Chapter Text
Namoc Dolar was, by Julian's calculations, the fourth best Cardassian author Garak had assigned him. He trailed somewhere behind Frena Bridik by a considerable margin and was followed by Preloc shortly after, saved only by the fact that it wasn’t a one-thousand page long repetitive epic waxing poetic about a surveillance state. This matter was hardly Julian would devote any amount of his expanded brain power to; Garak suggested mediocre authors all the time (all of the time?) and Namoc Dolar wasn't even the worst among them, not when the dregs of Tuvet Dekir’s drafts had somehow made it past multiple editors and the state’s publishing company.
In all other ways, The Warmth of the Worker's Palm by Namoc Dolar was completely, utterly, wholly ordinary. The plot and subtext were interesting enough in places to sharpen the dull, unending Cardassian prose; the characters were rippling with hidden dimension, their personalities undulating beneath the veneer of state-enforced loyalty and hegemony. He wouldn't call the work enjoyable, but it wasn't terrible. It was standard. This was what troubled Julian: Garak abhorred standard, stuck his nose up at it, ripped into it with an interrogator’s cunning and a tailor’s precision. There had been no preamble, no promise of his enjoyment or the lack thereof, no cunning smirk across the table. At the end of last week's meal, Garak had simply handed Julian the isolinear rod and bid him adieu, leaving him to stare at the remainder of his lunch feeling rather starved.
The work itself was mercifully brief—compared to everything else Garak had piled onto him—standing at a mere 250 pages. With a diminished length and rather terse descriptions, this allowed Julian to read it three times before their next discussion, which by all metrics should have given him enough time to acquire some insight as to why it was recommended to him in the first place. The Warmth of the Worker’s Palm, published in 2221, was a romance in the same way that most Cardassian novels were romances: a lopsided love triangle between a two living, breathing beings and the shadowy state of Cardassia looming above them, blocking out the twinkling of their crossed stars. Paras and Lakol were two entirely ordinary Cardassians, one of high society ( rUk’sha’sa) and the other the dregs of the working class ( rUk'ka) . Lakol orchestrated an entirely ordinary workers’ revolt, which Paras reported to the authorities in an entirely ordinary amount of time. When Lakol was executed in an entirely ordinary fashion (injection of a hallucinatory neurotoxin), Paras did not weep from the stands. Then, like an entirely ordinary Cardassian man, Paras married a Legate’s daughter and had two children before dying at the age of 118. Julian’s PADD buzzed in his hand as he tried to move on to the next chapter, reminding him once again that there were no more pages to scrutinize. Finished. Dead end.
As Lakol seized in his execution chair for the last time, Julian stared out the porthole of his quarters. He wondered if he could find Dolar himself on the flickering dot of Cardassia below. Julian wished him well, even if his novel was a bit boring by his standards (low, but obstinately high where Garak was involved). Maybe if he projected his confusion hard enough through the hundreds of millions of miles of space and atmosphere between them, the author might care to elucidate why he thought Garak would be interested in his work at all.
It was when Julian decided to do more research when he found that, even if he were the most powerful telepath in the Alpha Quadrant, this would be impossible. Namoc Dolar had died in 2180, more than four decades before his work was published. His first and only, Julian noted, or at least the only one of any importance. Dolar’s incredibly succinct biography in the station’s library database held no more information than the date of his death and a headshot of, by Julian’s admittedly limited opinion, an entirely ordinary Cardassian man.
Before he could shut the PADD off, something in the picture caught his eye. A discrepancy! Julian brought the PADD closer to his face, squinting.
“Huh,” said Julian. The image wasn’t of the highest quality, but Julian could tell that there was something glinting in the light of the photo. It took him a moment, but when he realized what it was, he felt a burst of warmth in his chest, somewhere close to his heart. An earring, dangling just below the auricular ridge. It was too difficult to tell exactly what it truly looked like, but it was undeniably a piece of jewelry attached to Dolar’s ear. “Huh,” repeated Julian, with feeling this time. He’d never seen a Cardassian with jewelry before, but he also hadn’t seen many Cardassians. Perhaps something to discuss with Garak when they met next.
Julian set the PADD down on his bedside table and set the lights to 0%. He climbed into bed, seeing nothing, until his vision adjusted and the faint shine of the planets and stars outside cast itself upon the carpet.
