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There’s a low buzz and the faint smell of ozone as the forcefield dissipates. It was necessary before, in the cramped quarters of the Defiant with no room to spare for a proper brig. Now they’ve docked on the station, and a team of Bajoran security personnel has arrived to escort Garak to a more suitable holding cell. Worf, though theoretically relieved of duty to his prisoner, insists on accompanying them to the security office personally, if only to make sure that the new arrangements are secure.
They aren’t, of course— not while Garak’s limbs are unbound, not while he’s able to communicate with his captors and talk them into making mistakes— and Worf growls that Garak’s meek compliance is merely a cover for a future attempt to escape. He’s wrong, of course; not because the thought hasn’t occurred to Garak, or because he doubts himself capable of such a feat, but because it’s pointless.
There will be consequences for his actions, and those consequences will find him whether he’s in a jail cell or in his own quarters or hiding in a bolthole somewhere like a frightened regnar.
He’s already been shamed by his failure to destroy the homeworld of the Founders— to do his duty and protect Cardassia. He will not humiliate himself further by trying to escape the consequences.
In the interim, the jail cell is a comfortable one, inasmuch as they can be. His quarters aren’t so confined as to trigger his claustrophobia; it’s well lit, but not cruelly bright; there’s a bunk to rest upon, and he’s allowed clothes of his own to wear; there are no chains, no scourges, no tools on display to taunt at what’s going to become of him.
Cardassia would not be so gentle with him. Unlike the Federation, failure to carry out his plan would have aggravated his sentence rather than lessened it— assuming, of course, that Tain ever let him see a judge, and didn’t deal with him personally.
(An impossibility, of course, but Garak is already entertaining the ludicrous within the safety of his own mind. If he can imagine being back in his home, even just to die there, then he can just as easily summon Tain from the dead to see him off.)
No. In this, as with most things, the Federaji are hopelessly squeamish. For all that he’s spat in the face of their lofty ideals, they insist that he has inalienable rights which they adamantly refuse to violate, even now.
At least, in the light of day.
Cardassia is hardly alone in her use of Night People; even the hand-wringing Federaji employ someone to slip among the shadows and tend to the most unseemly matters while the rest of them sleep easy and dream of their utopia. Garak is all too aware of Section 31 and at least a few of the atrocities for which it’s responsible.
The question, then, is not if they’re capable of properly disposing of him, but whether his crime warrants their intervention.
It’s possible that they intended to do precisely what he attempted— in which case, his failure may have alerted the Founders to outside threats and spoiled another possible attack.
But no, killing him for that would profit them nothing, and might potentially put them at risk of exposure. No, they won’t want him dead. At least, not right away.
It’s possible that they have other plans for him instead— as the last living member of the Obsidian Order, he is the key to the last of their secrets, even if his information is by now years out of date.
If it was Tain— and surely they have men like Tain among their rank, inasmuch as there are men like Tain in the breadth of the galaxy— then he wouldn’t be satisfied with a single man. He would dig up every one and every thing that Garak has ever touched, every asset and contact, and turn it to his own purpose, if there was any utility to be had.
How disappointed they’ll be to find that every last one of those assets has denounced him or died— or both, in a very short frame of time. If there is any bleak satisfaction to be had in this, it’s in the knowledge that he has no allies whom he can damn with his failure.
The thought barely has time to coalesce in his mind before the door the cell block opens with a pneumatic hiss, and a pair of Bajoran security personnel lead in a man in a Starfleet uniform. Dread pools in Garak’s gut with bitter irony.
It seems that there is still one contact that he has at his disposal. It slipped his mind, because it’s been so very long since he’s stopped thinking of Doctor Bashir as a mere asset. He’s a friend. His last friend in this dismal place.
But Section 31 doesn’t know that.
He cannot stand the thought of his one remaining friend on the station being destroyed like so much scrap. It is pure sentiment, he knows.
And if sentiment is what put Bashir in harm’s way, then it is sentiment that will save him. It’s a plan that would only work on Federaji, he knows. No other people would be so gullible as to think that their enemies shared their same weakness, but it is a failing that he is more than prepared to exploit.
