Chapter Text
“I didn’t hear you get up,” he said, pressing his lips to Garak's forehead. The sweet smell of the tea he was drinking mixed with the rich caramel aroma from the coffee he had prepared. Julian let the mug warm his hands, inhaling the steam as he took a sip.
“What’s this?” Garak asked about the packet that Julian had placed next to him as he sat down.
“Happy birthday,” was all he said, glad at the slight smile that crept onto Garak’s lips. It turned into a smirk, and then a moment too long without a word, and Julian guessed his mistake.
“Today’s not your birthday, is it?”
“I may have given Starfleet my records, just like everyone else on this station, but I no one said I had to give them the right ones.”
“Humor me, then,” Julian said with a smile and a roll of his eyes.
Garak folded the paper back carefully, uncovering a thick book that was short enough to fit in his hand. Bits of the cover were flaking off with age.
“I couldn’t read all the writing,” Julian said, “so I had to trust the bookseller. She said it was The Necessary Journey - One Hundred and Fifty Years, by Elim Desang.”
There was no reading Garak’s expression. Julian carried on to fill the silence.
“It’s real paper, almost microscopically thin; all six thousand five hundred pages. Not a first publishing, of course, she laughed at me when I asked that - I didn’t know it was seven thousand years old! This copy was only printed about two hundred years ago...”
It was hard for Julian to stop talking even as he realized he was rambling, but Garak hadn’t seemed to notice. He looked at the book as though he didn’t believe that it was in front of him. His eyes started to water as he stared at it, one hand hovering just above the cover, almost like he was afraid to touch it.
“Why this one?” he whispered.
“I - I heard you mention it,” Julian said with growing uncertainty. “I hoped that meant you like it...”
Garak sniffled, and shook his head quickly to regain his composure.
“I mention many books,” he said, still not having taken his eyes from it, hand still warily above it.
“And, well, the author had your same name, and the book was so long, I reckoned he must be rather loquacious,” Julian grinned.
“She,” Garak said. At last he ran his hand lovingly over the cover and stroked the edge with his thumb, fluttering the pages.
“She?” Julian asked, caught off guard. “You were named after a woman?”
Hand still on the book, Garak gave him an inquisitive look.
“I was named after an author,” he said simply.
“You do like it?” Julian asked.
“Julian,” Garak said with a soft smile, resting the tips of his fingers gently on his cheek, “I do. Thank you.”
Julian smiled back in relief. Then, remembering the smaller box, handed it to him as well.
“More?” Garak asked, opening it with both hands, but still leaning his arm on the book so as not to lose contact with it. He looked quizzically at Julian when he found an isolinear rod for a holosuite.
“It’s a program...” Julian explained causing a wave of apprehension to cross Garak’s face. “No, no, no! It’s not what you think. Nothing... untoward!”
Garak couldn’t help but grin.
“Should I perhaps be disappointed?” he teased.
“Come on, I’ll show you,” Julian said, taking the box with one hand and Garak with the other. Garak still held his book firmly, close to his chest, and Julian tried to hide the thrill that he had guessed so right. He only hoped, despite the protests Garak was now spouting about the impossibility of actually enjoying a fantasy simulated in a confiningly small room, that he would be just as impressed with his other gift.
There was only a dim light to help them on the holosuite deck. Garak was trying to suppress a sneer that was in turn hiding his growing discomfort. It pained Julian to see him that way, but he was hoping that the holosuite program would be worth it. He had, after all, spent a significant amount of time, and not an insignificant amount of money, trying to obtain it. The transaction had been completely blind and, he suspected, in some way illegal.
The metallic doorway that stood before them was showing signs of wear, hairline cracks appearing in some places that Garak rubbed at with his thumb. The slight uncleanliness was accentuated by the noise in the bar below of a long night that had turned into an early morning: the clatter of glasses and bottles being carted off in bins, the last shout of someone more than ready but less than willing to leave, the clink and shuffle of strips and bars of latinum being counted. Unaware that he was doing it, Garak flipped the pages of his tightly-held book noisily.
“There are some compatibility codes that I have to type in,” Julian said, squinting at each character on the box before fumbling at the input screen.
“I wish you’d let me do it,” Garak said.
“And risk spoiling the surprise? Besides, I still need you for one thing. It’s programmed not to open for anyone but a Cardassian. I don’t even know if it will let me go in,” he added as an afterthought.
Confusion joined the tumult of nerves, curiosity and impatience evident on Garak’s features. Julian turned back quickly to finish entering the codes.
“I don’t even know if you’ll like it,” he said, his assuredness dissipating and apprehension growing.
Garak parted his pursed lips to let him know, “I’m sure whatever it is will be fine.”
“You have to be honest with me,” he said, finished with the minor programming but still standing between Garak and the door. “You can’t pretend to like it if - “
“Don’t preface it any longer,” Garak said tersely, “you have me here, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but can we please get this over with?”
Stepping aside, Julian felt his heart sink as he prepared himself for disappointment. The computer scanned Garak’s palm when he pressed it to the console next to the doors, and they hissed open.