“You look like hell,” Miles said through his mouthful of oatmeal. Even with entire menus filled with flavorful and exciting breakfast items, Miles was content with the mush that Terran children had stuck their noses up at for centuries, just because it reminded him of home.
“Good morning to you too,” muttered Julian, dropping into the seat opposite. His tray clattered on the table, his spice pudding wobbling in its bowl. He glared at it for a moment, as if it was withholding information from him, and decided the best revenge was to shovel it into his mouth as quickly as possible.
Miles laughed. ”Slow down, mate, you’re gonna dislocate your jaw.” Julian looked up from his bowl, bleary-eyed. Miles gave him a tight-lipped smile until he let his spoon sink into his pudding. “There we go. Something on the mind?”
“Garak—” Miles mumbled something rather unkind about his Cardassian friend under his breath, “— Garak gave me a book last week, and I don’t understand why.”
“Probably wants you to read it.” Miles took a sip of orange juice.
Rolling his eyes could only do so much, so Julian continued, “It’s the same as all the rest, and does absolutely nothing new. It’s so…
boring.
And not even in a way that makes me hate it!"
“The hell else did you expect? The only thing Cardassians are interested in is their precious state winning everything and killing everyone. I don’t know why you keep reading that shite, honestly." Miles took another bite of oatmeal. His face twisted slightly and as he cast his gaze on Julian's pudding it twisted even more. He swallowed and continued, his voice thick, "Besides, that doesn’t explain why you look like you’ve been wrestlin’ a targ with your hands tied behind your back.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Julian moaned, his shoulders sagging. “For hours I was lying there just thinking about it . At least when he gives me, say, The Neverending Sacrifice, I know he wants me to read it because it’ll make me mad. Or just in general, I usually know why he does things, which is usually because he’s hiding a fact about himself from me that would, I dunno, improve his life a little bit if I knew about it. With this, I have no bloody idea!”
“If he’s a lying bastard all the time, I don’t see why this would be any different." Miles chuckled smugly into his coffee.
“He’s not—” Julian paused in the middle of Garak’s defense. In the back of his mind he imagined his friend’s piercing stare, egging him to go on and give Miles what for, but what Miles had said intrigued him. Why would this be any different than, say, Garak denying his involvement in the Obsidian Order? Garak would have balked at him had he said that aloud, but if he lied about everything, that included whatever this was. Julian then realized that Garak technically hadn’t actually lied about anything. Not yet anyway. Did that make all of this stranger? Don’t tell a lie when the truth will do, but what was the truth? Garak hadn’t said a damn thing!
"Sure look, if you’re done talking about your problems, I’m going to talk about mine,” announced Miles. He sighed and set his spoon down. “I found a whole host of encrypted Cardassian records in the biofilter repository yesterday. Over 750 individual files, from what I can see—and when Jadzia’s done decoding them, I gotta read ‘em all! Had to cancel a date night with Keiko for this. Why Cardies have to write everything down is feckin’ beyond me.”
Julian was about to agree when, around a mouthful of pudding, he was struck with a realization. “Namoc Dolar!”
“Always with the food coming out of your mouth!” exclaimed Miles. He tossed a napkin at Julian with disgust. “The hell is ‘Namoc Dolar’?”
“Who. He wrote the book. The book I read, I mean. Get this—" Julian leaned forward, his elbow dangerously close to his bowl; Miles’ hand shot out to push it into the center of the table, "—I looked him up in the library database last night, and nothing! Which is strange, because, like you said, Cardassians write everything down. Found that out with Rugal, you know—on Bajor, he hacked the computers... I bet—oho, I bet he knew I’d notice!”
“Oh, close your mouth, you’re gonna catch flies.” Julian did, but his smug, twitching grin remained. Miles scoffed and continued, “What’s your point? Maybe he was just not a very good author.”
“But they record everything. If he can get a book published, I bet that they knew everything about him before he even set pen to paper. Or fingers to PADD. Whatever.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction of Garak’s shop.
Garak had once quipped that if one did so much as eat the wrong dish for lunch they were subject to imprisonment, if not death. While it was a joke, Julian took it as a joke that, like almost everything Garak said, had a gem of truth buried underneath. Nothing stayed hidden from the Cardassian government, not even a manuscript stuffed under the mattress.
