Work Text:
"Time and again, our senses had been jarred by the hard intrusion of the West: a kimono-clad man wearing a bowler; corrugated roofing on a two-hundred-year-old wooden structure; the fizzy lemonade served with our perfectly grilled fish the day before. But even then, a vine had already begun to overgrow the metal roof, and the cloying drink had been transformed by a sprig of some unassuming herb."
The heat outside the cottage was, for Garak, a perfectly sunbaked spring morning. So he wondered, as he prepared to bring his partner a cold drink, why Julian was the one out in it.
Julian had been out in the vegetable garden for hours, breaking the ground and planting. He’d wrapped a cloth around his head to keep the sun at bay, but even though it was still morning and the planting season was just beginning, beads of sweat made their way across his skin.
Something about the sight unsettled Garak.
“Something to drink?” Garak said, offering the cup.
“Ah! Yes, please!” Julian wiped the dust off his hands and onto his pants, then straightened and reached for the cup eagerly. He drank in large gulps, then wiped the stray droplets from his mouth with the back of his hand, then swiped at the sweat on his neck the same way, leaving smudges of dirt across his skin. “I suppose I could do with a break.”
“Good,” said Garak. “Sit with me?” He gestured to the bench in the shade of their porch.
Julian gave him a long look before sitting down beside him, and his fingers lightly brushed the back of Elim’s hand. “What’s the matter?” Julian asked.
“Oh, nothing.” Elim watched Julian raise his eyebrows in disbelief before continuing. “If you are happy and well, then so am I. I simply want to make sure of that.”
“Hum,” Julian said, giving him another of those long, thoughtful looks. Then he smiled, a little amused, a little soft. “You’re worrying about me.”
“This isn’t one of your holoprograms. The point is not to prove your prowess.”
At that, Julian caught Garak’s hand in his and pulled it up, brushing his lips over Garak’s knuckles. “I promise you, that’s not what this is. What this place needs most is for seeds to bloom. I know the worth of my medical knowledge, but right now this is the best thing I can contribute.”
“Working yourself half to death in the Cardassian heat?” Elim objected.
“You make it sound like I’m some sickly waif,” Julian said, a bit of a grimace on his face as if the words tasted bad. “I’m perfectly healthy.”
“You're also human.”
“Elim. I’m a doctor.” Julian rolled his eyes. “I’m quite aware of how much the human body can endure.”
«Promise me that you are taking care, » he said, switching to Kardasi. Julian had acquired a habit of speaking in Kardasi when he wanted Garak to take him especially seriously, and so Garak had fallen into the same habit.
«I promise. »
«That you’re keeping the heat in mind. »
Julian sighed softly, and switched back to English. “You know, this isn’t outside of the normal range of climates on Earth. Earth has more places on it than England, more languages than English. As hard as the English may have once tried to mold the world in their own image. It never did take. People and places, they adapt to each other. For a human, I’m actually pretty well adapted to heat.”
Garak frowned as he considered that. “I suppose my idea of you has always been too tightly tied to the language you spoke. I am loath to admit it, but the Sherlock Holmes stories I’d read already had me wishing for a clever Englishman to come barreling into my life before I ever laid eyes on you.”
“I’d never have suspected.” The twinkle in Julian’s eyes was gently mocking.
Garak sighed. “This is hardly the height of summer. You do realize that, yes?”
Julian’s laugh was free and open. “I’ll be sure to stay inside once Cardassia is genuinely attempting to roast me alive. This is almost comfortable.”
“If you say so,” Garak said, raising his eyebrows with a pointed glance at Julian’s sweat-drenched clothing.
“Oh, you’re going to get even more familiar with the sight of me sweating,” Julian said, grinning. “It might be distasteful, but it’s how human bodies keep themselves cool.”
“I didn’t say I minded you sweating.” Elim lifted his hand to Julian’s face again, capturing a droplet of sweat from Julian’s temple with his thumb before bringing it to his mouth. “Only I like it best when it’s happening indoors, with me. And I would like it even better if I knew you’d still have the energy for that at the end of the day.”