In that instant all annoyance fell from Garak's face. All sound faded away. He was speechless. At the entrance to what should have been a dismally small room, he was lost in the world on the other side. He stood on the threshold of his home.
"How?" was the only word he could manage.
Julian smiled, partly with pride, mostly with relief.
"Surely you can let me have some secrets?"
It was as though Garak had barely heard him, and he didn't mind. He was enthused, like a child clapping his hands at something he'd done well enough to deserve genuine praise, and followed Garak through the archway.
"I never thought I'd be here again." Julian didn't correct him, didn’t want to break the illusion for a moment.
And the illusion was exceptional. From the moment they stepped into the city, he felt the embrace of the heat, the moist air invading his lungs as if to drown him, but then sitting quietly, almost pleasantly there. Garak walked as if in a trance along a promenade lined with carmine marble tiles speckled with black that made it look like the very ground had rusted to a smooth polish. The scent of damp soil came from somewhere. A perfume wafted on the air from an unseen tree that Julian imagined heavy with thick leaves and flowers that were great ruffles of petals, but dismissed the idea as ridiculous, out of place among the sharp, shadowy buildings nearby.
Everything in the air gave the indication that rain was imminent, but the clouds in the rust-coloured sky were thin and promised no threat. The sky itself was comforting, even in its orange blaze, dimmer than Julian was used to, a very slight but soft strain on the eye. But what came into view in the foreground made him halt without realizing he had done so.
A morning mist hung over the skyline that sprawled from the near-distance into infinity, and as far on both sides. It was then that he remembered they were on the station, by virtue of the same-shaped spires of a building that at first seemed tremendously near. Letting his eyes adjust, he found that it was much farther away, though no less imposing for it. It was as though the station itself were embedded in the planet's surface, but in all likelihood the design had been inspired in reverse. The spidery masts hooked abruptly into the haze, clutching unrelentingly at the clouds, their antipodes clawing a hold into the ground. Inhuman in scale, the structure engulfed everything around it, including the other monoliths that towered over the ant-like people, almost invisible from this vantage point. Few images of Cardassia were seen off world, but this was one of them, breathed monstrously to life before him. Overwhelmed, he felt he would be consumed, and reached out to grasp Garak’s arm.
Garak placed his hand over Julian’s, barely glancing at the megalith that loomed against the landscape below the roofs in front of them, but intent on an alleyway pressed between buildings to their left. Julian let himself be led down it, and had to blink as the scene seemed to change directly before his eyes. The smooth, straight blackness that lined the street they had just come from gave way to a narrow alley of ochre walls that wended its way haphazardly downhill, over worn clay bricks, uneven, every so often missing entirely, making him stumble. At first there were only the sounds of other people - a shout followed by a child crying, the whine of some unfamiliar animal, a voice singing lightly to itself floating over the walls on either side of them. Then he started to see people ahead who would disappear down staircases, other alleys, or into doorways, some of which were mounted with plaques bearing a crossed line of Cardassian writing that Julian could just barely make out phonetically, let alone understand.
They passed two people making their way up the hill, the first a man wearing a suit of undecorated grey fabric that ended in a stark square cut just below his throat. He cradled a round, glossy white loaf of bread, and a small terracotta jar sealed over the top with a cloth stretched and tied off in a knot. The second person, a few moments later, was a young woman in a rather severe dress with a high collar, a plain, large bag that she carried across her shoulder, and hair tied tightly and crisply behind her head. Despite her business-like appearance, she walked deliberately, trying to not lose her footing as she kept her eyes glued to a small tablet she was reading from. Garak had tried to catch the eye of each, throwing out a soft greeting that was never returned, both of the passersby had instead turned away without much subtlety until they passed. It perturbed Julian, who pitied Garak the lack of interaction, and cursed the programmer under his breath.
“That seems a bit rude,” he commented, drawing up beside him, “or, at least, rather unfriendly.”
“Hmm?” Garak mused, casting a vague backwards glance at the last passerby. “Oh, not really. I’m not surprised, in this part of town.” It wasn’t the reaction Julian had expected.
What else he hadn’t expected were the armed officers they met just after. They were men, in the same military-style garb that Julian was more used to seeing Cardassians wearing on the station, sectioned like plates of armor, actual armor for all he knew. The difference from the soldiers aboard Deep Space Nine were that these were armed, their hands resting on the rifles slung across their shoulders. Julian pulled in closer to Garak as they neared, but Garak said something to them that Julian couldn’t understand. His tone was cheerful, and the soldiers stopped just short of nodding, and quit paying them any attention as they carried on their patrol.
