Chapter Text
“The Brachnians held us there for three days, captive within the Galahad,” said Julian to the growing crowd around him, “a full two hundred leagues beneath the surface of the Brachnian atmosphere,” and there he took a sip of a lovely blue drink he’d been handed by someone, “with Lieutenant Selek as our only point of contact. And that was when…”
---
“They would like me to send another individual,” said Selek at 38 hours since their descent. Thus far, Selek had been the only one to exit the Galahad and communicate with the Brachnians. It seemed that they were able to link with him telepathically through the medium of the liquid atmosphere but not through the medium of the Galahad’s hull.
“Did they tell you why?”
Selek held his hands open in apology. “I have become more adept at communicating with the Brachnians since our first contact, but much of their meaning is still lost. My understanding is that what they seek would be akin to an anthropological interview.”
“Do you think we should give them what they want?”
“Candidly, Doctor, we are completely at their mercy. I believe that they will only release us when they are satisfied with the information they have received. They have a highly developed intellectual curiosity,” he said. To a stranger he would seem indifferent, but to Julian the admiration in his tone was as plain as day.
“I take it you want me to volunteer.”
“It has to be you, Doctor. I understand that they have already touched your mind – albeit at the surface level – and are interested in what they found. The same is true of the captain, of course, but…”
“This is not a mission for a captain. The risk is too great. I’m happy to satisfy their curiosity, Selek, if you’re confident we can take them at their word.”
“I trust the Brachnians, Doctor Bashir, though I do not fully understand them.”
“Then I suppose I’ll go ahead and slip into something more comfortable.”
“Doctor?”
“A joke, Selek. I mean I’ve got to change into dive suit.”
“Ah,” Selek said, “that will not be necessary, Doctor.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
---
Captain Moraga scowled at the two of them. “Lieutenant, are you telling me that I’m supposed to launch my CMO out of an airlock and into a hostile alien atmosphere, and that they want him naked?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“And you want to go along with this, Doctor?”
“It doesn’t seem as if we have any choice, Captain,” Julian said. “The Brachnians have highly developed telepathic communication, but it seems as though materials like the ship’s hull or the protective layers of a dive suit prevent them from transmitting their thoughts. Selek has only been able to communicate with them due to his Vulcan training. Being that I’m psi-null, I won’t be able to help them to penetrate the suit’s materials like Selek can.”
“You also won’t be able to breathe,” Moraga said.
“He will be able to wear a breathing apparatus,” Selek interjected quickly. “It is enough for the majority of the body to be uncovered.”
“You really have no objections, Doctor?” Moraga asked.
“None that outweigh the rewards, Captain,” he said firmly. Then he smiled. “Except that I might be a little embarrassed. I may have been indulging in a few too many Delavian chocolates as of late.”
His joke landed. The tension fell out of Captain Moraga’s shoulders as she laughed. She ran her fingers through her short, unruly curls and threw her arms out in defeat. “Well, we’re stuck here in the goo until the Brachnians let us go either way. What’s one little CMO? If they ask to have our chief engineer – that’s when we’ll be in trouble,” she said. “Go ahead, Doctor. I’ll begin arrangements to have you sent out.”
---
“And there I was,” Julian said, “absolutely starkers aside from my breathing apparatus and a tether around my waist keeping me within comm range of the Galahad – ”
---
With his body drifting in the Brachnian atmosphere, Julian’s mind began to swim away from him. The weightlessness of Brachnia was unlike the weightlessness of normal zero-gravity conditions. Rather than an absence of pressure from above, he felt a constant support from beneath. It had been hot at first – like touching a patient with a fever – but now it was as though the atmosphere had regulated itself to match his body temperature. The boundaries between himself and the Brachnian sea felt less and less tangible the longer he spent adrift. He forgot his body; lost awareness of his toes; became as physically malleable as the medium through which he moved.