“My dear doctor,” he drawls, swallowing bile. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Doctor Bashir glances over his shoulder to where the Bajoran guards left. “Garak, I don’t have much time to speak to you.”
“There’s never enough time for a proper conversation, is there?” He nearly peppers another instance of ‘my dear doctor’ or even ‘my dearest’ at the end of that sentence, but holds off. Even Federaji will be bound to notice something is amiss if he’s so very obvious.
“Listen to me. Worf is saying that he caught you trying to destroy that exoplanet. I don’t know why you didn’t try to defend yourself in front of Sisko, but I can help you if you let me.” He asks, rather than demands, with a tone no more stern than he might give to a difficult patient. There is no animosity there, no vitriol, no harshness that might be bestowed on an enemy agent.
Ridiculous boy.
This visit is being watched, if not recorded outright. Doctor Bashir coming to see him is already suspect; offering to help him is tantamount to betrayal. Worse, he’s all but identified himself as a valuable asset, and one all too willing to be of assistance.
If he was a trained operative, Bashir would know that.
“Tell me,” he urges, as if he hasn’t already damned himself. “What were you really trying to do?” He leans in, listening intently, as if Garak is about to start dissembling double-meanings and triple entendres.
“My dear doctor,” he says evenly. “Just what is it that you’re hoping for? A puzzle for you to solve? A clue, perhaps?” His eyes harden. “This isn’t one of your holosuite games.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Doctor Bashir demands. “What they’ve accused you of is serious.”
“Not so serious as to warrant more than six months imprisonment, it seems,” Garak says. “A Cardassian judge would have had me executed.”
The doctor blanches. “That isn’t going to happen.” Of course it isn’t— a judge would have no involvement in the matter. Assassinations are hardly the product of due process, after all. “You didn’t actually hurt anyone.”
“And it’s precisely for that reason that I would have been found guilty. I failed in my service to Cardassia by leaving one of her enemies standing.”
“Cardassia’s enemies?” Doctor Bashir repeats. “I know that the Founders are dangerous, but they’ve made no indication–”
“You forget that I spoke directly to the Voice of the Dominion,” Garak says, almost painfully direct. “She declared outright that they intend to eradicate my people. I merely attempted to deliver a preemptive strike.”
Bashir’s shoulders fall. “You really tried to…” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe you, Garak.”
“Can’t you? Then clearly you don’t know me as well as you like to tell yourself.”
“But you didn’t go through with it,” Doctor Bashir says. “Something stopped you.”
“Yes: a Klingon. I still have the bruises to show for it.”
“Not just that,” he insists. “A moment of— of conscience, or sentiment, or—”
“Sentiment?” He scoffs. “Why, because you were still on the planet at the time?” That’s a dangerous suggestion. A debilitating weakness is itself still a valuable tool in the hands of one’s enemies, and that’s the last thing the young doctor needs to be identified as. “You misjudge your importance to me, Doctor. You’ve been effective enough for passing on some messages to your command, of course, but your use to me has always been personal affection foremost.” He feels ill. “If anything, I found it apt. After all, what’s more poetic than sacrificing one love on the altar of another?”
“Love.” Bashir stumbles over the word, stupefied. “You love me.”
This isn’t the way Garak had wanted to tell him.
Truth be told, Garak would have been satisfied never letting him know at all, but needs must.
“Try not to look so taken aback, doctor. Don’t tell me you believed Cardassia would ever be less than my highest priority.”
“No. No, of course not.” Doctor Bashir swallows. “But you love me. You love me.” His mouth shapes the words differently, clearly speaking them in a different tongue, and the universal translator helpfully emphasizes the word for romantic love inside Garak’s head.
“For quite some time now, my dear.” He nearly cringes to say the words so plainly, but they must be known. There can be no doubt about Doctor Bashir’s place in all of this: not as an accomplice, but as an indulgence. Useless to Section 31’s designs.
Doctor Bashir backs up a step, then another. Two Bajoran guards step inside as if summoned. Perhaps they were.
“I— I should go,” Doctor Bashir says, backing closer to the door. The guards shepherd him out, watching him with a mixture of disgust and pity.