After nearly half a kilometre, the alleyway ended and opened onto a small square surrounded by low blocks of houses made of the same yellowish bricks as those they had just passed. There were a couple of busy food stalls, as well as two older women sitting on small wooden crates with sacs of produce open in front of them, and a few dozen people coming and going into alleys that radiated from the plaza. The air was perfumed with the sweet floral scent there had been a whiff of earlier, and Julian was surprised to see the tree from his imagination, hung heavily with orbs bursting with thousands of petals that floated steadily to the ground. An ornate metal bench was fashioned around the trunk of the tree, and small birds flitted from the branches to the grains dropped at one of the stalls; cat-like creatures lay crouched to pounce on the birds; children were at the ready to pounce on the cats. Most unexpected, however, was a rather ornate fountain that was trickling clear water off its marble carvings, ignored by almost everyone except a white-haired man whose clothing looked dignified but slightly worse for wear and who was filling bottles at the spouts. People would stop and tease him and he would dismiss them and they would laugh, then he shooed them away shaking his head.
It wasn’t until then that Julian realized he was in the strange position of not being able to understand what anyone was saying. A man ignored a crying baby as he bounced it on his knee and talked right over its head at his friend who leaned in close for gossip. A stall owner yelled at a young boy, gesturing for him to leave the fruit he had been about to steal, then said something sarcastic to which the boy responded with his head hung. The woman flung up a hand at him and disappeared behind the curtain. Julian hadn’t realized how little Kardasi he’d learned, let alone heard, but here it sounded harsh and threatening. Tension permeated the air all around him and he was growing nervous. Garak, who was hovering behind the other customers at the fruit stall, seemed not to notice at all.
“I don’t know what anyone’s saying,” Julian complained, more abruptly than he had intended.
“You don’t? Perhaps the programmer shut off the universal translator, not thinking anyone would need it. Why don’t you turn it on?”
Flustered at not having thought of it himself, Julian did so. At once, the scene changed entirely.
“Til Hemay,” said a woman, putting her hand on the old man’s shoulder, “why don’t you let one of us help you carry those home?”
He waved her away with a trembling hand, and continued to arrange his bottles into bags. “I may be old, my dear, but I’m not buried yet!”
She shook her head with a smile and went back to her friends, the man bouncing the now-quiet baby on his knee, and his companion.
“They’re just too young to know what’s going on with their bodies, let alone what to do about it,” he was saying to his friend, passing him the baby. “It’s usually gas. You have to keep them moving.”
The stall owner returned with a heavy crate of fruit in her arms that she placed in front of the boy Julian thought she had just yelled at.
“I told you I have fresh ones - here, take these. A kilo, yes? And pass me that nearly-empty crate. There we go. Here, these are still good,” she said, taking two from the old crate and handing them to the boy. “One for you and one for your sister. And don’t tell your father.”
She winked at the boy who smiled and skipped away, sinking his teeth greedily into the pink fruit. Julian watched, strangely engrossed by the things he now understood. It reminded him of when his grandmother had taught him Arabic when he was young and the conversations she had with her friends transformed from a garble of syllables into stories with meaning. He was so engrossed that he didn’t notice Garak approach him with a small cup of fruit until he pressed one to his lips. The small berries were grey and wrinkled, but they melted in his mouth like butter, and tasted like honey.
Their journey was far from over, and they ducked down another alley, a sharper descent where both stairs and shops became more frequent. Garak started to point out the doors with plaques.
“That’s someone offering tutoring, and this person does shoes as well as some small electronics repair. Here’s a private hairdresser; where that person just walked in was an accountancy practice, which makes sense, she was certainly dressed like an accountant! And this place offers herbs, teas and…” - here his tone turned derisive - “divination.”
“Really?” Julian interjected. He was distracted by a line of small wooden bowls on the ground just outside the door that held three equal, pyramidal piles of nuts, berries and pebbles.
“Yes, well,” Garak rolled his eyes. “Strangely, they’re always the ones who seem most surprised when the authorities come to shut them down, which doesn't say much for their professed abilities."
Even so, Garak dragged them as far as possible to the other side of the alley, and Julian swore he heard him mutter a short rhyme under his breath as they passed. He didn't know what to make of that, but he wasn't given much time as Garak led him down one last set of stone steps that opened out onto an esplanade.
Here, a white marble walkway curved gently with the river, reflecting the morning sun like flecks of gold. Ancient footbridges were carved marble, greying where people touched the railings and in the crevices where rain pooled. They were decorated with scenes of miniature people, worn down by millennia of weather. The buildings on the opposite shore, half-hidden by trees, a university and a technical college, Garak said, were intricately painted in what appeared to have once been bright colours, motifs of flowers and design that rivalled the detailed mosaics that were inlaid on the ground. It all contrasted with the shiny black roofs that brought out the colours starkly. Beyond the rooftops there was nothing but more greenery, and Julian guessed that they must have come around the opposite side of the modern monstrosities. Along the bottom of the hill, shops, offices and residences pressed up against one another in a mishmash of heights and architectural styles - plain terracotta with elongated windows, painted brick encasing statuettes, gleaming metal and glass, smooth marble columns - that bespoke the area’s two-thousand year history. At its end, nearly two kilometres from where they were, a massive building stood at the top of an uncountable number of stairs - the Layizian Library. A silent tram glided to a stop not far from where they were, and, having picked up its passengers, headed the same way, following the curve of the mountain’s base.