The touch of the Brachnian mind was the same – subtle, gradual, and endlessly alluring. Julian found himself thinking of people, places, little bits of information he hadn’t thought about in years before he realized that he must be answering the Brachnians’ questions.
His mind wandered comfortably wherever the Brachnians led. He felt them learn about Starfleet, the Federation, about Deep Space Nine and the Gamma Quadrant (that’s here) and the taste of honey and the wormhole and the Alpha Quadrant (that’s home – far away from here) and Delavian chocolates and Tarkalean tea and clothing and uniforms dress uniforms off-duty clothes shore leave Risa pleasure planets pleasure Jadzia Dax the Trill, a humanoid species like me that may coexist with a sentient organism called a symbiont Quark Ferenginar profit loss “Dabo!” drinking kanar Elim Garak literature and the Brachnians absorbed the entire plot of The Never-ending Sacrifice, absorbing simultaneously the spirited arguments of Julian’s book club lunches with Garak, absorbing simultaneously the work of that great Earth poet Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? / Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth / Tell you I do not, nor cannot, love you? absorbing simultaneously the look in Garak’s eyes when Julian said something exceptionally Federaji, both adoring and reproachful, absorbing simultaneously the concepts longing, attraction, sacrifice, disappointment, loneliness, and desire, which fascinated them immensely.
He left a few of those things out in the telling, of course.
---
“And, well, to make a long story short, the Brachnians were so pleased by what they’d learned from my mind that they asked Selek to send them each and every individual aboard the Galahad in turn to conduct a similar, ah, anthropological interview.”
“I hope they weren’t disappointed,” said a sly, familiar voice from the circle of faces that had gathered to listen to his story. “If I were the Brachnians, I would have wanted to save the best for last.”
He found Garak’s pale blue eyes and tried to meet the challenge he saw in them. “Well, we’ll have to forgive them,” he said – charmingly, he hoped. He refused to let that underhanded (he was sure) compliment ruin his mood. “After all, they couldn’t possibly have known until it was too late.”
“Ah. That is right, isn’t it,” said Garak, smiling politely.
“Yes! And then, um,” Julian stumbled. Oh, dear, he’d had one too many, hadn’t he? Or was it just the effect Garak had on him? After all this time! He felt a little bit sick.
(He didn’t say this out loud, but the Brachnians had been especially curious about Garak. They had teased out all of the regret holed up in Julian’s heart and laid it bare. He’d relived their highlights reel, from the first encounter in the Replimat to the bullet in the neck to the unfinished goodbye. He’d stepped through the airlock back onto the Galahad naked, wet, and crying.)
“Are you all right, Doctor?” asked a sweet-looking Andorian in civilian dress.
(Once they were out of the thick of it, he’d been grateful for the experience. He’d written to Garak then for the first time since the end of the Dominion War. He’d sought to make things right – he had.)
“Yes, yes, I’m –”
“Doctor Bashir,” said Lieutenant Selek, who appeared at his shoulder. His white dress uniform had been badly torn on one sleeve and smeared with a black stain like an oil slick, the braids around the wrist dangling limply from a tattered elbow.
“Selek! What's happened –”
“There is no time. One of the Brachnians’ containment suits has been compromised.”
“Was there a deliberate attack?” he asked, getting to his feet. He followed Selek to the stairway, relying a little too heavily on the banister as he clumsily descended.
“Unclear,” Selek replied. “All I can gather is that the containment suit has, in essence, sprung a leak.” Their footfalls on the staircase punctuated the rhythm of his speech.
“I don’t suppose you have any solilotrine on you,” Julian ventured, hoping to shake the drunken sluggishness off of his muscles.
Selek let Julian go ahead of him down the stairs.
“I was under the impression that you were the doctor, Doctor.”
“Very funny, Selek – and to think everyone says you have no sense of humor. I guess I’ll have to…” – His foot slipped and he went down two steps at once – “…sober up the old fashioned way.”