Julian laughed. “I’ll be sure to factor that in, then,” he said. “I’ll be in soon. I do plan on enjoying my day off by sitting around all afternoon. Maybe catching up on some reading or something.”
That last bit sounded like a lie, and Garak itched to call him on it. But it would be terribly hypocritical of Garak to insist that Julian be completely honest with him.
Now that Cardassia had finished unburying its war casualties and was able to bury them properly again, Garak found himself once more in the information business.
People came to Garak if they wanted to find someone who’d lived in a part of the city that had been leveled, if they needed to find someone with a specific skill, if they wanted to find out what was going on with the reconstruction or sometimes, just to gossip. It was Garak’s habit to want to know things, to build a network of useful contacts, and so he’d automatically begun collecting people and information where he could. He’d inadvertently become something of a community leader, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or hide.
It helped here, as it had on the station, to have some obvious occupation which got people in his doors so that information could be shared more easily, more casually. He did take in clothing for mending and tailoring, but gardening had become the primary work he had in hand as he spoke to people.
Cardassia needed food, and especially here in the remains of a once-great city, people needed to learn how to grow it. Transportation and trade were disorganized and uncertain. They needed to grow what they could here, rather than waiting and bargaining and begging to get it from somewhere else.
So Garak had fallen into being the local expert on gardening and small-scale farming, drawing on what he’d learned from Tolan, his experience on Romulus, and everything Kelas and Julian could tell him about the nutritional needs of the population and how best to fulfill them.
What surprised Garak was the way he’d become a sort of librarian.
Julian had brought the equipment of his trade with him when he’d arrived, but he’d also brought a fairly powerful computer. Its programming was derived from that on Deep Space Nine, which meant that it could interface with both Cardassian and Federation equipment. Julian had brought it to keep medical records and information that he came across, but that had quickly expanded to the information about planetary logistics that Garak collected, what resources were available where and in what amounts, and from there the database grew in all directions.
People brought him their favorite books to make sure that the files existed somewhere other than one private collection, and asked if he had any other books. People brought him photographs of buildings that had been destroyed in the war, people that had died, told him stories of things that had happened so that they would be recorded, heard, remembered, and spread.
Usually people defined Elim Garak by the secrets he kept. But now he found the community around him treating him as not a secret-keeper, but a secret-teller.
This unsettled him quite enough, but in the last few weeks, Garak had become increasingly aware that Julian was keeping something from him. And not just the everyday things, the medical information covered by his code of ethics, the classified Starfleet information he’d been privy to at one time or another. Something more immediate, more personal.
Garak saw it in the set of Julian’s shoulders as he turned off a padd when Garak entered the room, the vague way he spoke of what he’d been doing with his down time.
The tension between them wasn’t entirely unfamiliar, and, Garak admitted to himself, wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Things had always been most intense between them when there were secrets involved.
Julian, however, seemed ready to jump out of his skin.
One evening, when they were sipping kanar after dinner, he looked at Garak out of the corner of his eye before saying, «Aren’t you going to ask me? »
“Ask you what?” Garak replied in English, keeping the conversation at arm’s length.
«What I’ve been hiding. »
“I have not a single idea what you’re talking about.”
«I know you better than that. »
“Of course you do, but that’s not the point.”
«What is the point? »
“I don’t need to know what you’re hiding. We all have secrets.” Garak paused, and then gave in, switching to Kardasi. «There are secrets that I will take to my grave, that you will never know even if you’re with me when I give my own Shri-tal. And so, how could I ever ask you to give up yours? »
«But it’s bothering you. »
“It’s driving me to distraction, Julian.”
He realized as he said it how true it was. He would have liked to pretend that he was totally unbothered, that it didn’t have him just as on edge as Julian seemed to be.