Julian’s feet lead him to the arboretum without him consciously deciding to go there. It makes sense— it’s a peaceful place, good for thinking. He’s recommended more than a few patients go here to clear their minds when they’re dealing with stress.
He needs to rethink that prescription: there’s nothing amidst the Farengi lotus and the Bolian ferns that offers him any answers.
The foliage parts, and in place of the greenery he finds himself gazing into a pair of familiar eyes framed by spots.
“Julian,” Jadzia says, stepping into the alcove. “There you are.”
“Hello, Dax.” At the moment he can’t think of anything more charming to say. “Did you need something? Is everything alright?”
“I should be asking you that question.” That look on her face is entirely too understanding, and his stomach sinks between his knees. “I heard what happened.”
“You did.”
Of course she did. There’s not much gossip on the station that hasn’t reached Jadzia. That means it’ll be public knowledge soon, and he still hasn’t fully processed it himself.
Jadzia gives a sympathetic nod. “It must have been pretty hard to hear.”
“It was… shocking,” he admits. Garak was going to slaughter an entire race of people. He was going to destroy a planet with Julian still on it. And worst, that doesn’t come as a surprise to him. Of course he would go to such lengths for Cardassia. Of course he would. There’s nothing that Garak wouldn’t do for his homeland. It should be unforgivable, but Julian can’t help but understand.
It’s the rest of it that’s breaking his brain.
He hesitates. It takes a moment to brace himself to say the words aloud, let alone in front of another person. But this is Jadzia. He swallows. “He said he loves me.”
“Oh, Julian.” She lays a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “Love means different things to people like him. Try not to take it personally.”
“How can I not?”
Sacrificing one love on the altar of another, Garak had said. He’d practically put his feelings for Julian on the same tier as his loyalty to Cardassia, or as close as another person could get to it.
Jadzia gives his shoulder a squeeze, and Julian can’t help but be reminded of other similar, decidedly less platonic touches, taken at the time for a simple friendly gesture.
“Listen, you can do so much better than him,” Jadzia says. “Someone who will stand by you without reservation. Someone who’ll put you first. You deserve that.”
Does he, though?
No, that’s the wrong question entirely. It isn’t about what’s he or anyone else deserves. It’s about what’s fair— and what’s utterly unfair to ask of another person, let alone a partner. He experienced that with Palis when he put his career before her, he’s seen countless partners grow frustrated and then jaded as their plans together were interrupted by a call to the infirmary or to opps.
“And if I can’t put them first?” he asks miserably. “I’m a doctor, Jadzia. My duty to my patients will take precedence every time— to say nothing of my duty to my subordinates, and the station, and Starfleet. How am I supposed to ask someone to just be alright with that?”
“Finding the right balance between work and your personal life is hard,” she says. “But the right person will understand.” It seems that nobody but fellow officers understand that demand, and sometimes not even them.
But Garak does. How many of their lunches has Julian cancelled due to his duties, only to be praised for his sense of duty? How many times has he worked himself into the ground, only for Garak to chide him that his responsibilities would be better served if he was taking proper care of himself?
Julian nods blankly and tries not to to let his thoughts show on his face. “Thank you, Jadzia. That means a good deal.”
She hugs him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “I’m here if you need me.”
Julian makes his way to Quark’s— after all of that, he needs as many drinks as it takes to dull the edges of his augmented mind. Quark casts him a knowing look before sliding him the first round, but blessedly he doesn’t say anything.
He isn’t so lucky for long.
“Ah, Julian,” says a familiar voice, and Julian finds himself relaxing slightly. “I was just looking for you. Care for a game of darts?”
“I’m— ah— not quite in the mood for a game just now, Chief,” Julian hedges. “Maybe another time?”
“That’s alright, we don’t have to play.” Miles pulls up a chair and settles into it with an edge of awkwardness that sets off warnings in the back of Julian’s head. “I heard what happened with the Founders.”
“Yes. Well.” Julian takes a long swig of his drink. “I think Odo got off easy, considering the Changelings’ propensity for vengeance, but I suspect he feels differently. It will take some adjusting, I’m sure.”
