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Chapter Text

He had a look of surprise and slight dismay as he came into his abode, welcomed by the fragrance of redleaf tea that had been sitting for a while too long in the pot. Three pairs of eyes had set on him at once, black, green, and blue — mine.

“What-” He fumbled, hesitating to remove his coat.

“Sit, it’s all fine,” I assured, gesturing at the free chair between myself and our green-eyed guest — Pythas had opted to sit directly on the kitchen bench, a foot resting in a drawer he’d opened for that purpose, the other dangling next to his cane.

“That situation doesn’t look fine to me,” Kelas Parmak gestured at the woman seated opposite to me, with her hands bound to the chair.

“Ha! Bold words coming from you, Counselor! ” her eyes held a murderous glimmer, perfectly matching the shine of the blade on the table.

“What is this all about? I don’t have time for your games,” Kelas resolved to take off his coat at last.

“I’m afraid that it’s about this new… idea? At the government?” I poured tea for four at last. “The one about the emblem’s redesign,” I clarified and got up, to bring one of the cups to Pythas, who accepted it in silence.

“And what about it?” Kelas looked tired as he came to sit, dragging his chair away from the table, and away from us. “I take it you don’t like it? And who would you be?” he looked at the woman.

“Nizyal Keret,” she answered, as fearlessly as could be expected from a military urchin.

“Did you come to try and murder me over, what? A flag?” Kelas gave her a weary look.

“Because you think yourself so much more important than our emblem?” she shot back with a voice clear and sharp like a perfectly-cut obsidian blade. “If it’s of so little consequence to you, why touch it!? ”

“Your Keret… Our Union isn’t what it used to be anymore-” Kelas started with the politician speech, but that wasn’t going to fly.

“-You destroyed it! That’s what you did! First you bicker about power grid mappings instead of just rebuilding, then you let our colonies secede one after the other, and now you even want to outcast our emblem! You’re destroying everything that’s left of our culture!”

“Culture is made everyday, Your Keret,” the doctor’s dark eyes set on hers. “Cardassia has been slaughtered by-”

“-By you,” she cut off with unwavering resolution in her voice.

“Yes, I suppose you could say that,” Kelas reckoned. “Mercy killing.” His honesty shut her up again. “The world we had isn’t coming back. We must let go of the past and invent a new future for ourselves…”

“And what of the present?” she questioned.

“Yes,” I agreed with interest. “We’re not going anywhere, are we?” I squinted at him.

“Oh, Elim… you who used to be so patient…” he shook his head at me. “Have you also come to expect we can mend the damage done to this planet and to our people within just a few years?”

“Your government is bickering about a new face for our emblem, for State’s sake, Kelas!” I lashed out at him. “Talk of a way to waste time and lives! People are still dying out there! And here you are, splitting public opinion when we need to keep united, more than ever! It’s like you’re asking for a civil war!”

He sighed heavily, leaning to massage his face with a hand, elbow weighing on his thin tigh. In his fatigue, my neighbor seemed more wiry than ever. He seemed older too, and the sight reminded me like a slap across the face that he was my elder, after all. But not by so much that he should look so withered.

“Kelas…” I said more softly, holding to the warmth of my cup of tea.

“It’s about ideas, Elim. It’s always about ideas…” he looked up at me, keeping his head rested on his hand. “We need to become the idea. The emblem… this militaristic symbol… it’s not us-”

“It might not be you but it’s still many of us,” Nizyal interjected. “You can’t simply go ahead and discard it like that!”

“Have you never considered that it might have been representing those of your caste, but not the rest of us? That military symbol…” Kelas looked up at her but held his stance in the debate. “No, your rule is over, like it or not, and the idea that, somehow, the military keeps on controlling our nation must die now.”

“No-”

“-Yes,” he didn’t let her continue. “The military was always meant to serve. From the day you took power, everything was destroyed. You shall now know your place and keep it, and your place isn’t Central Command anymore,” Kelas stated firmly.

“But is it really the right moment to do such things?” I still questioned.

“There’s no right moment.” Annoyance vibrated in his throat and he drowned it with tea. “We have to do everything at once. We don’t have much of a choice. And you want to kill me?” he looked at Nizyal. “It won’t trigger elections,” he shrugged. “I will be replaced by a member of my cabinet, and you would have given up on your life for nothing. You cannot kill an idea with a knife. But we can kill an idea with a drawing.”