---
Julian had to duck between the enormous suits of the gathered Brachnians in order to reach their fallen comrade. There were six of them, counting the one on the ground. The sight of it was certainly sobering: a brass giant, sprawled mournfully across the floor. A stream of black fluid steadily gurgled out of a rupture in the crook of its massive cetacean throat and pooled on the parquet floor. He could see that a wad of cloth had been stuffed into the breach. That must have been where Selek had sacrificed his sleeve... but it had already been soaked through and didn’t appear to be doing much to staunch the flow.
Julian moved to get himself to the Brachnian’s side, but another barred his way with an outstretched fin.
“Doctor Bashir!” exclaimed the comm unit on the fallen Brachnian’s right arm. Its head did not turn to look at him. “I have news which will bring you pleasure: I have decided to become an individual!”
Before Julian could begin to parse this announcement, the new individual hauled itself up to its feet and careened into its brethren. It smashed through them after a brief grappling match, flinging itself against the banister at the foot of the stair. The contingent of partygoers who had rushed down the stairs to see the excitement started tripping over each other to get back up to the second floor. A nasty sound told Julian the rupture in the containment suit had widened.
“Stop! Just hold still,” he shouted, breaking free of the Brachnian arm that held him back. The containment suits were large, but strangely light for their size and severely limited in maneuverability. “You’re losing atmosphere quickly. How can we repair your containment suit?”
Receiving no answer, he turned to the other Brachnians gathered around. “Will this Brachnian be able to survive once exposed to our atmosphere?”
“Yes,” droned the communication devices on each of their five right arms.
“For how long?”
“Indefinite,” they told him.
What? he thought. How can that be?
“Explain,” said Lieutenant Selek, who was approaching cautiously.
“Clarify,” the Brachnians countered.
“How can one of your kind survive outside of your native atmosphere?”
The injured Brachnian was the one to answer: “I have no native atmosphere.”
“Then what is the purpose of the containment suit?” Julian asked, baffled. And what’s pouring out of it if not the liquid atmosphere he had swum in on Brachnia?
“It – limits – the – body,” intoned the Brachnian. The computerized speech of the comm unit had become disjointed and slow. Was the organism within losing its ability to control the suit?
“Just hold on,” Julian said, considering the options. An on-duty medic would be helpless without any knowledge of the Brachnian body, and any medication Julian could get his own hands on would likely be useless. Any medical tools could very well be useless. What wouldn’t be useless?
A standard tissue regenerator could be calibrated according to one of the other Brachnians. Then, it would be able to repair any damage done by exposure to the Earth atmosphere.
“Selek,” he said, “can you find me a –”
He broke off, spinning out of the way as the Brachnian lurched forward and smashed its blank face against the floor. Black fluid left the containment suit like yolk draining out of a cracked egg.
“No–!”
Julian dove to the Brachnian – but what for? What would he do, shovel the heavy atmosphere back in with his bare hands?
He made a decision. “One of you,” he said to the Brachnians, “will need to open your suit for long enough to accommodate a guest. Selek, do you have a tricorder?”
“Not on my person.”
“Find one. I have reason to believe that the physical body of the Brachnian occupies a very small area of the containment suit. I’ll need you to run a scan and see if you can help me locate it.”
“Yes, Doctor,” Selek said. He left at once.
In the meantime, what to do? Selek’s move to plug the leak with a piece of his uniform had been smart – there wasn’t much else in the way of material at a diplomatic soiree like this. Despite complaints to the contrary, a Starfleet dress uniform would allow some air to circulate, but the Brachnian atmosphere was thick, with a high cohesion factor. A plan coalesced.
Step one: He dragged the Brachnian containment suit back to the foot of the stairs and propped it up in a seated position to reduce the amount of fluid lost.
Step two: He removed his own uniform jacket.
Step three: With effort, he wrenched the compromised helmet piece off of the containment suit.
Step four: He draped his jacket over the opening thereby revealed, and – oh, he’d just cleaned it. Never mind! A life may be at stake.