“Well, sure,” Miles says. “But I was talking more about the rest that happened. They’re saying Garak tried to blow the place to pieces with you all still on it.”
Julian takes another long draught. “We really don’t have to talk about this.”
“You sure about that?” Miles asks. “Because I’m here for you, you know. If you need to talk.”
There’s something familiar about that phrasing, and not from Miles. “By any chance did Keiko tell you to say that?”
Miles tilts his head, conceding. “She thought you might need someone to talk to, what with some of what she’s been hearing.”
“Oh.” Oh no. “Thank you, but I’m… really, I’m fine. Let her know that I appreciate it.”
There’s a sixty-seven percent chance that Miles will just drop it and leave, too overcome by the awkwardness of the conversation to push it any further. Unfortunately, the subject matter seems to have struck a nerve.
“Seriously, though, I don’t know what Garak was thinking,” he continues. “Like springing something like that on you will just make you forget that he tried to blow up an entire planet— while you were on it, no less.” He mutters something under his breath that sounds like “fucking Cardies”.
“Now hold on,” Julian says. “There was more to it than that.”
“You can’t seriously be defending what he did.”
“Of course I’m not. What he did was wrong, of course it was. I’m saying it wasn’t that simple.”
“Wasn’t it? Attempting genocide seems fairly cut and dry, from where I’m standing.”
“He said it was a pre-emptive strike. That he was trying to stop the Founders from attacking Cardassia.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“I didn’t say it did. I’m saying I can understand where he’s coming from.”
Miles shakes his head into his glass. “You’re giving the man an awful lot of grace, Julian. He tried to blow up a planet that you were standing on. He says he’s your friend– claims he’s even more than that— and he nearly killed you.”
“To protect Cardassia.”
“That doesn’t change things.”
“Of course it does,” Julian insists. “Tell me, Miles, if it was Earth on the line, you’d let me die in a heartbeat.”
“That’s different,” Miles says.
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. For one thing, you’re my friend, not my… you know. Whatever it is Garak says you are to him.”
“Alright, then,” Julian says. “A more equivalent comparison, then. Would you let Keiko?”
Miles goes red. “You leave my wife out of this.”
“Wouldn’t you, though?” Julian says. “One person in exchange for Earth?”
“She’s a civilian. It’s our job to keep people like her out of the line of fire.”
“But if you had to choose—”
“I’m not having this conversation, Julian.” He slams down his glass. “I’m here to try and be a friend, not to play twisted hypotheticals about my wife.”
“I’m just saying that I understand.” Maybe it’s the alcohol finally setting in, but he adds, “I’m surprised that you can’t, all things considered.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that sometimes people have to make hard choices in times of war, and I’m not always going to agree with what they decide.” He should shut up before he says something he’ll regret. Instead he says, “Like you didn’t agree with me helping the Jem’Hadar with their addiction to Ketracel White.”
That hits a nerve. There’s a reason they’ve avoided speaking of this since it happened; it’s easier to be Miles’ friend when they don’t address it. “That was different.”
“I could have saved an entire species from subjugation.”
“You could have taken an army off its leash. For all we know, they could have been even worse than they are now.”
“But you don’t know that for sure,” Julian says. “Nobody knows, because you destroyed my research before we could find out.”
“I was rescuing you!”
“I didn’t want to be rescued. I told you that I didn’t want to be rescued. But you made a call, and you sacrificed the freedom of an entire people for the good of the Federation. I didn’t agree with the choice you made then and I don’t now, but I respect that you feel you had to make it.”
“That’s not the same and you know it,” Miles says.
No, Julian doesn’t say. Because unlike Garak, you succeeded. It’s a good deal easier to forgive him for something that he never actually got to do.
Instead he says, “Maybe it isn’t. But at least I can understand it.”
The argument weighs on Julian for hours after it ends. He knows he needs to give Miles some space and let him cool down, maybe apologize for letting things get so heated, but in the meantime, he feels like a live wire. The things they said kept creeping into his thoughts, his eidetic memory reproducing them syllable for syllable in a perfect account.