“I’m sure you could find out if you put your mind to it,” Julian said with a bit of a smirk.
Garak made a clicking noise with his tongue. “I don’t relish the thought of using those particular talents of mine on you,” he told Julian.
“Well,” Julian said, raising his eyebrows, “you could just ask.”
“Julian,” he said, “you can tell me whatever you wish to, whenever you like.”
Julian sighed. “Yes, very helpful. Thank you.”
Garak put down his glass. This was going to be one of those conversations.
Sometimes they worked well together because they’d been brought up with secrets, forced to spend their lives lying and lying, and it was nice to have someone who understood what that was like. Sometimes it was frustrating that neither of them had the ability to speak about certain things outright, not easily.
Julian Bashir, this alien he’d enjoined with, was more similar to him in some ways than the average person they lived among here on Cardassia. Which meant he had things at the core of him, secrets that strained to escape but that he’d kept for so long, the mental muscles around them were stiff with disuse.
Garak hated the thought of applying pressure to Julian, but he could, as the doctor pointed out, just ask.
“Julian. Is there something you’d like me to know?”
Julian took a breath. He drew his case of isolinear rods out of his pocket and set it on the table, fingertips still resting against the latch.
Garak didn’t move. He was desperately curious now, but there were times when waiting and watching were the quickest way to get information.
Interrogating Doctor Parmak came to mind. Garak shut his eyes for a moment and tried not to think about that. Not here, not now. This was different. This was Julian, who trusted him - far too much.
“Are you all right?” Julian asked.
“Yes, perfectly fine. Only if you don’t want me to know about whatever this is, please know that we can leave it here and simply move on.”
“Right,” said Julian, and forced his gaze down to the case, opening the latch. “There is something I’d like to share with you.” He hesitated, hand hovering over two of the isolinear rods in the padded case.
Elim could only watch. He was sure Julian was going to pick up the rod on the end, but at the last second he reached for the next one over. He picked it up, and set it in Garak’s hand.
Garak closed his hand around the rod, and it felt strange in his hand, a little too much like an objective. So he set it aside in order to lean forward into Julian’s space and kiss him, sweet and soft. Julian responded in kind, reaching to pull Garak close for a moment before asking, “Aren’t you going to look at what’s on the rod?”
“I will look at it,” he said, not moving to pick it back up. “Just, not at this very moment. I have something more important to attend to.”
“Oh, and what’s that?” Julian asked with a smile, kissing the tip of Garak’s nose.
Garak threaded his arms around Julian. “You,” he answered simply, and went back to kissing his enjoined.
The next morning, after Julian had left for the day but before the day’s visitors began to trickle into his garden, Garak sat down on the front porch to look at whatever Julian had seen fit to give him.
It was another in the series of Mary Russell books. Which would make sense. Those books were often a conduit of communication for the two of them when all else failed.
Garak had to admit that for a moment, he’d expected something more personal, perhaps something like the letter Elim had sent to Julian after the war.
Perhaps there was something of the kind on the first rod. But Julian’s talent had never rested in making up stories. He’d always been better at taking other people’s stories and picking out the patterns, tracking down the inconsistencies, finding things out by listening to what people would tell him and what they wouldn’t.
Garak had become adept at learning what Julian meant by handing him a particular book at a particular time. And so, he sat down to read Dreaming Spies.
Russell and her husband traveled frequently in these books, and Julian was right, Elim should have recalled that not all of Earth was England. Russell herself had ancestry from the area she referred to as Palestine, a hot, dusty place where water was scarce and valuable.
But this book was not about Palestine. It was about Japan. And something about Japan began to sound very familiar to Elim. Not in the superficial ways that Palestine did, but in its culture. And especially in the way they related to secrets.
The first time one of the protagonists made a tremendous sacrifice to protect their state and its secrets, Garak began to wonder - if Julian appreciated this story, might he come to appreciate The Neverending Sacrifice as well?
Quite honestly, Garak wasn’t sure how he felt about that idea, not anymore.