A smile slowly crept across his face, showing more and more teeth, until Miles snapped his fingers at him and told him to turn around.
Game on, Mr. Garak.
“I just find it odd,” Julian said. Jabara nodded the same way she had the first time he'd told her: a slight dip of the chin, acknowledgement and nothing more. He kept going despite this, or more accurately because of this: “They always keep records, I mean, I’m sure you know that—I know you know that. Ugh, it’s just so...”
“Odd,” said Jabara. She rolled her shoulders, face pinched. “Yes, Doctor, I agree.”
Julian slumped down at his terminal and tried to focus his attention on a new casualties report from Bajor. Deaths were down, which was good, but not by a great enough margin to chalk it up to anything other than good fortune. Only the whirring of the station and Jabara’s even breathing filled the room, until Julian perked up. A hopeful smile pulling at his lips, he said, “Do you know who Namoc Dolar was?”
“The author of your book?” Julian hummed affirmatively. “Not that Dolar in particular, no.” Jabara resigned herself to her own terminal, her back to him.
Disappointed, Julian propped his head against his hand and blinked up at the bulkhead, the pandemic on Bajor forgotten for a moment.
Had Garak merely run out of interesting novels to share? That was impossible, Julian knew, otherwise he wouldn’t have to put up with his spiels about the superiority of Cardassia’s literary culture. Maybe he simply had run out of available books. Why Dolar's was available on the station’s library was beyond Julian; it hardly seemed like an important piece of Cardassian literature, if Dolar’s stilted biography was any indication of its value. Or maybe Miles was right, and Garak was just lying to him.
But why, then? What secrets could this entirely ordinary book hold at all? It was a literary ouroboros, the opening sentence devouring the epilogue. Julian was in the middle of thinking of other ways he could word his cyclical conundrum in more poetic phrases when Jabara's words eventually processed.
"Wait," he said. "Do you know of another Dolar?"
Jabara sniffed, no doubt calling upon the Prophets for the strength to carry on the conversation. "Yes." Julian waited for her to elaborate. Finally she said, "Well, somewhat."
"Who?"
If Julian could see the thin line of Jabara's lips he would have stopped his barrage of questions immediately. If he knew Jabara much beyond her medical expertise, he never would have asked at all. "I believe it's part of a Cardassian expression."
"It's—" Julian frowned. "Huh?"
"'An ally of Dolar is an enemy of Cardassia,' so the saying goes."
"What’s it mean?" He watched Jabara as if she were looking him in the eyes, his gaze flitting across the back of her uniform.
Jabara sighed, then swallowed. Her voice wavered as she said, "You're going to have to ask someone else, Doctor."
"Oh." Julian correctly analyzed the situation, for once, and said nothing more.
"What I will say," Jabara continued in an even tone, "is that if it is the same Dolar, I hope your friend is more forgiving than the rest." With this she took her leave, the sound of her boots echoing off the walls of the Infirmary until the door shut on its own behind her.
Julian had never thought there’d be a day where he wished for an outbreak of the Bolian flu. While tiresome and perhaps life-threatening for infants and the elderly, it would have kept his mind off The Warmth of the Worker’s Palm, Jabara’s cryptic advice (almost Cardassian in its ominousness), and the thought of Garak’s pleased smile when, not if, Julian solved his little puzzle. Vaccine development was old hat, and was taken care of mostly by computers (one biological and the others mechanical), so he had all the time in the quadrant to think. All of his thoughts rattled around in his head like the last few Gramilian sand peas in a bowl, sometimes settling in the middle only for another to collide with it and send it rolling around again.
“Doctor Bashir!”
Sisko could always tell when his mind was wandering. “Yes!” Julian jolted upright in his seat. “Sorry, Commander. I…” am trying to decode a riddle of Garak’s—a member or ex-member of the state that is actively opposed to the Bajor-Federation alliance—that isn’t actually a riddle and may just as well be a literary recommendation I didn’t like much— “didn’t sleep well last night.”
Sisko had heard that one before, and hadn’t found it a sufficient enough answer the first time. “Why?”
“Uh,” Julian said, blinking more. Miles’ mouth twisted against a smile from across the conference table. “Just… didn’t. Happens, I suppose.” Sisko blinked, his jaw set. Julian swallowed. “Sorry.”
“The replicator coffee has caffeine in it,” Sisko said coolly. “I suggest you try it sometime.”
