Chapter Text
Garak stood on his balcony, looking out at what little of the city he could see from the second storey. It was Thursday, which meant Agent Impossible was out patrolling New York. There were seven members in the local superhero team, the Defiants, so they used the obvious rota—each one was responsible for a different day of the week. Generally, Garak didn’t care for superheroes—they were either too optimistic, too naive, too preachy, or too cheerful. Or some dreadful combination of the four. But he did have a unique interest in a certain Agent Impossible.
It all started about a year ago. Garak was at a bar. He usually only ever imbibed in the comfort of his own home, and had ever since this incident, but on this particular day, he was feeling unusually manic. His party mood cancelled out his common sense. Of course, before Garak could even finish his kanar, a mean-looking, drunken brute stepped up and started causing trouble. At first, only goading him and pushing him around a bit, but before he knew it, xenophobic slurs were being flung at him from all around and he was being punched in the face and the gut and the back. Garak could have easily broken every arm and leg in that bar, but the bartender, who was pointedly ignoring the beating in front of him, would have certainly called the police if Garak managed a full turnaround in the fight. And Garak couldn’t afford a run-in with the cops.
He managed to escape into the alley, but didn’t notice the man following him with a gun. Luckily, Agent Impossible did and tackled his pursuer to the ground. Once he had the man’s gun, the hero tucked it into his utility belt then whacked him across the head with the palm of his hand and growled at him to “ Get out of here .”
Garak stared at the superhero in front of him. He couldn’t not. The man’s suit was hideous. Each member of the Defiants, Garak would learn later, had a specific color designated to them which featured heavily on their costumes. Agent Impossible’s was blue. A dull, dusty blue that no one in their right mind would pair with the bold black base of the design for fear of making the wearer look like a giant bruise. Perhaps that was part of the tactic they used to discourage crime. Wear exceptionally horrid outfits and then no one would want to partake in criminal activity for fear of having to look at them.
“Not very heroic of you to slap that poor man like that,” Garak said flatly, somehow unable to imbue the words with the sarcasm he’d intended.
Agent Impossible sighed. “I don’t believe in violence, especially not as punishment, but you and I both know that if I took him to the police, he’d be right out the door with barely a slap on the wrist. Besides, xenophobic assholes like that deserve far worse than me trying to slap some sense into them.”
“Ah. So you heard.”
“I caught the tail end of the fight, yeah. Rushed over as quick as I could.” Agent Impossible reached a hand toward Garak’s face, not quite touching, but close enough that Garak could tilt his head a few degrees and feel the full silky warmth of the hero’s gloved palm. “May I?” he asked.
Garak nodded, not quite sure what he was agreeing to.
Agent Impossible pulled back for only a second, only long enough to remove his glove. Then he touched his bare, soft fingers to Garak’s swollen cheek. There was a slight tingle that ran over his facial ridges as the pain ebbed away. Or maybe that was just from him blushing. “Where else did they get you?” the superhero asked softly.
“I believe I may have a broken rib or two,” Garak said reluctantly, and to his surprise, lifted his shirt when Agent Impossible gestured to it in silent request. The hero pressed his fingers to different places around Garak’s torso, that tingly feeling left behind everywhere he touched.
“They were only cracked,” Agent Impossible said, “but you’re fine now.”
“So,” Garak said as the hero healed his back, “your mutant power is healing.”
“Among other things,” Impossible said tightly. Apparently, he didn’t like to talk about his powers. So they talked about other things. Agent Impossible started flirting. Garak flirted, quite openly ( outrageously! ), right back. He blames that matter on his being quite tipsy at the time. But he wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t debate the moral implications of vigilante justice as Agent Impossible escorted him home.
After that first thrilling encounter, Garak had searched exhaustively to discover the man’s true identity, ultimately, to no avail. The mask covered his entire head, obscuring any identifying features. The padding in his suit—especially obvious around the shoulders and chest—concealed his natural body shape within. His universal translator was outfitted with a voice modulator so no one could hear his true voice unless they were very close . Garak had been close enough to hear the charming British lilt only a handful of times over the past year. Which, to be fair, was probably more than any other person in the city had.