He’d given Julian the translation of The Neverending Sacrifice that he’d created all those years ago, when they were still feeling each other out, as a kind of litmus test. Garak had believed, and still believed, that the book represented something fundamental in the best aspects of Cardassian literature. He’d gotten the reaction he’d expected - a fundamentally Federation, fundamentally human, fundamentally English rejection of the no-win scenario. Of the premise that terrible sacrifice was necessary, and would continue to be necessary, and that coming to terms with that was not only necessary, but noble.
Julian was hopeful and idealistic through and through. Garak despaired of him, but also loved him. Hopelessly. For all the things that made him himself.
Garak found himself fervently hoping that Julian would remain all those things - young, hopeful, optimistic - and that Cardassia would fail to crush it all out of him the way the planet tended to do. Elim had sacrificed many things - and many people - for the good of Cardassia in his life. He found that the idea of sacrificing Julian for the same cause was unbearable.
He nearly put down the padd to stop reading, and even had the fleeting thought of leaping up, going and finding Julian and - what? Rescuing him? Taking him and running away from Cardassia, leaving Garak’s people to fend for themselves? No. Neither of them would be happy with a decision like that.
Flights of fancy. What was becoming of him?
He settled himself once again, and returned his focus to the book.
The story had begun with a foreign visitor in an English garden. An element that was at first strange, but the longer one looked at it, the more sure one became that it belonged there.
...once the eyes had accepted the shape, the mind began to rearrange the entire garden around it. In less than the time it took to drain one cup of tea, I was beginning to suspect that, were Patrick to hitch up his horse and haul this foreign stone into the fields, our terrace would forever be a lesser place.
Something strange and other had come home with them, and it had settled in their lives as if it had always intended to end up there.
The Russell books were so often about traveling, about dipping a toe into the other cultures of Earth for a while. This one in particular seemed to focus on the interplay of two cultures, English and Japanese, and how trust could be built between people of one and people of the other, despite their vast differences.
And if Garak found himself and Cardassia in the descriptions of Japan and its people, there was reassurance in the way that Japan retained so much of its character and traditions even with English culture creeping its way in. They kept their sense of honor, their duty to their state. And the English characters were shown having difficulty, but eventually adapting to and understanding the culture well enough to serve it at the highest and deepest levels.
The Japanese characters did not trust easily, and the English characters accepted the choices they made, even while wishing that there could be less suffering involved.
And there was suffering. There was sacrifice. The secrets vital to the state were kept, no matter the cost. Russell recalled the way the members of the Japanese family described their commitment to serving their state:
"'We use the tools we have,' she said. Or as her father put it, 'Get the job done,' no matter the cost to your life, your pride, your freedom."
Without arguing their friend’s sacrifice, while fully understanding why their friend had made the choice, both Holmes and Russell mourned the results.
He kept reading.
The story could have been a repetitive epic. It could have been, but it wasn’t. One got the feeling of generations of a single family serving their state, echoing backwards through history, although the reader only caught glimpses of those before their friend and her father.
The story accepted, but did not default to, the Cardassian ideals that Tain had instilled in him. King continued to serve as a bridge between Earth and Cardassia.
Between Julian and Elim.
The story was one of two cultures meeting, not blending, but still affecting each other. Still causing meaningful change.
Elim wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that, really. That change was inevitable on both sides.
And it certainly wasn’t everything Julian had meant to tell him. No, this book didn’t hold the secrets that had been trying to escape Julian’s mind. Those secrets were still imprisoned, locked up tight.
Julian wanted Garak to get it out of him.
Another one of those moments, like the confession that Julian had been genetically enhanced. He had some need to be pried open, to be made to tell his secrets. It made him feel free.
Garak didn’t understand. Or perhaps he only wished he didn’t.
So much of what he felt most deeply had been in that letter to Julian, with their separation after the war. Oh, many of the facts were inaccurate, the story finessed to make it readable, to hide details that could still hurt Cardassia or its people. But the feelings were there.