There was a sudden mess and it took me a second to review what had just happened in the previous second. Nizyal had kicked her chair away from the table and swiped her leg over the table, casting all things standing there over Kelas. To my left, my neighbor was breathing short and fast amidst the mess. In front of me, Nizyal had just tried to get up despite being still bound to the chair, but Pythas (when had he moved?) had whacked her in the neck with his cane. She sat back.

I stared at Kelas, then at the knife's point stabbing into his lower belly, over his left lap.

“She might not kill an idea, but she might still kill a man,” I concluded to that and took a sip from my cup.

“I’m not dead yet, Elim,” Kelas rasped, trying not to let shock get the best of him — his face was turning pale, enhancing the contrast with is dark eyes and orderly hair. “If you planned on killing me, that’s your worst job yet,” he added surly and glanced at Pythas, the ever silent. “So? What was this really all about?” he asked, holding the knife so it wouldn’t fall while he had nothing to apply pressure to the wound and prevent hemorrhage.

I was rather impressed by the willpower he put in his act and in his ignoring Nizyal’s swears — I saw Pythas roll his eyes rather quite discreetly before tipping her chair on the floor and stepping on her throat to muffle her sounds into choking and coughing. I knew it was also a barbaric way to keep Kelas on his toes and ill at ease.

“So, you’re not going to clean up the mess?” I asked Kelas and looked at the broken tea cups, broken teapot and the wasted tea on the ground. “Or maybe now is a good moment to redesign the composition of a good redleaf blend?” I raised an eyeridge.

“Now, you see, Elim,” Kelas narrowed his eyes, “ that’s what bad political rhetoric leads us to. You think that this situation is a good reflection of our current context? The Order being the only line to keep the military from killing us? And us civilians being incapable of choosing what to do, between cleaning up the mess or preserving life?” he glanced down at the knife. “But look at yourself, drinking your tea like nothing touches you. You want no involvement in politics nor in anything else. You just sit there, watch, and write your memoirs like you’re already dead. And yet you break into my home-” he stopped there and I could see pain on his livid face.

“Well, I’m only one person,” I argued, however weakly.

“We’re all persons, Elim,” Kelas seethed and looked at the woman under Pythas’s boot. “So is she, and she doesn’t deserve to be treated like this, least of all in my home. So, if you would be so kind as to put an end to this barbarism… Look at yourselves, really… Behaving like the militaries you despise…”

“I can’t say I despise them,” Pythas’s voice came to life at last, “and neither do you,” he looked at me with those warm coals. “I believe you wanted to become one of them, in a different life.”

I blushed in slight embarrassment, and got up to get Kelas’s surgical kit. Pythas let go of Nizyal’s throat but couldn’t, due to his still-healing-wounds, raise her back into dignity. I had to be the one doing it, and I could feel the weight of the doctor’s eyes on me as I did. Nizyal only had half the heart to observe as he performed surgery on himself, cleaning the wound she’d caused and stitching it close — the knife hadn’t damaged any organ, only cutting through the skin and some tissues.

Pythas regained his place on the kitchen bench, which meant that tidying up was left to me. Fair, I thought.

“Redleaf is hard to come by,” I still bemoaned over the loss of tea, “but maybe I can use less next time, and instead add some cloves of terepa, see how that goes…”

“Yes, that’s creative…” Kelas croaked. “But for the time being, could you be your usual nice and delicate self, and free Her Keret?”

“You’re not concerned that she might try to harm you again?” I rose up my nose along with the question.

“Why do you ask me, rather than her?” my neighbor scolded me and laid kind eyes on the woman. “I understand your suffering more than you can believe… We’ve all lost so much and you find that there is more yet that you can lose,” he smiled wryly.

“Then why do you do it?” she questioned. “It’s our identity.”

“Identity, Your Keret, is a complex construct, but I promise you that the social aspects of it aren’t immutable. Yes, we’re a threat to your identity. But we’re only touching the parts that are in your control. I reckon it causes you pain and grief, it’s yet another mourning process… But please… I am tired. I would like to go lay down and sleep, really. Come back later, at the clinic. We can listen to you, provide medicine if you need any… There’s no shame in healing, Your Keret.”

“No,” she reckoned, looking at the plaster covering his stitches.

I unbound her. She got up, massaging her wrists, and looked at me. At Pythas. At Kelas Parmak. And she left without a goodbye.