“Where do you want to go?” Garak asked, his eyes still wandered hungrily over the familiar places and the people, taking them all in from head to toe. They walked, sometimes alone hurrying to another place, sometimes with others, hand in hand. One hurried-looking young man made a dash for the tram, but slowed as he realized the doors were closing and it was pulling away. It was incredible the myriad of different likenesses of the passersby, as if this wasn’t a copy of a place but the place itself. The noise in the air was full of life. Still, Julian was unsure.
“So you do like it?”
“No, no, no - shush!” Garak said, trying to silence anything that might crack the facade. But one glance around, and it was impossible to believe he wasn’t home. Garak met his eyes with a genuine smile, squeezed his hand, and kissed him tenderly.
“I love it.”
The sincerity made Julian glad, and he guessed at where Garak might want to go.
“What about the library?”
Garak beamed and tugged him towards the tram. It glided up to the platform, seemingly made entirely of smoky glass, strangely unobtrusive, reflecting the buildings and the sky perfectly, almost as if it wasn’t there. It let off its passengers, picked up new ones, and moved silently on its way. Most people had pressed a card to the validation machines in the car. Although it was merely a simulation, Julian felt uncomfortable that they hadn’t done the same, and pointed it out to Garak.
“I never did,” he said in a quiet voice. “Even when I was young, I just wanted an officer to stop me, to ask where I lived so I could see the look on their face. No one ever did. Lots of older people scolded me, though.”
He was lost in a nostalgic reverie, and, as with any number of strange things he sometimes said, Julian let it pass without comment. Instead, he stared at the passengers, seemingly indifferent to one another, but aware enough to let those who needed to sit in the occupied chairs without a word. Quite a few people read electronic devices, others paper books - one man had his eyes closed, arms across his chest, head bobbing as he neared sleep. A few people stared out the windows. Following their gaze, Julian watched the scenery move by silently, taking notice finally that the entire car was silent, as if by some unspoken rule. Even people who appeared to be travelling together didn’t speak to each other. It gave an air of calm that contrasted with the bustle on the streets. He watched the world go by outside as the tram snaked its way gently along the river, sometimes nearer, sometimes further from it. The trees on the banks bent over to touch the water, like weeping willows, but with leaves deep green and bushy like a soft pine. A man and a woman sat hand in hand on a bench by the riverside, and it struck him that the woman was wearing a shawl around her shoulders. Upon inspection, the people in the tram were similarly dressed, in light coats and even the occasional scarf. So, despite the warmth, what he guessed must have been twenty-some degrees outside, this was a cooler day! Julian kept himself from laughing out loud at the realization, and wondered instead if it was due to the more reptilian physiology of Cardassians, the general climate of the planet, or even just that of the area, and shuddered to think what a hot day was like.
It was at the third stop that they disembarked with the other passengers, including most of the ones who had been reading, and found themselves directly at the bottom of an endless set of stairs.
“One hundred and eight,” Garak said, seeming to read his mind, before bounding up the steps two by two. Julian watched most of the other people going into and out of the library through doors on either side of the stairs, but shrugged and followed Garak.
About halfway up, Garak turned around with his hands on his hips, panting as he looked out into the distance, and Julian followed his gaze. Beyond the lush area of the university were a few more buildings surrounded by trees, then a small forest that stopped abruptly at a white expanse. It was a large desert that stretched for miles before melding with the ocean, shimmering a deep blue.
“It’s beautiful.”
They stood a moment in silent admiration, and Garak slipped a hand into his. Julian asked if he wanted to venture inside.
“No,” he said, sitting himself down and pulling Julian with him. He patted the steps fondly. From a pocket in his tunic he withdrew the book he had been given earlier, and that Julian had forgotten that he still had with him.
“I spent most of my time outside, on these steps, reading Desang with a dictionary and a book of expressions. Sixty-five hundred pages of seven-thousand-year-old literature doesn't just read itself.”
Julian’s eyes bulged. “Why did you read it?”
“My dear, why do you read your Shakespeare?”
He caught himself, took a moment to think.
“I suppose... the timeless stories, the beautiful language..."
Garak waved his book at him knowingly.
"Exactly. Shall I read you some?"
He flipped open to a page at random, and recited a verse. The words were strange to Julian even with his limited Kardasi, and he struggled to find rhythm. But Garak was lost in it, and laid his hand down on the page carefully when he finished, not taking his eyes away.
"What's it about?" Julian asked after a long moment, making Garak smile.
“The details, Julian - you always get lost in the details! Well, I suppose there’s no cure for that. It’s the story of Zidaynasar Amanfalga - she was an ancient queen, one of the rulers of the Fourteen Initial Peoples. A renown warrior, but a reticent fighter.”
He smiled at the book as if it were an old friend.
“I read it as part of a literature class when I began to study letters, of course, but I had first come across it in our library at home and read it as a teenager. It captivated me in its very opening pages - not a word of description, nothing but a conversation. The queen bidding her mistress farewell. You seem surprised? Well, I was, too. But it wasn't surprising in her time. Our professor mentioned it once and never again. I found out years later that he was lucky he wasn’t turned it for merely pointing it out. That it existed at all drew me in, thrilled and comforted me. From there, the beauty of the language became me, or, perhaps, I became it.”
