Work Text:
The first thing Garak did when he returned to his quarters aboard Deep Space 9 was to check for any new surveillance equipment that might have been placed there during his absence; there was none, probably because Odo had been away from the station with him (and he steered himself away from the memories that rose to greet that thought). The second thing he did was to call Mila. He didn’t want to take a shower or change his clothes first; he wanted her to see him as he was now—the singed tunic, the dry, dull scales, the frayed, brittle hair. He wanted her to see that he shared the pain he was about to inflict on her.
When she picked up the call, her face was anxious, but still hopeful. “Elim?” she said. “You look dreadful. What happened? Did you find him?”
He’d contacted her a few times during the years of his exile—it was always risky revealing that they had any connection at all—but not since the last time he’d seen her in the flesh, before having to leave Cardassia forever, had he wanted so badly to call her ‘Mother.’
“Yes, I found him,” he said gently, solemnly, and watched as her hope turned to dread. “I tried to help him, Mila. I tried to save him. But he wouldn’t let me.”
“Then he’s—?” It came out as a hoarse whisper, and then her voice failed entirely.
Garak nodded and said simply, “He’s dead.”
He watched her struggle to control her emotions, to keep her composure, not to break down and wail and sob over the comm line. The same struggle was going on within him, though he knew she couldn’t see it: he had decades of training and practice at hiding his true feelings.
He had the urge to tell her—whether out of cruelty or out of kindness, he couldn’t say—that Tain had once again threatened to have her killed in the days before his death. Out of either kindness or cruelty, he held his tongue. Let her continue believing that Tain had loved her.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said, her voice choked, once she had mastered herself.
“Of course. You deserve to know.”
“You should get yourself cleaned up, Elim,” she scolded him thickly, and sniffed. Her light blue eyes (the same color as his) sparkled with moisture. “You always feel better when you’re looking your best”—a gentle prod at his vanity.
“I will. But I had to tell you first.”
“Take care of yourself,” she said, before cutting off the connection.
Doctor Bashir had said the same thing over the comm last night, or the nearest Federaji equivalent. He supposed it was a way of expressing affection, or care, without quite expressing it. And he supposed that Bashir did care about him, in some way, even if it couldn’t possibly be in the way he had professed.
He stripped off his damaged clothing—it would have to be carefully cleaned and repaired—and stepped into the shower. He used real water, not the sonic scrubber: water was in absurd abundance on this Federaji station, so there was no reason to deprive himself of that luxury. If anyone had been listening—which he was fairly certain no one was, since he hadn’t found any recording devices, and the only person who might have been able to effectively get one past him was now dead—they wouldn’t have been able to hear his quiet sobs over the sound of water hitting tiles and scales; if anyone had been watching, they wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the sources of the water running down his face.
He also used his nil-kúna [soft-stone] to polish away the dull, flaking surface layer of his scales. He applied smoothing oil to hair and scales, as he hadn’t been able to do in three days, since his personal effects had been destroyed along with the Romulan ship, the Obsidian Order, and his last hope of ever being able to return home. The only thing he could do about the bruise-like shadows under his eyes was to cover them with the silver highlighting makeup that he used, in his foolish vanity, to make himself appear younger, more cheerful, more desirable.
He had a “date” this evening. He supposed he ought to dress for it; he put on one of his favorite outfits, the red and black with the wide belt that disguised his shameful middle-aged pudginess. If he had believed that this was real, that Bashir really wanted him as anything more than a source of Cardassian secrets and a chance to play at espionage, he might have applied a touch of blue to his chufa and kinat’hu. But the silver makeup wasn’t just for Bashir’s benefit; it was meant to hide his weakness from the whole station, from Starfleet and the Bajorans.
He didn’t think Commander Sisko had ordered Bashir to court him. It didn’t seem like Sisko’s style, or Starfleet’s for that matter, to order a subordinate officer to seduce an enemy for information; the Federation was far too sanctimonious about sexual autonomy. No, this must have been Bashir’s own idea; Garak had seen what manner of absurd, frankly offensive nonsense he read about the life of a spy. Most likely he hadn’t sought Sisko’s approval, either; he probably imagined he would unexpectedly produce some key piece of intelligence, as he had with Garak’s assistance in the case of Councilor Pa’Dar’s missing son, and be celebrated for his crucial intervention, but not be entirely forthcoming about the source of his information. Sisko would guess that Garak had been involved, but Bashir would not disclose precisely how, and he would be thrilled and smug about living his very own ‘James Bond’ adventure.