“Do you really think she’ll come to the clinic?” I asked.

“No,” Kelas smiled. “Some wounds aren’t so easy to see. Now, leave. And you too,” he set his kind eyes on Pythas.

We didn’t oppose, and as we crossed out into the night, amidst my ‘sculptures’, I looked at him, my silent companion. All I could see was the scar mangling his profile. He looked back at the door and the other side of him appeared to me, as handsome as ever.

“Any hesitation?” I asked.

“Isn’t it what we’ve become?” he looked at me, standing there as a salvaged fragment of a world that no longer was. He wasn’t so different from my piles of rubble — all those debris I couldn’t let go, and shaped into artistic monstrosities that other people came to observe, like mirrors to their own horror and suffering. I closed my eyes over that vision.

“I think… maybe I’ll go to the clinic tomorrow,” I said and opened my eyes again, bluer but truer than ever, I’m certain. “We’ve talked of healing so much that we never considered it was something we truly wanted. And wanted enough to do something about it. But now, Pythas… Now, the time has come, at least for me.”

His smile was the only answer he gave before disappearing into the night, but it kept me warm on the way home to my own bed.

Chapter Text

“I might have omitted to mention that it’s been well over three months now,” Garak said, enunciating the words distinctly, all while holding a distant, almost haughty attitude. He didn’t look at me as he spoke, which meant he wasn’t in control of his emotions.

“ Three months since what? ” is what Garak wanted me to ask, but I wasn’t going to humor him. I acknowledged his statement with a hum, glancing at him in time to catch sight of a nervous spasm on his jaw.

Garak, as I’d come to know, was only ever patient when he was in full control of a game of his own design. As soon as something slipped out of his control, frustration spread into him like wildfire. As a member of the Order, he might have learned to bottle it up with more controlling schemes, and as an exilee… Well, whatever coping mechanism he’d come up with had eventually broken down.

Garak had never been good at coping with being himself.

“Aren’t you supposed to ask me questions, or keep the conversation going somehow?” Garak eventually snapped. “Is this how you conduct therapy? I mean no offense , of course — you are the doctor, and I am only a humble gardener, but it’s taken months to get an appointment with you, and it’s… Well, let’s say I expected something else!” he gestured, agitated, eyes comically rounded as he now gave me “the stare.”

I smiled.

“Therapy’s not on me, Garak,” I explained quietly, paging through some notes about the reconstruction project on Tajal Square. “Therapy is a work only you can do. I’m only here as a mirror, to help you reflect upon yourself. I’m afraid you’re the one who has to speak — and I mean speak , not hide behind your words.You’re going to have to open up, and this isn’t something I can force you to do.”

His expression shifted to one of contained — but absolute — offense. I pressed on:

“Should we talk about your claustrophobia in relation to your inability to stay inside a room with yourself for sole company, or…”

“This is preposterous!” He slapped his laps for emphasis, but deflated immediately.

He looked at the door, then at me, and his expression was torn by desperation. He struggled a bit, trying to choose between his ego and himself, but finally relaxed, letting his composure crumble. The mask was cracking.

Silence hovered around us like the choking cloud of dust that had tormented us for so long now. When it finally settled and Garak looked up at me, I could see the hurt on his face — the same hurt I’d seen on seemingly intact buildings outside, before they cracked and collapsed at long last.

“It’s been three months,” he said again. He gulped. He wet his lips cautiously, unsure whether it was safe to look me in the eye. He gave it a few tries and eventually held my gaze. “I sent it. My… ‘memoirs’ as you call them. And he hasn’t replied.”

I nodded, slowly. Knowingly.

“I… I don’t know,” he sighed. “I mean, I don’t understand. You’d think he’d reply. It’s not like he’s too stupid to encrypt his answer… Genetically engineered ass ,” he muttered with distaste for his own words.

Garak does swear, although he usually tries to keep his mouth clean in front of an audience.

“You are angry,” I said.

“Ought I not be?” the emotion flashed through his eyes, but it was a sad kind of anger, rather than the murderous anger I knew him for.

“How you should feel isn’t for me to dictate,” I calmly replied.