“But more of the story, before I lose your interest. It tells of how Ziday journeyed to the lands of the other rulers to convince them to end their wars with one another, to bring order out of chaos. She visited thirteen kingdoms, staying in each for eleven years. The travel took the rest - one hundred and fifty years in all.”
Julian smirked. "It sounds a bit like one of your repetitive epics."
"Some would argue it is. The very first. A chronicle of the same noble action, repeated again and again. Persistence. Some interpreted it as stupidity, some looked further and saw hope. But it is not only the origin of the epic, but the epitome of the genre. A history. And a tragedy - not the style, though after having read The Never-Ending Sacrifice, I should choose my words carefully lest you make light. Desang was a great chronicler, but the tale ends in sadness - for the queen, at least. Not only did her lover die of anguish in her absence, from the longing and loneliness that saddened the hours that she didn’t spend in fury, but the queen died on the journey homeward, her work unfinished.”
He paused a moment before continuing.
“Though the epic ends in tragedy, history lent her struggle greater meaning, since it was her death and the memory of her words that brought her dream to fruition. Gathered at the memorial place of where she was thrown to the wild animals, as was done in those times, the thirteen rulers finally spoke to each other, and found they spoke as one, and joined together. For the five thousand years that followed - there has never been a longer period of peace or prosperity on Cardassia. And yet, so few recall it. So few want to.”
Julian didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. The few clouds in the sky passed over the sun, chilling the air, then moved away just as quickly. People got on and off the tram, a very few chose to climb the stairs, some choose to linger with a book or with friends. A young-looking woman with curled hair and dark eyes was going from person to person, and she stopped next to them on her way up. She handed them a small, square piece of paper, telling them that she hoped to see them in an hour, then headed to the next group of people.
Garak glanced at the short maze of text on the paper, and Julian looked over his shoulder. But before he could even try to figure any of it out, the text disappeared in the sunlight. Julian’s eyes widened, then he knit his brows.
“What just happened?”
“Survival.”
Garak nodded past the paper in his hand. The girl had stopped giving them out and was walking down the steps calmly, as if she had just stood up, hands in her pockets, a book under her arm, and passed the set of armed soldiers that were making their way up the stairs. Julian hadn’t even seen them approach.
“Why? What did the paper say?”
“It was a flyer,” Garak told him, lowering his voice as the soldiers continued their slog up the steps. “For an afternoon performance at the university.”
“A play?”
“Mmm. I fear it might bore you, but it’s a student work, so it might be rather… provocative. Politically speaking, of course. Hence the need for subterfuge, it would seem.”
“I don’t know if the program extends that far, but we can try. And don’t worry about me. This is for you.”
A strange expression crossed over Garak’s face, but disappeared a moment later. He pressed on his knees to stand up, then offered his hand to Julian and bounded down the stairs as nimbly as he must have been doing since he was a child.
They took the tram back a few stops, and crossed one of the pedestrian bridges to the shade of the tree-lined streets of the university. Expertly, Garak weaved his way between buildings and through corridors until they came to an unpretentious door admitting a small crowd to the theatre. It was a simple room painted black, with a few dozen chairs on risers and a small, curtainless stage only several metres across and a few metres deep. They were easily the oldest people in the crowd, but every seat was full. There wasn’t much time to observe the audience before the house lights faded and the stage lights illuminated a single actor in blue light.
She was detailing a legend that was familiar to the audience but confusing to Julian, and staged a bit too esoterically to hold his full attention. On top of that, the heat in the small room was stifling. He only meant to lean on Garak’s shoulder and rest his eyes for a moment, but the next thing he knew the entire cast was on the stage and the audience was on its feet. It was the strange clapping that caught his attention, changing from a smattering to everyone in unison, applauding the actors’ performance. Every so often a cheer issued from the crowd, with someone breaking the rhythm to show their enthusiastic appreciation. The only person still sitting was Garak, and Julian could have sworn that he saw tears on his cheeks. But he turned away to wipe them off, so Julian chose, for Garak’s sake, to ignore them.
After the applause faded, they made their way out into the dimming light of early evening. The air was still pleasantly warm despite the setting sun, but people were donning jackets. Stepping onto the dirt, Garak looked down at his feet and stopped.
“You have no right to walk the same soil,” he muttered.
Taken aback, Julian looked at him speechless and indignant. It wasn’t a moment later that the words came back to him, the ones the young actress had recited at the beginning of the play. He didn’t understand, but it didn’t seem right to ask. He could only guess at their origin, but he didn’t need to know where they came from to see how profoundly they affected Garak, or to piece together why.
Garak took his hand, lost in his own silence. He seemed to be moving on instinct, and Julian was curious where they might end up - back at a dormitory, or perhaps his home? He longed to find out what Garak would do if he weren’t pressed, if he wasn’t calculating his every move.
