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The first thing Julian realizes is that he had gotten the pronunciation wrong.
It’s a benign thought, only because one of more substance has no room in his mind. His head is a war of white-knuckled professionalism and almost childlike worry; he’s desperate to remain Dr. Bashir even as Garak is ripped out from behind the shroud of mystery, hurling insults like acid, shedding his skin to become someone Julian doesn’t know. He almost misses it, caught up in his own struggles, but the name drips from Garak’s tongue and tugs on his brain.
“A man named Elim.”
ē-lim.
He can see it in his mind, written out in federation standard across his ribs. Julian can count the number of times he’s heard the name out loud on one hand. When he was younger, when had he learned what the name written on his skin meant and how to form letters into sound, he had spent one night tracing the shapes and whispering the name to himself.
El-im, he had murmured over and over, committing it to memory.
Julian hadn’t been aware he was memorizing the wrong name nor that the next time he would hear his soulmate’s name out loud it would be to hear that Elim is dead. Dead by Garak’s hand.
Julian struggles to not press his hand against the name against his ribs now. As though now that Garak has told him Elim was no more, he would be ripped from Julian’s skin as well. For a moment Julian thinks it can’t be real. Garak must have seen Julian’s mark, had sat on the name until the perfect moment to weaponize it. But Julian’s name is not in a place it would slip out and he has always kept it hidden with some sort of paranoid secrecy.
“You can’t be serious,” Julian says and he’s not sure what he’s referring to.
That Garak is dying.
That Garak has killed a hundred people, innocent people.
That Garak has killed the person tied to Julian’s soul before they were ever able to meet.
Garak has tasted blood and steps forward to follow the scent of Julian’s hurt. Garak watches him with wide eyes, a stare that seems more real than the words coming from his mouth.
“None of those prisoners escaped off of Bajor alive,” he says with a cruel lilting tone.
It hits Julian then, the benign thought has grown into malignancy, colonizing his brain. He barely listens to Garak as he continues to tell his story, he moves closer and closer as Julian drowns in his thoughts. His soulmate is dead. Garak is a killer. He feels as though he’s been hit by a phaser and the worst thing is, he’s not sure which part makes him ache more.
Garak is too close now. Julian could reach out and touch him. He wants to touch him. Not to strike but to grip, to fasten his hand to Garak’s shirt like a child, to beg him to tell him that this isn’t real. To go back to the morning before when Julian didn’t care that there was an El-im out there waiting for him and Garak was his confusing companion cloaked in mystery.
“I hope… I haven’t shattered too many of your illusions,” Garak says as though he can read his mind.
It feels like a slap in the face. It’s so pointed, so perfectly designed to make Julian feel like a foolish child, to make him hate Garak that it snaps him out of his spiral and reminds him of how they got here. Murder, soulmates, it doesn’t matter. Garak is his patient and Julian is his doctor.
“Listen to me, Garak,” he says. His words come out so softly but he’s not sure if he’s trying to soothe Garak or himself. “Right now, I'm not concerned with what you did in the past.”
Garak’s eyes don’t leave his as Julian attempts to convince Garak to let him help. The shock is clear, he is transfixed, searching for something. He must find what he was looking for because against all odds when Julian asks where the device to turn off the implant is, Garak tells him.
It is easy from there to bury everything, to focus fully on taking care of his patient. Garak doesn’t speak again, allowing Julian to prod and scan and work until he falls asleep on the bio pad, the computer carefully monitoring his system. When he dismisses his nurse, Julian finds even the idea of relaxing brings the flood of thoughts he doesn’t want to face. Instead, he turns to the computer which gives him readings that he doesn’t like any more than the thoughts. He’s almost glad when Odo comes to give him another thing to keep his mind occupied. That gladness only lasts as long as it takes for Odo to share what he’s there for.
When he’s shooed Odo away and done all can do with Garak’s readings, he collapses into a chair by Garak’s bed and he’s forced to face it all.
He rests his hand against the name on his ribs. His soul mark. Elim. He tests the name on his tongue, mouth forming the hard E, but he can’t make himself say it and swallows the sound. Instead, he practices the name in his mind.