“Well, I am angry, yes,” he stammered and kicked back in his chair. He trembled and sprung forth — it wouldn’t have been like him to shut up. “Can you believe it?” he asked me, wrathful but contained. “ Seven years I spent listening to his Federal propaganda. I listened to him speak about Bajor , about freedom , about helping these people. He went all over that planet, Doctor,” he pressed a meaningful finger into his lap, hard enough to start wincing. “And when the Dominion took over Cardassia…” He scoffed, something bitter and sour. “What was I ever thinking? That he’d care? That he’d be there?”

The fire seemed to die as he looked down, dejected.

“My father was right. Sentiment is the weakness that’s made me into this mess I’ve become.”

Enebran was a sensible and sensitive man — as capable of sweetness as he could be ruthless. But Garak didn’t need to know what I knew. Not yet.

“You are sad,” I simply said.

The recognition undid him. He closed his eyes and stilled for a moment, holding his breath, containing it tight. Then he wheezed, unable to keep the feelings in anymore.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Garak cry, but I believe this was the first time I saw him cry, not over the destruction of our world, not over the loss of lives, not over the injustice of it all, but over himself. Over his own aching, mangled heart.

“I just want it to end…!” he heaved through long, inelegant whines.

“How so?” I asked and he writhed, gulping painfully and whining some more.

“Am I… so worthless to him, that he won’t bother to break up once and for all?” he managed to ask me. “Was I nothing but a tool, all along? Did he play me? Tell me, Kelas…”

I cannot help the way my heart tightens in my chest whenever Elim Garak looks at me with begging eyes. I cannot now, and I couldn’t then either.

“I cannot answer these questions, Elim,” I said, sadly, and gently squeezed his knee, as I’d done many times before. “All I can do is try to help you navigate your feelings. He is out of our control, and… maybe it is time for you to try and stop trying to control everybody around you, and learn to control yourself instead.”

“Control myself…!” he snorted with a remnant of tears in his voice. “What do you think I went to Bamarren for? And the Order…”

“Elim… what was it that the Order did?” I asked him.

“We ensured the integrity of our culture…”

“Through what means?”

He kept silent for a moment, sniffling.

“Through control,” he muttered at last.

I gave him more time to think, to review his life through this notion. He said nothing for a long while. I gave him a tissue and he dabbed his eyes and his nose.

“Self-discipline and self-control aren’t the same thing…” he concluded at last, and looked up at me, seeking approval before quickly hiding behind desinvolture again. The facade was see-through, and I believe he was aware of it.

Humility isn’t something that ever was part of Garak’s nature, but I adore his vanity, as much as it frustrates me at times.

“So,” he said, puffing himself up, “how do I make it stop? The pain…”

“First, you have to acknowledge it. See how far it spreads, how deep it seeps. And then, you will have to learn to appreciate it, embrace it as a part of you. When you can integrate all this damage, not just as the scars left onto you by others, but as a part of you, you can start to heal. When a cat scratches you, you see the scratch, but your body feels the breach into its tissues, the change in chemistry, and it answers with more chemistry. We may not feel whole when we are damaged, Elim, but the truth is, we are chaotic beings.”

“I thought you wanted me to control myself.”

“Again. Control is not order, immobility and immutability. That’s what the Order understood right: it never froze Cardassia in a permanent state of stunted growth. It embraced change and only made it all seem like everything always was the way we saw it, so we could pretend that everything always was the best it could ever be. So we could be proud. So we could be happy.”

I smiled, a bit of cheek tugging at the corners.

“Kelas, you’re losing me,” Garak complained.

“Balance, Elim, is accepting that you are made of chaos. You’re not a mess, my sweet friend. You are pure energy. It takes awareness and acceptance to feel the reach of that energy within you, physically, mentally, psychologically. When you know the flow, when you know who you are, then you are in control.”

I felt warm as I looked into his eyes. He didn’t shy away, looking back at me, with growing understanding.

“I reckon this is going to be harder than it sounds…” he said carefully and I smiled bright as the old days, glimmer in the eye and flashing my teeth. I smiled because I could see the glint of cunning in his eyes — the glint he had when he saw a challenge and accepted it.

“Doctor…” he said as he was about to leave. “Thank you for this session of therapy. I believe it has been helpful.”

“I’m just a mirror, Elim. You did this.”

“Oh, no, Doctor,” he shook his head. “We did this together. And I guess… I guess you’re right. We have to do everything at once.” He nodded to himself and took a deep breath. “This is going to be chaotic, but… I’m less afraid now that I know it is meant to be so.”