what I'm going to do.”
“Hey,” he said, reaching to pull her into his embrace. She reluctantly allowed him to turn her. He felt hot tears on his chest, wetting the pajamas top. “What happened?”
“Quark cut my pay,” she said on a shuddering exhale. He felt her jerk with a suppressed sob.
“What? Why?” Concern turned to anger in the blink of an eye.
“The Bajoran Time of Cleansing has cut into his profits. It's not just me. It's everybody he's docking.”
Her efforts to control herself made him feel that much worse for her. “It's OK to cry,” he said softly.
“Yeah, sure,” she said, bitterness creeping into her voice. “I can just lie here and cry. That'll pay the rent.”
“Leeta, if you need to borrow some money to pay rent...”
“No!” she said with such vehemence it took him completely by surprise. She sat up and pushed the blanket off, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “Computer, lights.” The room flooded suddenly with bright light, leaving Julian squinting and blinking back spots. “I'm sorry,” she said, wiping swiftly at her face with the back of a hand. “I didn't mean to snap at you like that. I know you're trying to help, but there's no way I'm going to borrow money from you, or anyone else for that matter.”
“If it would make you feel better, I could insist that you pay me back,” he said, sitting up, too.
“I said no,” she said, a thread of steel under the usually soft tones. “I'll figure out something.” Sniffling once, she stood and headed into the sitting room.
Feeling helpless, he pushed up from the bed and followed. “Could you...could you at least tell me why you're so dead set against letting me help you?”
He didn't like the deep hurt he saw in her eyes, an old hurt from the look of it, partially veiled behind unshed tears. “I made a vow to myself some time ago,” she said softly, “that I would never be beholden to anyone for anything again.”
“Does this have something to do with the family that took you in?” he asked hesitantly.
Her lips trembled slightly. “I love you very much,” she said, “but don't go there.”
Being shut out stung. He recognized the blatant hypocrisy in that as he felt it. It didn't change anything.
“I love you, too,” he said. “What can I do?”
“The fact that you want to do something means more than you can know,” she said. “You're going to have to let me handle this. I'd like some time alone now, please.”
He nodded slowly, trying very hard not to take it personally. He had the feeling that there was no one in the galaxy she would accept in her presence at that moment. “I just need to get dressed.”
She nodded and turned away from him, padding barefoot over to the replicator to make herself something. She spoke too low for him to hear the order. He watched her a moment more before heading to the bedroom to get dressed. When he emerged, he found her standing beside the star port and gazing outward, lost in thought.
“I'm leaving now,” he said quietly, feeling awkward standing in the middle of her sitting room with nothing to say or do that would make any difference at all.
She glanced at him and nodded, her gaze softening slightly. “Thank you for understanding.”
He didn't understand, but he had no intention of telling her that. “Of course,” he said instead. “If you need anything, even if it's just to talk, you know where to find me.”
“I do,” she said, nodding and turning back to the port. “Good night.”
“Good night,” he replied, stepping into the corridor and going back to his own quarters. He felt angry with Quark, angrier than he had ever been at the obnoxious Ferengi. Most of all, he was angry with himself for not being able to be open enough with Leeta that she would feel able to be open with him. Somehow, his pretense with Garak felt more honest in that moment. When he reached his quarters, he threw his PADD against the wall and watched it shatter.