Was he just making excuses for Garak? And what does that make him, to excuse an unquestionably reprehensible act just because it was committed by his friend? What does it make him, that the possibility of having something more with him is still tempting at all, rather than utterly disgusting?
Is it an early sign of an underlying problem, perhaps— the danger of his genetic augmentation that has loomed over him since he was fifteen, threatening that he’ll become the next Khan Noonien Singh? Shouldn’t being able to live with— even forgive— crimes like Garak’s be an indicator of the sort of tyrannical impulses that he’s been on the watch for?
He lets his thoughts chase one another around his head until they make him dizzy, and then he goes looking for someone who has some semblance of experience in the matter.
He briefly considers going to Major Kira with the matter, but he finds her in the midst of prayer and contemplation inside the Temple to the Prophets. Before she can turn around and see him watching her, he ducks out of the way.
He knows he has a habit of putting his foot in his mouth where she’s concerned, and this matter issn’t going to be any more tactful.
What exactly is he going to say? Just march up to her and ask how could she justify remaining as close as she is with Odo, knowing that he willingly enforced Cardassian oppression against her people on this very station? How she could simultaneously begrudge the coerced servants and enslaved comfort women as collaborators, knowing that they had little to no choice in the matter?
He runs the calculations, and there’s a thirteen point two seven percent chance that he ends that encounter in the infirmary, and a forty-seven point three eight percent chance that he winds up wishing that it had merely gotten violent instead.
No, perhaps it’s best if he kept Major Kira out of this conversation.
Instead he makes his way toward Ops with significantly more temerity than he’s accustomed to. He can feel every eye on him, acutely aware that everyone who’s watching him knows what happened between him and Garak. Normally he doesn’t care much if people discuss his private life— better they gossip about who he’s seeing and how long than about details he actually intends to keep a secret— but there’s an element of the unfair about this. It seems like the entire station knew about him and Garak almost as soon as he did, and he hasn’t even made up his mind about it yet.
Swallowing, he pokes his head into Sisko’s office.
“Captain Sisko?” he asks, feeling for the life of him like being sent to the guidance counselor when he was a child.
“Doctor Bashir, come in.” Sisko’s natural air of authority does nothing to diminish that particular mental image. Sisko looks weary— he often does these days— with piles of padds stacked across his desk. Already he’s tense, his shoulders tight and his posture too straight, visibly bracing for another emergency.
“Has something happened, Doctor?” he asks. Something that couldn’t be expressed over the comms, is unspoken.
“Nothing like that,” Julian says quickly. “Not an emergency, anyway. Everything in the infirmary is under control.” He runs his thumb over the pads of his fingers, wishing for something to fidget with. “Actually, I was hoping to ask you about a— a personal matter.”
The tension doesn’t leave Sisko’s frame, but simply redistributes. He sighs. “Go ahead.”
“It’s about Kasidy Yates.” He hesitates; he can practically see Sisko’s blood pressure ticking upward. “How are you coping with her being… gone?”
“Not at all, Doctor,” Sisko says. “Because she isn’t gone. She’s serving her sentence. Once that time has passed, she’ll be free to come and go as she pleases.”
“But seeing her in prison— that must be difficult for you.”
“It is,” Sisko says, and he picks up his baseball and turns it over in his hands. “And I feel for her lost freedom and her lost opportunities. But what she’s going through is no injustice. I’m ensuring that she’s being treated fairly throughout the process.”
Of course he is. Julian would expect no less of his captain. “And she isn’t… taking it personally?” he asks meekly. “That you were involved in her arrest?”
“She understood the potential consequences of her choices when she made them,” Sisko says. “And she accepted those consequences. She understands that I have a duty to this station and to the Federation, just like she has a duty to the Maquis.”
“But those duties contradict each other,” Julian says.
“And what they require will sometimes be a point of conflict, and not only in this situation. But we both understand what drives it.”
“And can you still love each other despite it?”