Julian didn’t want a soulmate.
That isn’t fully true. As a child he had loved Elim, dreamt of Elim, he had searched every database he could find for Elim. But the only place he could find the name was written onto his skin. He had been disappointed, but his young mind had seen it as the opportunity for adventure, thinking of the quests and journeys he could take to find his soulmate, just like in the fairytales he had read over and over.
But then he grew up and learned he wasn’t who he thought he was. Something took root deep in his heart, fed by his father's paranoid demands for secrecy and his own patchworked memories, till it grew so encompassing it rang as truth. Elim wasn’t his. Elim was for whoever had existed before his parents had decided they wanted a new child. Elim must have Jules somewhere on his body, not Julian. Had.
He learned that not everyone has soulmates. Most species didn’t. Humans were a strange anomaly with names written on their skins that society had decided were their destined matches. There were rumors the Vulcans had soulmates, they say Kirk had no name on his skin but a bond with his first officer none the less, but Julian had not found another species that had their destinies handed to them like humans. It was easier to reject the idea of soulmates then, to pretend Elim was just a strange pattern of melanin. He became obsessed with the statistics, even now they sit in the back of his mind: 22% of humans never meet their match, 7% meet their match and choose to not pursue any sort of relationship, 3% believe the name on your skin means nothing. He decided he was part of the 3%, hoping he would be part of the 22%.
He chased after anyone who was beautiful and intelligent and didn’t have the name on his ribs, pretending he wasn’t running away from Elim. Palis and he hadn’t talked of soulmates. Most people didn’t, most matches didn’t need to speak when the proof was right there, and most other species thought human soulmates were a fiction they created for stories. He still wonders if she had Julian on her skin, hidden by the tape she kept on her wrist. Her father had been all too willing to give him a position for a random boyfriend, even one with Julian’s admitted skill. He wonders if she realized she had been wasting her time with the wrong man when he ran from Elim one more time, to the furthest place he could find.
Julian had never wanted to meet Elim. But the idea that Elim isn’t out there in the universe feels wrong, like a physics constant being proven false. Nothing has changed, not really, not the universe, not Julian's life. But Julian can't help but feel like it should have. Regret shivers down Julian’s spine and for the first time Julian wonders if he was wrong to run.
How could Elim be dead? Shouldn’t he have known? If their souls were truly tied together shouldn’t he have felt Elim being ripped from this universe somewhere deep inside of him? Shouldn’t he have somehow known that every week Julian had sat across from the man that killed him?
He had been so sure if Elim caught him, he would know that this wasn’t who his soulmate was supposed to be, name or not. So he had run. Knowing that he had no need to run anymore, shouldn’t he be relieved? No, of course not.
He can’t help the childish thought from trickling out, he hadn’t wanted this to happen.
But what had he wanted to happen?
Julian had done his best to not think about Elim for the last decade. In the transition from soulmate to boogeyman, Elim had stopped being a person at all, just another threat to Julian’s secret. He hadn’t cared what happened to Elim, Julian realizes. Maybe in some banal way he had thought Elim would move on, find someone else to be happy with that wasn’t his soulmate. But that assumed Elim wasn’t one of those who would wait. History and tales were filled with those who were willing to wait, who ran into tragedy’s arms just at the prospect of meeting their soulmate. As a child he had been one of those, he had been willing to do anything for Elim, waiting included. It would only make sense Elim would match Jules. With a dawning alarm, Julian thinks about what he had done to Elim in deciding his secrets were more important than Elim’s happiness.
But no, Elim is a Cardassian. Was.
That revelation had fallen to the wayside, buried by everything else that seemed more pressing. Young Julian had searched for Elim but not found him because he had never thought to look for a Cardassian. He wasn’t sure if he would have found him even if he knew where to search with the way Cardassian’s guard their information, like Ferengi and latinum. It was likely that Elim had never suspected there was someone out there running from him just because his name was on his skin. Something burns in Julian’s chest at the thought. Is it jealousy? That Elim had been free from destiny’s grasp. Or bitterness? That he had spent his life hiding from someone who wasn’t even searching for him.