At least, Garak hoped that was the case, because now, every Thursday after Agent Impossible went off duty, he’d stop by Garak’s apartment before heading home. Some people might find it odd, chatting and arguing with a masked man as he relaxed out of his professional persona and healed any wounds he’d acquired during the night, but it was the highlight of Garak’s week. And if he was lucky, Agent Impossible would have to remove his gloves for some reason, revealing his warm brown hands. And lately, he’d even pull his mask up enough to enjoy a cup of Tarkalean tea while he discussed literature with Garak. (After a few weeks, they’d begun to exchange book recommendations). Of course, Garak was likely to be distracted by such images—he’d lost more than a few arguments that way—but it was more than worth it to see Agent Impossible’s velvety pink lips caressing Garak’s teacup.
They’d become quite close in all the time they’ve spent together, but even after all that, Garak still hadn’t the faintest clue as to the man’s true identity. But, he supposed, even if he didn’t know who exactly this man was, he knew who he was . Garak would even consider him a friend. And he had to admit, there was a certain allure to the anonymity. Garak often dreamed about what he’d find under that mask. Under that suit.
There weren’t many pleasures in Garak’s life, being a Cardassian living on Earth. Earth had opened its doors to all life and welcomed many aliens, but after the whole ordeal a few years ago with the Cardassian supervillain group, The Obsidian Order, Cardassians weren’t viewed too kindly, as Garak knew all too well. But Agent Impossible was his “light in the darkness” so to speak, even if that was a disturbingly heartening sentiment.
Garak regained his focus on the present when he spotted movement below and to the right. It was, of course, Agent Impossible, right on schedule. The hero bounded up the fire escape, and Garak extended a hand to him once he came within reach. Garak smiled, and he imagined Agent Impossible did the same beneath his mask. He escorted his friend inside. The hero had been here so many times, he no longer needed an invitation to collapse dramatically onto the couch as Garak strode over to the kitchenette to put on some water for tea.
“Tough day at work?” Garak asked.
“ Tedious day at work,” the hero replied. “I spent nearly four hours helping a little girl look for her dog.”
“No evil plans for you to foil today? The city’s villains must be slacking.”
Agent Impossible snorted. “Maybe they all decided to retire.”
“Then you, my dear, would be out of a job.”
To Garak’s surprise, instead of a witty retort, Agent Impossible sighed and said, “Nothing would make me happier.”
That made Garak pause. “You don’t like being a superhero?” he asked.
“Not that. I mean, if there wasn’t any more crime or violence or accidents and I wasn’t needed anymore. That’s like, the ideal scenario. I’d gladly retire if that was the case.”
Agent Impossible always did have such saccharine morals. “So did you find it?” Garak asked.
“Find what?”
“The dog.”
“Oh, yes,” Agent Impossible said as he brightened out of his solemnity and became animated. “A delightful little beagle named Dandelion. He just turned a year old two weeks ago. You’ll never guess where-”
There was a low fwoomsh that echoed in through Garak’s still open door to his balcony. Agent Impossible leaped off the couch and ran to the balcony, Garak close behind. They both stood there in shock. Garak had lived in New York for five years, but he’d never seen anything like this. The entire night sky seemed to be lit up with a big, gaping, glowing… something. A portal? And coming through the center were some sort of spaceships. A lot of space ships . The wind picked up and carded through Garak’s hair. He could taste the metallic tang of space dust in the air.
“Shit,” Agent Impossible swore, startling Garak. “They’ve got the wormhole open.”
“Wormhole?” Garak asked, but didn’t receive an answer since Agent Impossible was too busy fiddling with his communicator.
“Agent Impossible to Ops,” he spoke into it. “There’s a situation in Midtown. I need backup ASAP. Request all hands on the scene. The Dominion’s here.”
Garak only had a passing familiarity with the Dominion, but he’d heard enough to know they were Bad News, especially for the local heroes. The Dominion was a group of alien supervillains who wanted to take over the galaxy or enslave humanity or some other overdone melodramatic nonsense. (Villains were so uncreative these days.)
Agent Impossible grabbed Garak’s shoulders and pushed him back into the house. He spoke slowly and clearly, “Stay here, lock the doors, keep away from the windows.” Garak got the distinct feeling that were he not wearing a mask that covered his lips, Agent Impossible would have kissed him goodbye. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he said then ran back out the door, jumped over the railing, and fell to the ground two storeys below. After a moment, Garak could see him running off into the epicenter of the invasion.
Everything was obviously not going to be okay. Garak had never heard Agent Impossible speak such an infuriatingly reassuring lie before, which meant this situation was serious. The question was, what was Garak going to do about it? Lock his doors, hide under his bed, and await the all-clear?