Step five: He created a firm seal between the fabric and the opening in the suit using a…
Damn. He didn’t have anything. While he scanned the room for something he could salvage from the décor, a warm body settled beside him. “Go ahead and run a scan, Selek,” he said automatically. “Look for any significant differentials in either density, temperature, or composition. What do you think I should use to secure this?”
But the man beside him was already taking out a small device, and the man beside him was not Selek.
Julian breathed in. They were very close now, but Garak’s eyes were on his work.
“Garak. What is that?”
“A standard dressmaking tool, Doctor,” Garak informed him as he ran it along the edge of the fabric, pressing firmly. “I always carry one with me. It’s only designed to create a temporary seal, but it should last an hour – perhaps two.” Right. Now they were back on course.
Step five: Garak created a firm seal between the fabric and the opening in the suit using a Cardassian dressmaking tool.
Lieutenant Selek arrived next, and (Step six:) initiated a tricorder scan to pinpoint the location of the Brachnian.
While the scan was underway, Julian glanced back at the other five Brachnians. They hadn’t moved in minutes, neither helping nor hindering his efforts to rescue their compatriot. Why?
“I am not finding anything, Doctor,” Selek said over the soft beeping of the tricorder.
“Nothing?”
“There are no differentials in density, temperature, or composition as far as the tricorder is able to read. It would appear that the contents of the containment suit are completely uniform.”
Julian’s brow furrowed. “How could that be?”
One of the Brachnians shifted behind him. He turned to see it shuffling across the floor, trying to push all of the escaped liquid atmosphere into one pile.
“You would think they had enough atmosphere to spare on their own planet not to have to scrape it off the floor,” Garak said.
The Brachnian addressed Garak for the first time. “You do not understand.”
“Please, educate me,” Garak said. Julian was surprised to notice that he didn’t sound smug or facetious at all.
“It is not atmosphere,” said the Brachnian’s comm unit. “It is –”
“It – is – me!” interrupted the now-headless Brachnian beside them. “Return – me – to – my – self,” it demanded.
“It will return to Brachnia,” said one of the others.
“No! I – am – an – individual! I – am – me!”
Of course. The black liquid was not the Brachnians’ atmosphere. It was the Brachnian. Julian stood. “You will not collect any more of that material.”
“It seeks to separate,” the Brachnian protested.
“And what is so wrong with that?” Julian asked.
“There is only one Brachnia.”
“When I look around this room, I see six Brachnians.”
“The separation is artificial. Brachnia learned from the Federation how to separate the body. It is temporary. This part of Brachnia does not wish to return.”
Julian took a step closer to the five of them who opposed the other.
“Help me to understand you,” he said. “Do you mean to tell me that you are a single organism?”
“There is only one Brachnia.”
“But you are able to – exist – separately, for a time, using these containment suits.”
“Is it not the same for Federation individuals? Is the separation not temporary?”
“No,” he said. “It is the permanent state of most Federation species, my own included, to exist as individuals.”
A silence passed over them like a wave at the ocean’s surface passes over the creatures of the deep.
“To be separate,” the Brachnian told him, “causes us pain.”
Julian’s mind took him to the gray promenade of the space station after the Dominion War. He came to the office that had once belonged to Commander Sisko and stared in through the glass paneling on the door.
“It can be a source of pain,” he said, “to be separate, but more than that it is the source of our strength.”
He walked past the empty storefront that had once displayed the name of Garak’s shop.
“Our individuality is what makes our society possible. Each of us has unique experiences which can never be replicated by another.”
He went to the bar where Ezri wasn’t – where Jadzia hadn’t been in a long time.
“We are able to share these experiences through varied forms of communication.”
He stared at a PADD night after night, composing a letter he wouldn’t send.
“By listening to each other and seeking to understand each other’s experiences, we can make the decisions that will best serve us all,” he said. “That is what society is for us. If you wish to maintain contact with the Federation, you will need to learn to communicate with us as individuals and as representatives of a whole.”