They made their way back to the opposing shore, more fountains catching Julian's eye along the way. On the esplanade they ranged from the ancient to the ultramodern, from simplistic, plain and simply functional, to ostentatious, shaped as animals or people, both of them at some points verging on the ridiculous. As they ascended a passageway that was much the same as the one they had come down earlier, the fountains became smaller, more practical, inset into walls, the ones in the squares equipped with spigots. They also seemed a little worse for wear, as if they were used more often or not as well kept up, or both. Stupidly, he realised a moment after he thought it, there were more divination shops in this area as well, but rethought when he noticed that the doors with the wooden bowls piled with offerings were placed more discretely and only outside the doors of private residences. Garak remained silent, so Julian was left to guess for himself.
There were more people in the streets here as well, with many involved earnestly in conversation as they stood in deep-set doorways. There was a change in what people were wearing, with two distinctly different styles of dress - for one, both women and men wore long, shapeless robes, with the only embellishments around the neck in simple lines, their hair pulled back with long ribbons the same colours as their clothing; for the other, women wore tunics that reached to the knee, with tights to cover their legs, and the men wore shirts to the calf and very high boots. This second set of people also bore markedly different features, with much smaller noses, ridges that were more pronounced over their eyes, and hair that hung in front of their ears. Their skin was a deep green instead of grey, and it struck Julian that he had never asked himself if he had seen a true representation of all of Cardassia or merely a small elite. It felt strange to think it, since he never would have hesitated to say it about Earth.
While they wandered, Julian hoped that Garak might have shown him his school, the houses of his friends from childhood, or where he lived, but Garak was either more conscious of what he was doing, or he wouldn't have gone to those places anyway. But he wasn’t to be completely disappointed, for halfway down a narrow passageway that looked as though it would lead to a square, Garak stopped, holding out his hand towards it, but not moving.
“Down there,” he said, pointing, “there are ruins - a monastery, from ten thousand years ago. It's all crumbling arches and toppled columns. Just past that there's a bakery, and a stone’s throw from there a pond with ducks that have brown feathers and red beaks. My father would give me…” He stopped and started again, “I would usually have just enough money to buy a bun at the end of the week. I used to feed half of it to the birds until the baker caught me one day on his way home and stopped me. I must have been no older than nine - I was terrified that he was going to hit me and yell at me for wasting food, but he wasn’t angry. He told me I couldn’t feed plain bread to the ducks because it was bad for them, but that I should give them seeds instead and eat the bread myself so it wouldn’t make them sick. And that I had to be responsible about it because they were wild animals and didn’t know better, and they were at my mercy. When I told him I didn’t have enough money, he just laughed and told me not to worry. From then on, he always gave me the bread with seeds for the price of the plain. I had already fallen in love with his bread, and I think from that moment I started to fall in love with him.”
The honesty of the revelation, told so simply, was heartfelt and touching. Julian grasped his outstretched hand.
“Let’s go see him,” he said, but he met resistance, and Garak shook his head.
“He’s not there anymore. He died the year before I had to leave. He was no longer a young man then. Neither was I.” There was a sadness in Garak’s eyes. “He used to call me ‘the strange boy who reveled in the company of others, but so rarely sought them out.’ In his language it managed to fit into two words. He was from the west, you see. His Kardasi was very good, and imbued with a strange but beautiful accent on his words. It seems like it never even crossed your mind.”
Julian ran a hand through his hair.
“I know it’s ridiculous,” he said, “that I’ve given you books from every corner of the Earth, I just never extended the logic to anywhere else. The universal translator makes it so that you never have to think about it, I suppose.”
Garak was distracted again, staring far off. Julian put a hand on his shoulder.
“You still miss him?”
Garak shrugged. There was something about him in that instant that made Julian take him gently by the chin and kiss him. They stood for a moment more after that, looking at the ground, just letting the ends of their fingers curve against each other.
"Let’s go this way, there’s something I want to see," said Garak tugging Julian out into another street. The buildings here started to tower above them, their windows high above the ground, facades hiding their people, flat walls unimaginative in their sleek simplicity but nonetheless of ominous scale. Julian had never felt so ill at ease from architecture that was so unoriginal.
Behind a massive wall they passed onto a square that stretched before them, and he had to catch his breath. It was an openness so expansive that it threatened with its very offer of freedom. Had it been filled with military pageantry, which he imagined it was for, it didn't seem possible that it could be more intimidating. The clouds that were ushering the sun to an early demise gave the hovering building a drab backdrop that thrust them even more to the fore of the landscape. The immense space was completely surrounded.
Yet no one in the square seemed as overwhelmed by its size. Like on the esplanade, people made their way as they needed, some in an obvious rush, others sauntering, enjoying where they were, unconcerned about where they needed to be. Another pair of armed soldiers, young-looking and tired with the ageing evening, walked along one edge of the square. The thought crossed Julian’s mind that this was a planet occupied by its own people. Still, even with their presence, people went about their lives, for the most part happy enough and likely never to cross their path.
As he followed the soldiers with his eyes, they passed in front of a what at first appeared to be a small pile of grey rags, but at second glance could be seen to be a woman kneeling on a mat on the brick cobbles. Her face was pale and wrinkled with age, her eyes cloudy, and one of her hands clutched her worn clothes close to her chest, while the other was outstretched, palm up, raised above her head. One of the soldiers stopped to place a coin in her hand, at which she bowed her head, pressing the coin to her lips and saying something he couldn’t hear until they passed by. Julian was stunned.