Garak had told himself that he could write one message to Julian, and if the doctor didn’t reply favorably, that he would put their relationship out of his mind and do his level best to move on, as he had told Julian to do. And so he delayed in sending that letter, putting more and more of himself into it until it became a beast of a narrative, a book in itself.
Actually sending it had required… some persuasion. On the part of Kelas.
It had been Kelas Parmak who had pointed out that Garak was distracted, that he was elsewhere, that the work he did in rebuilding his beloved Cardassia was suffering for it. It had been Kelas Parmak who had convinced him to do something about it.
The embodiment of the shadow of his days in the Obsidian Order.
Garak had needed to be pried open, because he feared his own secrets more than anyone else’s. They always felt like oily, corrosive things. And he’d gifted them to Julian.
Julian was usually a relatively easy mark, careless with all but a few of his deepest secrets. If his dear doctor had something that needed to be pried out of him now - how much had Garak changed him, by sharing all of that? By bringing him here?
Garak waited until Julian was in his bed, their bed, loose and pliant from the evening’s activities. It wasn’t a technique he’d called upon often in service of the Order. Tain had, perhaps, known that that would have more likely ended in the loss of Garak’s devotion to the cause than any kind of gain. So there were fewer bad memories to push aside.
Not none, just fewer.
“So,” Garak said, not touching Julian. “Have you acquired any state secrets that you’ve just been dying to spill to someone?”
“Ugh,” Julian said, throwing his arm over his face as if to hide, though he stayed relaxed. “It’s just something I’ve been working on.”
“Do tell.”
“No, no, it really will be easier just to show you.” He fished around with one arm for the clothes he’d thrown on the floor earlier, until he found the little case in a pocket and handed the whole thing to Elim.
Elim flicked it open and looked at the rods inside. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“It’s not perfect yet. But if I don’t show you now I never will. I’ll lose my nerve completely.”
Garak frowned in thought. “I have to admit, I went through a similar process when I wrote to you, after the war. I’m afraid it made the missive somewhat unwieldy.”
“Well, this was always going to be pretty substantial,” Julian said, gesturing to the case. “But I hope… well.”
“What?”
“I hope it has some value. To you, if nothing else.”
That was what made Garak able to reach into the case and pluck out the rod on the end. That Julian needed him to read it, even if no one else ever did. If it ended up being a burden, well, it was Garak’s burden, as much as Julian’s.
He kissed Julian, took the rod and tucked it away, and tried not to feel like he had dipped his hands back into something filthy. It took him some time to fall asleep.
His curiosity got the better of him the next morning, and he abandoned his weeding halfway through a bed of melons to investigate the rod.
He was three paragraphs in before he realized what it was.
It wasn't a personal narrative, the way Garak's letter to Julian had been. But the words were Julian's. And after all, it wasn't as if Elim's letter had been literal truth, from beginning to end. But as Julian had put it, the letter was "truth in all the ways that matter." And as Garak read, he began to think that this was truth in all the ways that mattered, too.
It was a new English translation of The Neverending Sacrifice.
And it was… creative. Not the pure, clear, rigid thing that the original Kardasi text had been. Not mostly utilitarian, like Garak’s attempt at an English version. The bones of the story were there, but it was a different beast.
Garak read on, and he began to see what kind of story it had become.
It was now a story that said something about Julian. Garak could read between the lines, see the way he’d painted the noblest characteristics of his parents onto the first generation. His father’s prison sentence was something that made Julian feel many things, Garak knew, but neither of them were very good at speaking about those emotions outright.
About either of their fathers.
But they could always speak in literature, in tall tales. Garak only had to reference The Adventure of the Three Garridebs in passing for Julian to get that knowing smile on his face because that meant that Elim cared and worried about his dear doctor more than he could say in any other way. Julian could throw out a mention of that time Russell felt silly for being sad about her new clothes being destroyed when there was a murderer on the loose, and Garak knew exactly how he was feeling about whatever events he’d been talking around. A mention of Hyrum Graff out of the blue, Julian had come to recognize, meant Garak was having complex, maudlin feelings about Enabran Tain.