“Despite? No.” Sisko puts his baseball back on its stand. “I love her because of it— because of her passion, and the dedication she has to something greater than herself, even if I won’t always see eye to eye with her about every aspect of it. She wouldn’t be who she is without it. It’s possible to love someone whose duties contradict your own— and possible to love them even more because of it. But at the same time, you have to be certain of where you stand. You’re a member of Starfleet, Julian. You need to know that you can be trusted to do the right thing. You need to know where your loyalties lie.”
“Are we talking about me, Sir?”
Sisko raises a brow. “Aren’t we?”
It’s been days since Doctor Bashir came to see him.
Garak has taken to pacing in his cell, if only to stretch his legs.
Section 31 hasn’t come for him yet. Maybe they’ve decided that he isn’t worth their time. Maybe he’s simply not a priority. It’s difficult to say from here.
At least he can tell himself that he’s done everything in his power to protect Doctor Bashir from the fallout of his actions, little as that may be. That gives him some cold comfort, amidst the reminders of his other more egregious failures.
And at last that familiar slim form appears before the door of his cell once more. Doctor Bashir is on his own this time.
“No guards today?” Garak asks primly.
“No.” Doctor Bashir’s fingers twitch as though he might like he might like to straighten his uniform, but he keeps himself still. “I’d prefer to keep this conversation between the two of us.”
“Is that so?” Garak spreads his hands. “I can assure you, my dear, there’s nobody for me to tell.”
The doctor twitches just slightly at the endearment. It’s been a very long time since he’s reacted to it, though that may be about to change. Garak braces for the moment of chastisement, the demand that Garak leave those terms behind.
“Garak,” he says, weighing the word carefully. “About what you said the last time we spoke together…”
Ah. This. Garak doesn’t pretend that it’s unexpected. He kept the depth of his feelings to himself for a reason, after all; it was easier to play this silly game with the doctor when they both had plausible deniability about what it all meant. Neither of them has that anymore.
“You said that you love me.” Doctor Bashir takes a steadying breath. “But the fact is that Cardassia will always come first to you.”
“Yes,” Garak says, plainly.
“You understand that I have to put the Federation first,” Bashir says. “And my patients. Always. There’s no getting around that.”
“You’re a doctor, my dear. And the CMO of this station. I don’t see how anyone could ask any less of you.”
Julian’s expression flickers briefly, and he hesitates. “And if I were to do something– stupid. Something that I thought was for the greater good, but it would potentially put people in danger. Put Cardassia in danger.”
“You mean as an act of war?”
“As an act for the greater good.”
“Then I would be forced to evaluate how great that good could truly be. My government is bloated with people who have convinced themselves that what’s best for themselves is best for all.”
“And if I was one of those people?”
He wouldn’t be. Garak has met such people, has watched them tear up their own beliefs in service of their own interests. Doctor Bashir isn’t like them.
But that isn’t the question being asked.
“I would stop you.”
“What about sentiment?”
“I would mourn you for the rest of my existence. But if you were to become such a threat? No, I would not hesitate.”
“Right.” Bashir takes a deep breath. “Computer, lower the forcefield of Holding Cell Three. Emergency Medical Override Bashir One Alpha.”
In an instant the forcefield drops away. Before Garak can comment on it, Bashir grabs him by the collar and pulls him into a bruising kiss.
Garak lets himself coil against Bashir’s chest, ignoring the rest of everything going on around him and simply basking in the feel of Bashir’s lips against his and his warmth pressed tight against his body.
Too quickly, the kiss is over, and Bashir is panting into Garak’s mouth.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, so close that the sound barely passes between them. “I feel the same.”
“Well.” Garak wishes he had the wherewithal to give a more suave reply. He’s denied the opportunity when the doctor’s commbadge chirps.
“Doctor Bashir, we have record of an override in the holding cells?”
The doctor taps his badge with a look of mild chagrin. “Yes, that was me. I was just giving Mister Garak a quick examination.”
“Do you require assistance?”
“No, thank you. Bashir out.”
Garak flashes a languid grin. “I don’t suppose this is you letting me out of this cell, is it?”
“I’m afraid not,” Bashir says. “You’ve still got a sentence to serve.” He presses another swift kiss to the corner of Garak’s mouth. “But I’ll come visit you. And I’ll be here when you get out.”
“I look forward to it.”