Garak supposed that Bashir must not be entirely disgusted by the prospect of physical intimacy with him, despite the fact that his age, sex, and physique were far from the young doctor’s highly consistent preferences. He had not seemed obviously disgusted when they had kissed the day before, even in the Human way, which seemed calculated to arouse disgust if one did not find one’s partner irresistibly attractive. Perhaps ambition, patriotism, or mere curiosity were enough to overcome his lack of inherent attraction.
Well. Whatever the case, Garak would have to make clear that he was not deceived and put a quick stop to it. He wondered whether anything resembling a friendship would be able to survive this foolish gambit. It didn’t offend him particularly that Bashir was trying to use him to aid the Federation or advance his career; Garak himself had happily used the doctor for his own purposes and would do so again. If he made clear that he knew what Bashir was up to, he would save either of them from further embarrassment—except, of course, the inevitable embarrassment to Bashir of having his attempted deception uncovered; he would be spared having to debase himself further and dissuaded (or so Garak hoped) from further amateurish attempts.
But the fact that he had allowed his sincere desire to show when Bashir had engaged him in yut’shara without knowing the meaning of the gesture—that he had been taken in for those few minutes of weakness, when he was tired and vulnerable, unraveled by grief and disarmed by Bashir’s display of care and kindness… he would never be able to erase that from either of their memories. He could never take back the words that his perfect memory taunted him with: “I didn’t mind.”
“What in the Union were you thinking?” Tain’s voice drawled in his head. “Now that he knows you want him… just imagine what he could do with that information. Or anyone else he might choose to tell; he’s not the most close-lipped Federaji you might have fallen in with.” He imagined Tain shaking his head with faintly ironic disappointment, the way he had at Garak’s feeble attempts to protect Odo. “You really have lost your edge, Elim. After all those years I spent honing it so carefully! At least Palandine was a Cardassian, and a Bamarren graduate at that; she knew how to keep a secret.”
Garak had no excuses to make to him. I swear I won’t let it happen again, was all he could say.
“It’s too late,” Tain’s voice said pityingly. “You only have to show your soft underbelly once; your adversary will always know where it is.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d shown the doctor his soft underbelly. The recollection of the incident with the wire still filled him with shame: how he had let himself be seen inebriated in public; revealed to Bashir the abject misery of his exile and the depths to which he’d sunk to be able to barely endure it; revealed, too, how precious the doctor’s own company had become to him—the lone piece of driftwood to which he clung while adrift in his aimless existence, all but drowning in his loneliness.
Most contemptible of all, he had revealed that he craved forgiveness. He’d been so certain that he was about to die, he hadn’t thought it would matter that Bashir knew he regretted the things he’d done… but that very certainty meant that he couldn’t now pass it off as some kind of ploy to win Bashir’s sympathy and trust by making him think he was no longer the man he’d been, that he’d repented his sins and was ready to follow the enlightened path of Federation morality. Unless he could claim that he’d been sure Bashir would save him? Mentioning the Arawath Colony had been an impulsive shot in the dark… and damning proof that he was a coward who would gamble the life of a friend rather than salvage the last shreds of honor he had left—to use as a shroud, since there was nothing else they were good for—and accept the death he had earned. (Yet perhaps, from a certain perspective, it had been a shrewd strategy: if Bashir did not care enough to follow the hint, or if he was killed in the attempt, Garak would not have to live with that knowledge for long; the very conditions of his survival—that Bashir was willing to risk his life for him, and was spared—provided him with new reason to live.)
Bashir had seen all these weaknesses—his remorse, his loneliness, his self-destructiveness and lack of self-control; did it matter so much that he had added another to the list?
“Of course it matters,” Tain said contemptuously. “This one gives him direct power over you.”
Well, the vole was already out of the box (or however that Terran expression went); all Garak could do now was try to contain and minimize the damage.
Speaking of damage, he did need to assess the state of his shop. It had been pleasantly cathartic, in a way, to blow it all up—his mundane, respectable, tastefully decorated prison. But now he had to go back into his cell and keep living in it, which meant cleaning up the debris and redecorating the prison walls. He replicated a broom and a long-handled dustpan before he went to the Promenade; the replicator in his shop had probably been damaged along with everything else.
The extent of the destruction he saw when he walked in—not through the door, which had collapsed, but through a massive hole in the front wall—was nearly overwhelming. An apt metaphor for my life, he thought darkly. He leaned the broom against the wall and picked his way through the carnage of glass and fabric and half-melted scraps of bulkhead. Under a fragment of broken pipe he spotted a piece of blood-red velvet that might still have passed for a skirt if not for the light charring… he picked it up and walked over to a mirror near the back wall that had somehow, miraculously, remained intact. Some things had survived, after all; some mannequins were still upright, their outfits undamaged. Such are the meager mercies I can now hope for…
He used the velvet to wipe the mirror clean of dust and soot—a first, easy step toward salvaging what could still be salvaged—and the newly polished spot revealed the reflection of Odo, standing framed in the gap in the wall that now served as the shop’s doorway. Garak turned slowly, dreading what he might say.