He took a breath.
“Now, as I understand it, you are able to rejoin the whole at any time once you have separated.”
“Yes,” one of the Brachnians confirmed.
“Then why not allow this part to separate? It will have experiences in the world that would be impossible for the whole to replicate. It will learn and grow, just as we do. And then, when the time comes, it may rejoin you. Then, Brachnia as a whole will be enriched by the time during which it has been separated.”
“This decision is too great for the parts,” spoke the comm unit on a Brachnian’s right limb. “Brachnia must return to the whole.”
“Why not let this part remain behind?” Julian asked. “It could experience life in the Federation until Brachnia comes to a decision. You could ask for its assurance that it will eventually return to the whole as well.”
“This decision is too great for the parts,” spoke the comm unit on a different Brachnian’s right limb.
Selek spoke softly at Julian’s shoulder. “Doctor Bashir, now that we know the nature of the Brachnian, I would be able to prepare a containment field that would allow it to transport this damaged suit and its contents back to its homeworld.”
Julian bit the inside of his cheek. He couldn’t let them take this individual captive. If even one part of the whole desired to exist as an individual, he could not allow it to be reabsorbed without a fight.
“What do you think?” he asked one of the Brachnians.
“This decision is too great for the parts,” it replied.
“I am not asking for a decision. I am asking what you think about the situation.”
He was met with a silence. He turned to his friend, the new individual leaning against the stair.
“What about you? What do you think?”
“I – would – rejoin – after – a – time,” it told him. The voice of the comm unit buzzed – a telltale sign of damage to the mechanism.
“Tell them, not me,” Julian said. He stepped out of the way to address them all. “There’s a Federation custom known as a negotiation. When a difficult decision needs to be made, all of the individuals involved will come together and spend time talking – communicating – with each other until everyone is able to come to an agreement. If Brachnia would be amenable, we could begin negotiations…here,” he said, and took a seat on the bottom stair beside the Brachnian individual, “and now.”
He smiled, despite the uncertain mood around him.
---
It turned out that blocking the stairs down to the main exit of a party venue after an upsetting incident was not the ideal setting for important diplomatic talks, and so the nine of them had mopped up any spilled Brachnian into an empty ice bucket and relocated to a small conference room on the third floor: five representing Brachnia, one representing the Brachnian individual, Doctor Bashir mediating the discussion, Lieutenant Selek acting as the impartial voice of logic, and Ambassador Garak, who had surprised everybody by volunteering to sit and take notes. He had also taken it upon himself to tend to the compromised containment suit, making sure that the seal between its throat and Julian’s repurposed jacket was regularly re-pressed.
It was already past midnight when the meeting had begun, and now the sun was threatening to rise. No conclusion had been made, but a recess had been called for the benefit of the non-Brachnians among them. In a society that aimed to be fair, the Brachnians would have to learn, decisions like this could not be made all at once. They would all return to their lodgings and reconvene at another location once Julian and Garak had been able to get a few hours of sleep. Selek insisted that he required only a brief period of meditation to return to top form, so he would spend the rest of their break engineering a more permanent solution for the broken containment suit that would allow the Brachnian to continue to communicate with psi-null parties.
Garak found him on the balcony as the sky turned orange from the bottom up. Julian heard him, but he didn’t turn around. He squeezed his eyes shut and scrubbed at his face with his hands. His skin felt too thick. He was certainly dehydrated. He scratched his fingers through his hair and found it too greasy. The roof of his mouth had an unpleasant taste. He didn’t mind seeing Garak now, but he wished he could clean himself up first. At least they were outside. At least he was out of that uniform jacket and he could feel the cool morning air on his skin.
“Thank you, Garak,” he said. The roughness of his own voice caught him off guard. He cleared his throat. “For all of your help.”
“You handled the situation admirably,” said Garak. He stepped forward to lean over the railing at Julian’s side. “Is there a starship command in your future?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, flashing Garak the best smile he could muster in his current state of exhaustion. “Let’s see if this blows up in my face or not before we talk about all that.”