“Yes sir,” warbled Julian. Miles’ brow furrowed against a snort; Jadzia concentrated on the porthole. There were some tapping sounds as Odo pulled up something on a PADD. Only Kira was able to keep her gaze on Julian as he struggled to save face, the inner corners of her eyes gathering slightly the one sign that she was paying attention at all.
Sisko looked down, his fingers laced together on the conference table. “Has your team synthesized the retrovirus?”
“Yes sir.”
“Are the vaccines in development?”
“Yes sir. Well, they’re on their way… to being developed, yes. There’s still some trouble with attenuation—see, we were thinking—”
“I don’t care what you were thinking,” Sisko said. He looked up and smiled with just enough warmth that Julian felt that the tension of the moment had passed. Then it disappeared. “Just do it.”
Julian shut his eyes in defeat. “Yes sir.”
The meeting trudged on. Miles recounted what he’d read so far of the decoded Cardassian files and Kira talked at length about the famine on Bajor and the distribution of supplies. As Odo needled Sisko on increased security on the Promenade—in particular a certain bar—Julian found himself looking at Jadzia. Her eyes crinkled amiably, then softened. She tilted her head. Julian was suddenly overcome with an intense burning in his cheeks, and focused instead on Odo’s impassioned argument on how some races—in particular those belonging to profit-centered cultures—promoted degeneracy and disorder.
It wouldn’t do to flirt with Jadzia in a meeting, especially not after Sisko humiliated him. That was probably why she never reciprocated—someone was always embarrassing him, telling him to shut his mouth, or to come back to Earth—station, whatever—and focus. Jadzia needed someone who could keep up with her effortless dance around the rules, and, unbeknownst to Richard Bashir, Julian had come back from Adigeon Prime with two left feet.
After a few minutes of Odo showing Sisko crime statistics and incident reports, the commander adjourned the meeting. He sat rubbing his temples as his crew dispersed. Julian resisted the urge to shoot out of his chair and bolt out the door. Instead, he watched Jadzia as she stretched her arms over her head, sighing blissfully, and stood up to leave.
“Jadzia!” Julian got up in a rush, nearly tripping over himself. She tilted her head in that peculiar way again. He got the feeling that she found him amusing, and not devastatingly handsome and intelligent and mysterious. That was no matter, really, because Julian found that nearly no one did; maybe the dabo girls, but even then he suspected it was more about how much of his stipend he was willing to bet on the wheel than his charming smile and practiced pick-up lines.
Jadzia waited for Julian to make his way over to her. “Hello,” she said. While he enjoyed the way she looked, Julian felt condescended in a way that made him uncomfortable. He averted his gaze to the porthole, then to the floor. “Did you have something you wanted to talk about, or did you just want to say hi?”
“Well, I mean, uh, I guess both,” stammered Julian. In a valiant attempt he said, “I wanted to ask if, maybe you wanted to—”
“Busy,” said Jadzia. Worth a try. “But I appreciate the offer. Besides, I think you’d better get ready for your lunch with Garak tomorrow. It’s important that you’re completely sober for it.”
“Sob—wait, why for? Wait, ” Julian repeated, his eyes finally finding Jadzia’s. Her head was tilted again. He frowned. “How do you know?”
“Miles was talking to me about Namoc Dolar,” she said, gesturing towards the door. Julian followed her, dumbstruck. “And how Garak assigned you his book.”
“Yes, yes, the— The Warmth of the Worker’s Palm.” They passed Kira and Odo discussing something in the hall. Jadzia nodded at them, her hands behind her back, as Julian reeled. Kira’s gaze followed him for a moment before returning to her conversation. “But how—”
“For yours and Garak’s sake, I didn’t tell Miles what it means,” she continued, “to give someone that book. For a Cardassian to give someone that book.”
Julian couldn’t help but grin. So it did mean something! Something important, too, by the sounds of it—whether good or bad he couldn’t discern from Jadzia’s growing smirk. “Well, what does it mean?”
Jadzia gasped in mocking, a hand over her heart. “As if I would say! I wouldn’t want to ruin what is somehow going to be a surprise to you.”
“‘Somehow’?” Julian felt like a broken hologram, skipping and stuttering. “Jadzia, what are you talking about?”