Garak grabbed a bag out of the back of his closet and his keys off the table and he ran out the front door. He immediately ran back inside and to the kitchenette to turn off the kettle. The last thing he needed was the building burning down while he was gone.
In all the years living in New York, Garak had never ridden his motorcycle. He drove it into the city then parked it in a little alcove behind his building, covered it with a tarp, and never looked at it again. A motorcycle gave anyone an air of competence and danger—a deadly combination, and a stigma he didn’t need.
He didn’t really need the bike anyway. Everywhere he needed to go on a weekly basis—the market, the bank, the post office—he could get to easily on foot. Anywhere else, well, it wasn’t that much trouble to take the metro. He only kept the motorcycle in case of an emergency. He was thinking more along the lines of being ostracised by his neighbors to the point of violence and having to leave town quickly, but apparently, his secret superhero friend running off to fight a horde of alien villains all on his own was also an acceptable scenario for the bike's unveiling.
Garak shoved on his helmet, cranked the ignition, and shot off like a rocket. He weaved dangerously through the mass exodus of terrified civilians out of the city center until he saw Agent Impossible’s dark silhouette trying to fend off his enemies with what appeared to be a street sign somehow detached from the concrete. Agent Impossible wielded it like a tennis racket, whacking one invader after another.
The motorcycle skidded to a halt. Garak flipped down the kickstand. One of the aliens made it past Agent Impossible and came running toward him. He reached into the bag strapped over his shoulder, pulled out a gun, and shot it. Then he shot another. And another. Garak looked around. Even with his help, there was no way Agent Impossible could hold off all of these attackers for long. Garak hoped the rest of the Defiants arrived soon.
And then suddenly, none of that mattered. Agent Impossible got overtaken by one of the aliens and thrown to the ground. He got right back up, but the fight immediately switched to their favor.
Garak focused back on his dispatching of oncoming hostiles for a few seconds before glancing back at his friend. Agent Impossible was punched and kicked and pushed and scratched and punched. He held his own decently until he was shot with some kind of phaser weapon.
At the clicking of his empty gun, Garak pulled out another and continued shooting with barely a break in the action. He turned back to Agent Impossible in time to see him stagger back, but before the hero could get his bearings, he suffered a bright red DO NOT ENTER to the chest as his unattended sign was ultimately used against him. Garak watched in horror as Agent Impossible flew backward then, with a sickening jangling sound, he bounced off a chain-link fence and his limp body collapsed to the ground.
And didn’t get back up.
Garak, freezing at the horrid sight, relinquished control of his body to autopilot. He sprinted forward, shooting every alien that even looked at him funny and shoving straight through the rest. It appeared that if he wasn’t actively standing in the way of whatever it was they were trying to accomplish here, they left him well enough alone.
He approached the spot where Agent Impossible laid, beaten and bloody.
Really bloody.
How much blood was too much for a human to lose?
“Agent Impossible?” Garak called. He knelt down and gently rolled him over to his back to try and assess the damage. The phaser wound near the top of his left arm was oozing blood, and there was blood seeping through a tear in his mask, likely where his forehead connected with the pavement. Other than that, he had no way of knowing how bad the situation really was. He couldn’t even tell if Agent Impossible was breathing. Garak called his name a few more times and still received no answer.
He would have to remove the mask.
Garak gripped the fabric at the base of Agent Impossible’s neck and began to slowly pull up, so as not to jostle his head more than necessary. Inch upon inch of once warm golden-brown skin, now equal parts bruised and pallid, was revealed. A mouth, blood spattering the edges. A nose, curving off to the side in a way that it shouldn’t. And two eyes, both closed.
Garak threw the mask to the side, already forgotten. What he needed to do first was check for a pulse.
How does one check a human’s pulse?
Considering that humans aren’t too different from Cardassians, Garak decided to check the way he would for one of his own kind. He put his fingers to Agent Impossible’s temple, the side that wasn’t gushing blood, right next to where his ridges would intersect if he had any. He didn’t feel anything. He panicked and pressed a little harder.
Agent Impossible groaned and fluttered his eyelids.
“My dear,” Garak cried. “You had me quite worried for a moment there.”
“Garak,” Agent Impossible greeted with a weak smile gracing his lips. His hazy brown eyes took a moment to focus on Garak’s face hovering above him. “I don’t feel too good,” he said.