But Julian hadn’t found a good framework for expressing what he felt about Richard Bashir, not in all the Earth literature he’d read. Not until he’d picked out a character from The Neverending Sacrifice and cast him in a new light, a human light.
Somehow Julian had created a work that held the ideals of Cardassia at its core, but felt… more immediate, like the visceral experiences of Julian’s favorite holoprograms. And Garak was hopelessly ensnared.
Julian found him sitting in the fading light from the front window, staring at the padd. He sank down next to him with a sigh, leaning his head on Garak’s shoulder.
“Tell me the truth,” Julian said. “Is it awful?”
Garak paused for a long moment, kissing Julian’s forehead somewhat absently. “It’s truly incredible,” he said finally. “It’s a lie that’s more true than the truth.”
Julian’s face broke into a grin, and he shifted so he could meet Garak’s gaze with his own. “A lesson I learned from you, love.”
“I don’t know whether that’s a good thing. How much we’ve changed each other.”
“After all the time you spent telling me I was hopelessly naive?” Julian said with mock outrage.
“I used to think that I would ruin you. That if you changed, if you became more like me, you would be less yourself.” Garak contemplated himself, sitting alone in the dark, reading something that years ago, he might have called romantic twaddle. A corruption of the greatest work of Cardassian literature. “I never imagined that you would change me. Not like this. Not in the fundamentals.”
“You’re still the Garak I fell in love with,” Julian said with his foolish smile. “But happier, I think. I hope. More ready to see the good in a given situation.”
“I am getting soft in my old age,” Garak admitted ruefully.
“Only in the best ways.”
Garak ran a hand over Julian’s shoulder as he said, “I used to think there was no good way to become a sentimental fool.”
Julian huffed a laugh. “And I was never as idealistic as I pretended to be.”
“Now, I know that's not true.”
“No, really. I would have liked to have been. But I already knew there were secrets and lies running under the foundations of my life that I needed to keep at any price.”
“At any price? Then why turn yourself in? Why not come to me and ask me to kill the engineer who found you out? Help you do what needed to be done to cover it up? I would have, you know.”
“Hmm,” Julian murmured. “All right. That was an exaggeration.”
“No, you had your ideals. And you still do. And I still worry about what Cardassia might do to change that. What I might do. Sometimes I look at you and all I can think is 'I could ruin you'.”
“Oh, please ruin me,” Julian said a bit breathlessly, looking up at him, open and trusting.
That made Elim feel a complicated mess of different things, all knotted together in his belly.
Julian frowned slightly at whatever expression had managed to find its way to his face. “What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Kelas Parmak.”
“Ouch.” Julian straightened up and reached for Garak’s hands, tangling their fingers together.
“It's difficult to hear you tease about what I'm capable of,” he admitted.
“Even now?”
“My dear, you have to know that none of that is gone.”
Julian shook his head. “You are a different man than the one who did that. I think you already were when I met you.”
“No. Not really.”
“Yes. Really. And you know that. But it scares you. If you aren't Elim Garak, shadow son of Enabran Tain and guardian of all of Cardassia's most dangerous secrets, who are you?”
“Oh, don't make this about Tain.”
“It's a little bit about Tain.”
Garak bristled at Julian’s insistence. “How can you be so sure?”
Julian’s fingers traced paths across Garak’s hands now as he spoke. “When he died, it frightened you so much to be charting your own path in a universe without him in it. When you aligned yourself with the Federation and started revealing all of Cardassia's secrets to them, you were terrified. Even though you knew it was for the good of Cardassia.”
“Hmm. When did you start doing that, I wonder?”
“Doing what?”
“Saying 'them' when you're talking about the Federation, instead of 'us'.”