“I just read the report that you wrote,” Odo said, a little haltingly. “And—I wanted to thank you.”
“Me?” Garak said, taken aback. Thank him, after…? “For what?”
“For not mentioning my… desire… to return to my people.”
Garak took in a breath, considering how to respond. “I could hardly reveal that without revealing the circumstances under which it was expressed” crossed his mind, as well as, more fleetingly, “It was the barest mercy I could show after what I did to you.” He decided on a more delicately phrased “I consider the entire conversation as something… best forgotten.” He ventured a close-lipped, confidential smile: they were co-conspirators, now, not interrogator and subject… or criminal and victim.
“As do I,” Odo gruffly agreed. After a pause, he said, “Quark has expressed an interest in renting this space if you’re not going to be using it.”
“Oh?” And what else would I do to earn my existence? Let Quark exhibit me as a curiosity—the last Cardassian left in the Bajoran system? Sell myself for the amusement of Starfleet and the vengeful satisfaction of Bajorans? Or should I spare us all some discomfort and inconvenience by throwing myself out an airlock?
“He mentioned something about an Argelian massage facility,” Odo said with careful distaste.
Garak was tempted to roll his eyes, but just kept his knowing smile pasted on. “Unfortunately, I don’t think Commander Sisko would approve of such an interesting facility on the Promenade.”
“I tend to agree. But I do think he would approve of a… tailor’s shop.”
Garak let the smile fall from his face. “Do you know what the sad part is, Odo?” he said, letting the shapeshifter hear in his hard voice and sharply bitten words just a fraction of the helpless rage and pain he had to keep masked when he wasn’t weeping, pathetically, alone in the shower. “I’m a very good tailor.” Eventually, as all good spies know, the masks one wears become one’s face; the garment that one first donned as a disguise becomes one’s skin, even one’s very body. How long before I really am just a plain, simple tailor… with an unusually bloody past?
Odo turned to go… but then paused in the makeshift doorway. “Garak… I was thinking that you and I should have breakfast together sometime.”
“Why, Constable,” Garak said, tightly reining all his anguish back into a tone of amiable surprise. “I thought you didn’t eat.”
“I don’t,” he said, then stepped over the little threshold of wall still remaining below the giant gash and walked briskly back out to the Promenade.
It might have been a ploy to try to get more information out of Garak about the Obsidian Order’s involvement in past incidents on Terok Nor; Odo had questioned him for hours about those after he’d recovered from the failure of his implant (and would have questioned him on his deathbed, Odo hadn’t hesitated to tell him, if Doctor Bashir had not forbidden it), while Garak alternately professed complete ignorance and conjured up implausible explanations (some of them not nearly as implausible as the truth). But something in the way Odo had issued the invitation—tentative, reluctant, almost… shy—made Garak think that wasn’t what he was after (at least, not in the first instance).
Strange, how this experience seemed to have forged a bond between him and Odo. Odo should have hated him, should have willingly left him to die along with Tain and the best part of the Order (and not a few times in the past three days, Garak had wished that he had). Now, Garak suspected that the reason Odo did not hate him was that very desire to return to his people that he had thanked him for not mentioning in his report. They were both alone here, the only one of their kind—lone representatives of two species who needed others of their kind, even more than most other sentient species—and Odo knew that everything Garak had done was for the sake of returning to his people.
Odo had been able to stand on principle and refuse to return when he’d discovered that his people were poised and willing to harm those who had taken him in, whom he called friends. Did he regret that choice now? Or did he simply wish for something impossible—to return to a people different from the one he had found, a just and peaceable race of shapeshifters? In any case, it seemed that Odo felt he could not blame Garak for making the choice that, in a not-so-remote possible universe, he himself might have made.
Garak glanced at a chronometer on the wall that still seemed to be functioning—or at least was showing a different time than it had when he walked in. 1352, it said: barely seven hours to make a start on cleaning up this mess before he had to go clean up another one—to face Doctor Bashir and nip his juvenile seduction scheme in the bud. That’s what you get for taking up with someone scarcely more than half your age… But after his conversation with Odo, the prospect seemed somewhat less bleak. It appeared that Bashir was not his only friend and potential ally on the station. He still hoped this episode would not end that friendship—though it would inevitably strain it, at least for the next few months… but even if he could no longer rely on Bashir for company and conversation, he would not be completely alone.