“But I thought the military coup was supposed to end poverty!” he exclaimed, lending the thought neither preamble nor context. Garak looked at him blankly, and he heard in the words he had just uttered the naivete of his outburst. Neither of them said anything more about it.
Julian was thankful that Garak moved them along to a wall at the far side of the square, and the vastness seemed more like a painting, unreal. They stood in front of a row of long marble slabs, just over a dozen of them, like angular stone coffins. Each one was topped with a small bronze statue of a person, standing over a plaque with what seemed to be their names. Beneath the plaques were lines of text, starting out vertically on the tombs that were the most visibly worn, continuing horizontally from a third of the way along.
"Surely you recognize them?" Garak asked, eyes bright. Julian was a bit perplexed, having never recalled seeing any of the people represented by their statues, or even photos of them, and wondered what Garak was talking about. He stared at the letter embossed on the plaque of the tomb just in front of them. A thin statue wearing a long tunic and holding a scroll stared off into the sky.
"Alo-... no, Ilo- Iloj... Iloja Primche - Iloja of Prim!” he read. Emboldened, he tried again. “Preloc!” He skipped to ones he could read more easily, ending up near the beginning of the row. The statue on top wore a long dress of a style he hadn’t seen anyone wearing. A long, thick braid fell down her back and ended at her feet. With a book clutched in her hands, her eyes gazed at a point on the ground to her left. “And this one is Elim Desang - I recognize the name from the book.”
The rest of the writing on her tomb was in a script that was unrecognizable, but that also fell across the sleek surface vertically, and looked as though it was read from bottom to top. He had to get to the opposite end of the row, the newest looking of the monuments, before he could read another name.
“Tanil Ghamar - why do I know that name? Wait, wasn't he... The Neverending Sacrifice?”
Garak’s expression was unreadable, and Julian was all the more perplexed. There was only a short paragraph of writing, and instead of a statue, a stone lay above his plaque.
“Why such a strange monument?” he asked. “Is he still alive? This is just a placeholder, I suppose. A bit morbid, isn’t it?”
Garak looked away for a moment.
“You’re right: he is not here. But neither is he still alive. His body was… burned. For… purification. It could never have been allowed to have been buried.”
“What happened to it?” Julian asked, unable to fathom what sort of accident could cause such a departure from tradition. “You make it sound like he caught the plague.”
“He killed himself,” Garak said quickly.
“Oh.”
They stood in silence, of embarrassment and of remembrance. Garak sighed.
“Even a self-proclaimed religionless state can't escape millennia of rituals.”
His voice lacked the edge of critique it usually bore for such slights.
“I used to think of suicide as a waste,” he continued, “there were so many other things you could give instead of your life. It was how I felt upon learning of his death. Surely someone who had managed to capture such devotion in his writing would have been able to find a way to survive, could have negotiated for whatever it was he wanted!”
Julian didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask, didn’t know if Garak would go on. He did, softly, recalling the story to himself.
“We found his letters circulating secretly amongst his friends and closest followers after he had killed himself. What he wanted could not be given, he knew. He wanted to see his writing burned, erased, destroyed. He said he didn't know how else to let the people know that he was ashamed of what he had done, what he had helped people believe. Ashamed of the words committed to the page that people gladly committed to memory. But we knew and he knew that he was too valuable - his writing was too significant: it persuaded people to believe what they couldn’t be forced to. Killing himself was his escape and his apology, but no one knows that. They merely believe he went mad and took his own life. Ironically, it has made his work all the more revered. I can only hope he knows nothing of that, that he is in peaceful oblivion at last.”
Garak’s eyes were fixed on the pale stone that stood out so starkly against the scarlet marble.
“When someone takes stock of what they’re doing in their life,” Garak mused, “or what they’ve done, or both, sometimes suicide seems like the clearest course, the least dangerous path. It may serve as a sign to others. Or it may be be a cure for the symptoms of life. Or a preventative.”
“Please, don't liken it to medicine!” Julian snapped, unable to hide the scorn in his voice. “I've seen too many families devastated by it. Wishing they knew what had happened or why, or what they could have done.”
Garak responded with silence. Julian blushed, wishing he hadn’t said anything at that moment. Just then a memory rose to his mind at the same time it escaped his lips.
“My grandmother used to tell me that the Imam couldn't pray for those who had taken their own lives, in case others might be tempted to do the same; but that the family must because, of all the dead, they needed the prayers the most.”
“That's very…”
“Sentimental, I know,” Julian interrupted.
“I was going to say kind.”
Julian stared at him for a moment, then took his hand.
“You continue to surprise me, Elim Garak.”
“You continue to change me, my dear doctor,” he replied with gentle mocking. “But we should eat. Except for the Rossaka berries this morning, we’ve not had anything all day, and it’s getting late.”
“I suppose the replimat might still be open.”