“You know, I'm not sure. Before we enjoined, I think. Don’t change the subject.”
“Ah, yes. And what was the subject?”
Julian sighed, clasping his hands more tightly for a moment. “You’re worrying. And you don’t need to be.”
“Don’t I?”
“Maybe paranoia kept you alive in the Order, maybe even on the station, but we have a home here. A community.”
Garak had to fight to keep eye contact as he said, “Worry and paranoia are two different things.”
“So you’re saying you’re going to keep worrying no matter what, but you’ll try not to be quite as paranoid? That seems reasonable.”
“I want to be done with paranoia, but.” Garak didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
“You can’t shake it?”
“No, that’s not the problem. The problem is, sometimes I think it means I’ve lost my edge.”
Julian’s smile was the kind that meant he was holding himself back from laughter. “Would that be so bad?”
“It might.”
“How so?”
“There’s only so much a dull knife can do against an enemy with skin as tough as a Cardassian.”
Julian was solemn again as he said in Kardasi, «If Cardassia was a safe place, you wouldn’t love it the way you do.»
“I’m glad you didn’t say that in English. It would’ve sounded dreadful.”
«I’m learning.»
« ‹ Learning › . Somehow that sounds better than ‹ changing › .»
“Oh, of course you like learning. In Kardasi, it just sounds like collecting more secrets.”
“Isn’t it?”
Julian’s mouth twisted in an expression that wasn’t quite a smile. “You’re not worried because you’re collecting more secrets. You’re worried because you’ve started to be the kind of man who is constantly giving them away.”
“Perhaps,” Garak allowed. “And you’ve become more guarded with yours. Even your full abilities, you never truly hid them from me. But this, this bothered you. The thought of me reading it.”
“Well, I’ve never really done anything like this before. I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”
Garak took the rod out of the reader, rolling it between his fingers. “Was this meant for me? All this, for only one set of eyes? Or are you planning on showing it to other people?”
“It’s your opinion I was nervous about. I’m not half as nervous about strangers reading it, somehow.”
“So you do plan on sharing it?”
“I'm worried I’ve gone wrong with it somewhere, and it’s unworthy. Not Cardassian enough. But I can't help but think it could do some good.” Julian hesitated a moment before asking, “What do you think?”
“It’s a halfway point,” Garak said, looking at the little orange rod contemplatively.
“Is that a good thing, or a bad one?” Julian asked.
“It’s a useful thing.”
Julian’s brow furrowed as he considered that. “Okay, but do you see yourself in it? Do you see Cardassia?” he asked.
“What I see when I read this is you.”
“Oh, that wasn’t what I wanted.”
“Wasn’t it?” Garak asked.
Julian paused in thought. “Perhaps, a bit. It wasn’t what I intended to want. I just wanted. To find the parts that a human could most easily appreciate and draw them out.”
Garak didn’t reply to that, thinking over what he’d read and his reactions to it.
“What are you thinking?” Julian asked at last.
Still looking at the rod, Garak said, “I wanted to see you in this. I want your fingerprints over the whole of the new Cardassia. Because Cardassia is home, but it would never quite be fully home without you in it. Not anymore.”
There was silence for another moment, and when Garak finally looked up at Julian, he was surprised to see his enjoined wiping at his tear-streaked face with one hand.
“I wanted to see myself in it too,” Julian managed at last. “Because it meant home to you and I wanted to be part of that. I hoped I wasn’t going too far in making it my own. But. I’ve changed, writing it. Or maybe I’ve found some things out about myself. And I hope. I hope it’s brought me closer to having a real place here.”
“You have one,” Garak said, surprising himself. “We’ll make sure of it. Whatever comes, we’ll find our way through it.”
“How idealistic of you.”
“A lesson I learned from you, my love.” Garak smiled, and looked out at the garden.
How things changed, if people made space for change. A Japanese stone at home in an English garden, and an English doctor at home in a Cardassian one.