But no, none of this matters, does it? Because Elim is dead and Julian hates himself that he’s so devastated about it. He finds he wants to know him now and it feels like a betrayal, to himself, to Elim. That now that he’s gone, now that he’s not a threat, Julian wants to know him.
Though Elim wasn't just dead, he was murdered.
Julian is reminded of one of the stories Garak had lent him, A Song in Shrouds it was called, where a man gets revenge for his murdered wife by secretly orchestrating the death of her murderer. Garak had claimed it was a staple of Cardassian romances, the equivalent of Romeo and Juliet for young Cardassian romantics. Julian wonders if Elim would want revenge. It would be easy, Julian realizes, to give him this one thing. It will take more to save Garak than it would to let him die. He wonders, is it more Cardassian to allow Garak to die without intervention or to further his death by some hidden poison or mistaken dosage? Would Elim be proud of him, forgive him for his cowardice in life, if he gives him the act of revenge? Garak would be proud of him, Julian thinks, if he killed him in the Cardassian way.
Julian almost snorts.
It was never an option to let Garak die. Not once, even with a hundred deaths hanging over his head it had never crossed Julian’s mind to allow Garak to die.
Strangely the thought makes him rage against the idea of soulmates once again. Who has the right to declare that he is Elim’s perfect match when he won’t even take revenge for him? Does Elim not deserve someone who would love him like the grand Cardassian romances? Perhaps the person he was before would have been willing to be the man for Elim. Julian shudders and blanches at the thought that any version of himself would allow a man to die on purpose.
Garak makes a sound in his sleep and Julian is pulled from his thoughts to check the computer, almost frantically pulling up his vitals. His heart settles as he sees they haven’t changed, but no change is still bad. Garak is still dying. He stares at Garak’s form and feels stuck.
It is easier to think of losing the soulmate he hadn’t wanted than to think of what else he’s lost but now his mind has traveled down that road and he can’t steer himself away.
He’s horrified. He is. Disgust sits heavy in his stomach and rears up like a viper when he thinks of what Garak did. What his… friend did. His lunchmate. His Garak. The worst part though is overpowering his horror, is his desire to overcome it. He wants to pretend it doesn’t matter, that Julian can look past such cruelty and destruction. Is that compassion or naivety?
He thinks of losing Garak and it feels like a physical pain. He’s going to lose him no matter what, Julian realizes. Even if- Even when he saves Garak, when they get through this, he’s lost him. How could he sit across from him, smiling over their lunches knowing what he’s done?
Julian almost failed ethics in Starfleet Medical. Well, not really, but he could tell his professor wanted to fail him. He has always been too stubborn to deal with the sort of philosophical debates his classmates wanted to have. When asked if he would let one person die to save many, his response was that he would find a way to save them all. It was what he believed but also it sounded like something James T Kirk would have said. His classmates felt differently than him. He remembers one person who confidently said he would let that person die to save many, claimed it was the only logical option, but when the professor asked if that one person was the one he loved most, the student balked and changed his tune. Julian huffed in his seat then, wondering how someone could change their morals so easily.
Now Julian wonders if he judged too harshly.
He has always known Garak hid something dark behind his too careful smiles. It hadn’t mattered when it went unspoken, the lives Garak must have taken, the cruelties he must have inflicted. What has changed? Now that he has a number to pair with the possibilities, a context that makes everything more real? Perhaps he really is as childish as everyone has always implied, to follow the call of intrigue and then throw a tantrum when he is proven correct. Or perhaps, it all changed when he learned Garak had not just killed but killed Elim.
Would it be easier to forgive Garak if he had just killed nameless strangers on a ship?
But is Elim not just as much a stranger as all those aboard the ship? His name may be one that has chased Julian across the universe but what did he know of Elim? Less than 24 hours before Julian didn’t even know the way to say his name and now he’s the straw that breaks it all?
Julian closes his eyes and rests against his chair.
It feels like a choice. Garak or Elim, to forgive one is to forsake the other.