“No, please - let’s stay here. I know it won’t be quite the same, but it will still be better here than not.”
Dusk had started to drain the colour from the world, but windows glowed from within, and more than a few stars began to brighten the darkening sky. The high wall that they passed behind hid an airy courtyard whose walls were interspersed with smooth tiles checkered blue and white. Inset alcoves were lit softly by candles. They took a table next to a tree, and Garak ordered a litany of dishes that Julian had never heard of. They started with a clear alcoholic drink that smelled sweet but was rather dry and had a bite of spice to it. The food itself arrived with surprising rapidity and in copious quantities. Pieces of flatbreads and rolls overflowed a basket, and the table was replete with small dishes of stews and scented grains, vegetables roasted and stuffed, platters of nuts, pickled berries and one plate that held nothing but a score of small bowls filled with an autumnal palette of sauces, not one of which looked remotely like the overly sweet yamok that had gained such infamy. They had no plates for themselves, merely what was in front of them, a spoon each, and the very malleable bread. Garak tore a piece of bread and passed half to Julian with a smile and a nod. Then he took his spoon, and they began to eat, sampling as they pleased, unconcerned about sharing from the same plates. Every new dish surprised Julian with its array of subtle flavours, none too smoky or tangy or sweet or sour, but beautifully finished. He watched Garak take a small spoonful of what looked like dry black caviar before each dish, and was surprised to find that it was not only a grain, but had no discernable taste except to provide a burst of flavour from the last dish before completely disappearing from his tongue.
“This is a far cry from your ubiquitous yamok sauce and kanar,” Julian teased.
“My dear, I suggest that you use your mouth to sample the foods before you, lest I say something about the inedibility of the spicy pickle you consume at home as though it were candy.”
“Well, all I’m saying is that you never cook like this for us.”
“I never cook, period. I believe we agreed on that.”
“Surely one of your many incarnations has been as a chef?”
Garak smiled mysteriously and continued eating. Julian followed, but in the middle of a bite stopped suddenly and put down his spoon.
"It very nearly slipped my mind,” he said, swallowing and holding his glass aloft. “Here's to what I hope was a very happy bir-... Oh, no, sorry. I forgot."
Garak returned a look of mild exasperation. Julian was flustered, but persistent.
"Well, then, if they don't have your date of birth on record, what date have they got?"
"Who's to say it's not made up?"
"I am. I'd like to think I know you slightly better than that!"
Garak shrugged, reaching for his glass, face blank, tone nonchalant. "It's not important, really."
"Let's see," Julian mused, a mischievous sparkle in his eye, spurred on by Garak's evasiveness, and stretching to think of significant dates. "Desang's birthday? The founding of the Obsidian Order - or is that too obvious? Military celebration day? State day?"
"Stop, please," Garak pleaded wearily, cringing.
"Too close to the truth?"
He caught Garak's eye ready for another guess just as he was interrupted.
"It was the day I had to leave."
Mouth still open, Julian felt his heart clench. It hadn't ever occurred to him that he might be toasting Garak’s exile. Everything seemed like an inadequate response.
"I'm sorry."
In an attempt at dismissing the whole thing, Garak managed a feeble smile. He tore at the last bits of his bread absently, tossing them to a bird that had hopped into the pool of light at their feet.
"It's my fault for deceiving you in the first place,” he said. Then after a pause, “But there could have been no better way to... celebrate. Thank you."
Julian reached out to hold his hand, and Garak pointed to the sky. A slice of a crimson moon floated near its twin just above them. On the darker side was a small but magnificent swirl of light that looked as though it gathered every other star into its orbit - a gorgeous view of the Andromeda Galaxy.
“It’s beautiful,” Julian agreed. “Everything is - all the parts of the city you’ve shown me. But I’ve still not seen your home, the places you grew up - your friends.”
There was a catch in Garak’s voice and he looked skyward again.
“It’s late - we should save that for another time.” He even forced a smile as the city faded away to be replaced by the dull metal walls.
Julian had never experienced a simulation that had felt so much more vibrant than reality, but back in their room, the light of the outside stars seemed pale and uninteresting. It served only to make their room barely visible.
They undressed and climbed into bed, Garak on his back as Julian crawled over him. Pressed up against him, Julian started to kiss his neck, dug his teeth in just slightly. At that, Garak ran his palms over Julian's hair to move his head back. He pressed their lips together gently. Then, kissing his forehead once, he leaned in just a breath away.
"Just this, please," he asked. "Nothing complicated. Nothing involved."
They stayed pressed together, listening to the sound of each other breathing, feeling their mere existence for a long while. Their nearness burned, and they had to move away before they were consumed by the intensity. Finally settled next to each other, Garak pulled the covers over them before curling into Julian. He laid a hand on his chest and Julian rested a hand on his back. They were close, they were warm.
Together, they slept.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you for reading. If you have enjoyed this story to this point, especially the somewhat-happy ending, please stop reading here, and thank you for your patience for the length of time it has taken me to complete this. If you insist on moving on to the last chapter, please heed the warnings in the notes, as I have chosen not to list them on the story itself.