“I’d imagine,” Garak said, brushing the hero’s hair from his forehead. “You took a couple of rough hits.”
“Yeah,” Agent Impossible said, as if he’d just remembered that himself. “I did.”
“Where’s the rest of your team? When will they be here?”
“My team?”
Garak was starting to worry again. “The Defiants?” he said. “Wonder Worm? Constable Justice? Silver Blade? Warp Core? Major Crush? That other one I don’t like? Tech something?” Garak, of course, remembered all of their names. He just needed to see if Agent Impossible did as well.
“Techno Mech,” the hero corrected. It seemed he hadn’t lost his memory. Was it just a touch of confusion?
“Yes,” Garak approved, “That’s it. You need one of them to take you home. Or to your base, or wherever it is you go. You need to get somewhere to heal properly.”
“I’d like for you to take me home.”
Under less dire circumstances, Garak would have loved to hear Agent Impossible say those words. However, seeing as this was an emergency, he tonelessly stated, “I don’t know where you live.”
“That’s okay,” Agent Impossible said, revealing a wobbly smirk. “We can go back to your place.”
“Agent Impossible,” Garak said sternly, “this is serious. You have to focus.”
He made a face. “Hmm. I can’t. I think I’m in shock. No… maybe it’s a concussion? Shit, how do my eyes look?”
Garak blinked, not sure exactly what he was asking. “Uh, brown?”
“Brown,” Agent Impossible repeated astonishedly. “I can’t remember what to do when the patient’s eyes are brown.”
“Alright. I’m taking you to my apartment.” Garak reached down to pick him up—one arm under his knees, the other moving toward his neck-
“No, wait!” Garak froze. Agent Impossible reached a hand up to the side of his neck. After a moment, he said, “Ok, my neck’s not broken, it's safe to move me.”
Garak wondered in horror if that meant he was only checking if it was broken and it wasn’t, or if his neck had been broken and he had just healed it. He didn’t have the first clue as to how Agent Impossible’s healing powers worked.
He carefully lifted the hero off the ground, making sure to support his head, and carried him back to the motorcycle. He sat with Agent Impossible on his lap facing him. It wasn’t safe in the slightest, but it was the only way he could think of to be sure his passenger didn’t fall off.
“Here, lean against me,” Garak instructed the dozing hero.
Agent Impossible whimpered into his shoulder.
To be honest, going to the hospital didn’t even register as a possibility until Garak was already a block from home. Not that it was much of an option to begin with. Garak had been around long enough to know that you didn’t take a masked man to the hospital, regardless of what side they fought on. The doctors would find out your real identity, then from there, you were on the public record. Not many heroes (or villains) lasted long after that.
Upon arriving at his building, Garak let his motorcycle fall to the ground and fumbled his keys twice, having too few hands to support the dead weight of a semiconscious superhero and unlock the door at the same time. He practically kicked the front door in as he entered his shop on the ground floor. Garak ran straight to the back, where he came to a door. It had a cherry red stain where the rest of the shop was honeyed oak, but the wood was aged and the hinges slightly rusted around the edges, suggesting that it was the last relic of the shop that existed before Garak moved in and remodeled.
At least, it seemed that way until Garak keyed in a code on the control panel beside it and the door swung open, revealing a lift. He rode it down to the basement level, adjusting Agent Impossible’s weight once on the way to keep from dropping him. The lift doors slid open to a cool metallic workroom covered in computer terminals and control pads. Gadgets were laid out across countertops; schematics tacked up on the walls. A long table in the center held various parts to some sort of device that was halfway assembled. Garak swept the pieces off the table—they bounced across the floor in all directions—and laid Agent Impossible down in the center.
“Computer,” Garak called as he ran to a shelf in the back and pulled out a medical kit, “Run medical diagnosis.” He’d have liked to rely on Agent Impossible healing himself, but considering the state he was in and Garak’s lack of knowledge about his powers, he chose to err on the side of caution and do what he could now to help fix him up.
The computer beeped in affirmative and started running analyses. Garak began unzipping Agent Impossible’s super suit in order to get to the wounds beneath. Agent Impossible muttered something and tried to grab at Garak’s hand.
“Not now, my dear,” Garak chided.
“Diagnosis complete,” the computer stated.
Garak turned to look at the big screen behind him. “Reorganize results by severity: highest to lowest.” He scanned the new listing. “Computer, run a search: how to treat head wounds in human patients.”