They reached the end of the hallway. The door dulled sporadic clunks of the loading bay and the hum of the general hustle and bustle of the Promenade. Jadzia turned to face him. “This means Garak trusts you, you know. Which also means you can’t go around telling everyone he gave you this book, especially on a Bajoran space station.”
“But why?” Julian pleaded, desperation bubbling over. He bit back a bark of frustration as Jadzia tilted her head at him one last time. There was a glint in her eye that told him she knew exactly what he was thinking. He opened his mouth to say something, he wasn’t quite sure what yet, but by then she had opened the door and the silence was swallowed by the roar of the station.
Out of spite, or perhaps petulance, Julian decided not to do a single thing Jadzia had told him to do. He practically broke into a sprint towards Quark’s and ordered a synthale that quickly turned into another. Instead of sitting in the corner like he usually did, he sat up at the bar. Talking to Quark.
“And it’s like, it’s like,” Julian hiccuped, “it’s like everyone knows what they’re doing but me. I’m never in on the joke, I’m—I’m the butt of it, and I’m tired!”
“I understand completely,” said Quark. He placed his elbows on the bar and leaned in. “I’d say your frustration is entirely justified. As is your way of dealing with it. Another?” He didn’t wait for Julian’s answer and shoved another pint of synthale under his nose. “Go on, tell me more. I’m here all night.”
Julian glared at him, but the anger and slight disgust quickly dissipated as he downed his drink. When he broke to take a breath, he said, “I just think… oh, I don’t know what to think. It’s probably wrong anyway! I feel like I should be so far ahead of everybody, and I’m not! I mea, what was the point of it all if I’m always going to be the one left behind?"
“Point of what?” asked Quark.
Balls, shit, tits, fuck! “Oh, I mean,” Julian stuttered, “I mean, you know. Uh…” He trailed off, chewing the inside of his cheek so hard he thought he might bite off a piece. Quark merely shrugged and went back to organizing the bar. He picked up a bottle of something blue and sickeningly viscous. Frustration flared to life somewhere in his stomach. “And another thing! I think I hate Cardassians!”
“I do hope that’s the synthale talking,” an amused voice remarked from behind him. Julian startled, almost tipping backwards in his barstool. A hand splayed against his back. “My dear doctor, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you so publicly inebriated. On a workday, no less.”
“Garak,” Julian gurgled, suddenly feeling very ill. “I—”
“At this rate, I doubt you’ll be in good form for lunch tomorrow. Perhaps we should reschedule?” Garak finally came into Julian’s field of vision, which was swimming dangerously. Even through his nausea, Julian could see Garak’s hands clasped in his lap, squeezed tight. “I would rather discuss Dolar on a day when you’re in your right mind—”
“Dolar,” gasped Julian. He frowned, the words struggling to form. Garak tilted his head, and before Julian could temper his anger he snapped, “He—what’s wrong with him?”
Garak’s eyes went wide and his entire body stiffened. His tail, which had been swishing contentedly around the barstool, came to an immediate stop. Only the tip stayed in motion, flicking slightly as the seconds passed in stunned silence. It reminded Julian of a cat stalking prey, calculating its next move, when it should strike. Garak's eyes narrowed to slits. “What, exactly, do you mean?”
“It’s…” Julian wracked his brain for what Jabara had told him earlier. Garak waited, his hands choking the life out of each other. After a few moments of thinking, he perked up and recited, “‘An ally of Dolar is an enemy of Cardassia’! Have you—”
Garak looked as if Julian had slapped him across the face. Then he looked as if he were about to murder him. Not since the wire incident had Julian seen such fury in Garak’s eyes, made all the more frightening by the fact that he wasn’t experiencing the excruciating pains of withdrawal and the possible reality of dying as an exile on a Federation spaceship. No, Julian had actually said something worthy of hatred this time.
He stood up, posture rigid, his hands retreating to his sides. Even they shook with rage, or maybe it was the effort it took to keep them from going around Julian’s neck. Then, all it once, they went still. Garak flashed him a chilling smile. Julian wondered how many times that was the last thing someone had seen before their death. “I think it’s safe to say that lunch tomorrow is off, seeing as you’ll be… incapacitated. Goodnight, Doctor.”
“Garak, wait—”
Garak stalked off, his tail lashing at the feet of Quark’s other patrons as it swung from side to side, leaving Julian alone to think about how his father had managed to waste money on an equally defective son.