“I think that you are doing very well.”
He caught Garak’s eyes. They looked incredibly blue. It must be because the morning light had turned the edges of his scales from pale gray to pink. It had enhanced the contrast. It was all he could do to stop himself from leaning any closer before he fell into Garak’s arms.
“You must be tired,” Garak said.
“Why did you come to this party, Garak?”
“I am acting as a representative of Cardassia to the Federation.”
“The alliance with Brachnia has nothing to do with the Cardassian Union. Why are you here?”
“If I had been somewhere else, Doctor, you might still be downstairs scraping spilled Brachnian off of the floor.”
“Garak!” Julian felt both of his hands turn to fists. Garak’s eyes widened. He took a deep breath. “I apologize, Garak. I am tired. So are you. We’ve had a rotten night. Please answer my question.”
They looked at each other for a long time, each taking the measure of the other. Garak did look older now. Julian saw new creases in the fine scales around his eyes. His jawline had softened a little. None of it mattered at all, because Garak was looking at him now as though he were a baby bird fallen too soon from the nest – something he wanted to care for but couldn’t bring himself to touch.
“My dear doctor,” Garak said softly, “if you must know, I am here because I heard that you would be in attendance. I understand that you will be on Earth for some time. I would like to take you to lunch before you go.”
He searched Garak's face. There was no smug smirk, no twinkle in his eye, nothing that told Julian he might be teasing. Still, he allowed himself one last test.
“My dear,” said Julian. “My very, very, very dear Mister Garak,” he said, watching Garak's reaction carefully, “I am afraid that I have to decline.”
“I see,” said Garak immediately. His expression closed off. He pushed himself away from the railing. “I apologize, Doctor. This has been quite the gaffe.”
There hadn't been any sign all night that Garak had been toying with him, had there? He'd projected it himself. He couldn't say yet what that meant, could hardly stand to conjecture, but...
“Garak, wait,” Julian called after him. “Can’t I tell you why?”
Now he had the chance to find out.
“If you must.”
He took a breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth.
“Because, my dear,” he said, savoring the feel of the word on his tongue, unable to keep the smile from playing at his lips, “it is much too early for lunch. If we are really going to make up for all our lost time, don’t you think we ought to start with breakfast?”
Garak’s carefully polite expression fell away and in its place arose the most brilliant smile Julian had ever seen on him.
“Speechless, Garak? I hope it’s only because you’re thinking of where to take me. I’m hoping to have a nice pain au chocolat. When in Paris, after all.”
“Julian, you will have to tell me who it was that taught you to be so cruel.”
“You…” he paused, then made a decision. He stepped closer to Garak and took his hands. After the briefest moment of hesitation, he felt Garak’s nails pricking backs of his hands, squeezing him tight. “You, Elim, are the one who went seven years without answering a letter.”
“Ah, but now you’re undermining your own argument.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why not allow the part to separate?” Garak asked. Julian recognized his own words from earlier in the night. “It will have experiences in the world that would be impossible for the whole to replicate. When the time comes, it may rejoin, and the whole will be enriched by the time that has been spent apart. I could not have gone with you to the Gamma Quadrant, and nor would you have been welcome on Cardassia Prime. These are things we could only have done as individuals. Apart.”
Julian wanted desperately to argue. He wanted nothing more than to contradict, to object to his words being taken out of context, and to point out the false equivalencies. Instead, he placed a hand on the back of Garak’s neck and drew him as close as he could bear.
“Elim,” he said, “I am going to return to my hotel. I am going to take a shower and change my clothes. I am going to brush my teeth. I recommend you do the same. In exactly one hour, meet me at the intersection of Rue de la Voie Lactée and Rue Cochrane. We will find a café, and once we are there, I will tell you exactly why everything you have just said is positively absurd.”
“Oh, my dear,” said Garak, delighted, “I look forward to being convinced."