Elim is the soulmate he never cared for and Garak the undefinable presence that Julian wishes deserves forgiveness.
As he manages to fall asleep, Julian thinks that if it’s a choice, it’s one that’s only challenging because Julian pretends it is.
*
In the chaos of everything, Julian had forgotten the most important thing about Garak. That he was a liar.
Julian doesn’t have time to think about anything other than keeping his patient alive until he’s in the shuttlecraft on his way to Garak’s last hope.
Then he finds he has too much time to think.
The problem is he has too many thoughts at once, all of them contradictory.
Elim is alive.
If Elim is even real.
But why that name if he isn’t? Julian had searched for the name and never found it but Garak just so happened to say the one name that would hurt Julian more than he could even know.
His soulmate is alive. He has to be.
Julian is relieved that the thought brings a sense of settling rather than dismay. He prefers that Elim is out there somewhere to the possibility of him dead. The thought Elim could find him doesn’t bring as much terror as it once did, and Julian has to push down the idea that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing for it to happen. Elim still has the ability to bring Julian’s life crashing around him. It’s easy to keep people at a careful distance that prevents them from realizing they’re at a distance at all. But a soulmate wouldn’t stay where Julian put him, he would find out and ruin him.
It’s almost funny because it’s the same reason he never takes Garak up on his unsubtle flirtation more than to give his own not so hidden smiles, even when he sometimes aches with want. Garak is fascinating, even now as he falls apart, and Julian can admit he’s entranced. But when Garak looks at him, Julian feels like he sees too much. No that’s not it. When Garak looks at him it’s like he knows there’s more to see and he searches for it. Other’s don’t think there’s much to him, they’re happy to stop at the green officer or skilled doctor. But Garak thinks there is more and that’s dangerous. Julian isn’t sure what’s more dangerous: the potential of Elim or the reality of Garak.
Garak told him three stories. He wonders if any of them are true. Which Garak is more real, the one that killed hundreds, the one that felt mercy, or the one that would destroy his best friend. Could they all be true?
Surely the first story was told to make Julian hate him. Was the second told to make Julian pity him? The final was a plea for forgiveness. When he asked for forgiveness, was he thinking of Elim? It’s fitting that Julian forgave him in Elim’s place, after all, they’re supposed to share a soul.
It feels like a game of chess, trying to untangle Garak’s lies.
He knows what he wants to be true but at this point, he’s not sure the truth would change anything.
*
Julian dislikes Tain.
Which is strange because he reminds him of Garak in many ways, though Julian can admit that he often dislikes Garak as well. After battling Garak to keep him alive for the last few days, withstanding the maudlin banter with Tain is almost easy. He expected more of a fight than for Tain to simply hand over the biochemical information like they’re age-old friends. When Tain hints for him to leave, Julian is only too happy to go but he doesn’t know he is going to speak until his mouth is already moving.
“Just one more thing,” he says and is surprised that Tain allows it.
“Garak mentioned an old friend of his the other day, a member of the Obsidian Order. I was wondering what happened to him.”
It’s just a precaution, Julian tries to convince himself. If he knows where Elim is, he can avoid him better. He tries to tell himself it's not a decision, a choice.
“Did he give you the name of this friend?” Tain asks.
“He said it was Elim.”
As he says it, Julian realizes Elim slips off the tongue much smoother than what he had thought as a child. He likes the way it feels in his mouth and has the same urge he had when he was young to whisper it to himself, over and over.
But Tain starts to laugh and his attention is drawn back.
“Elim?” Tain says and it doesn’t sound as nice coming from his lips.
“Mind letting me in on the joke?” Julian asks.
He’s not real, Julian’s mind screams as his heart leaps into his throat. It was all a lie. There is no Elim.
“Doctor, Elim is Garak's first name.”
Julian no longer cares to listen to Tain’s continued platitudes and is amazed that he’s able to respond with anything at all. When he ends up on the shuttlecraft, he knows he should start looking at the information Tain had given him but instead he plots the course back to Deep Space Nine and drops into the chair, face in his hands.
And then he starts to laugh.