Archive of Our Own ^beta

How, Tomorrow
AlphaCygni

The tulips make me want to paint,
Something about the way they drop
Their petals on the tabletop
And do not wilt so much as faint,

Something about their burnt-out hearts,
Something about their pallid stems
Wearing decay like diadems,
Parading finishes like starts,

Something about the way they twist
As if to catch the last applause,
And drink the moment through long straws,
And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.

                     - A.E. Stallings, Tulips

2366 – The Tora Household, Prefect’s Secondary Compound, Bajor

Mama hadn’t told her the story in years. Ziyal could put herself to sleep now, and besides, she’d always preferred the ones with the Orb of Invisibility or the Dragons of the Fire Caves instead.

Sometimes, though, Mama insisted. It was an old story, she said, and it taught an important lesson. (Those were always the boring ones.)

Tonight, Mama didn’t insist. She crept into the room, half a dream. She slipped into bed and stroked Ziyal’s hair. Outside the window, pale clouds covered the stars. There was no wind, but Ziyal could feel pressure gathering, behind the gray.

“Mama?”

Mama shushed her but sweetly.

Ziyal shut her eyes. She was afraid. Of what, she wasn’t sure, but it was there, half- hidden as the stars.

Mama and Yad had argued. They’d done it quietly, as they always did. Mama never raised her voice to him, even when Ziyal could hear it anyway, that anger striking loud against something deep.

Yad did yell sometimes, though softness followed. Sometimes tears.

There’d been tears tonight. From them both.

But Mama wasn’t crying now. “Do you remember the story of the Lilac of Lonar, Zizi?” Mama’s fingertips were light on her hair, her voice a whisper.

Ziyal didn’t answer, didn’t need to. Mama went on.

“Years ago, when the soil of Lonar was black and rich and the rains came without fail, the Vedek of Madin planted lilacs around the city’s temple. They were the most colorful, the most delicate lilacs any in the province had seen, and everyone said the Prophets had blessed Madin to gift it with such beauty. Pilgrims came from across Lonar to see the lilacs. Artists traveled to paint them. ‘As lovely as the lilacs of Lonar’, men would say of their wives, fathers of their daughters.”

Mama said that about her sometimes, when she braided her hair.  The ‘ziyal’ is the finest flower on Cardassia, your father says… The name didn’t sound the same on her lips as on Yad’s: when she said it, the vowels were soft, and Ziyal could almost imagine the petals.

“But it wasn’t long,” Mama continued, “before the Enemy came. They burned the temple. They took the fields, and the lilacs were trampled flat under soldiers’ boots. All of Lonar grieved.”

Ziyal had never been to Lonar. She’d never been anywhere outside the compound where they lived, and  there were no flowers here. Just a length of Jalandan ivy that wrapped around the front gate.

“But the Vedek of Madin escaped. He fled to the Kola Mountains, and, unknown to the Enemy, he took with him a single lilac, wrapped in the folds of his robes, nestled against the warmth of his belly.” Mama snuggled closer. Put her nose in Ziyal’s hair and breathed. “He said a prayer and planted the lilac there, outside a cave in Kola. He asked the Prophets to tend it, to keep it alive as they kept Bajor alive.”

Ziyal’s stomach tensed. She hated this part.

“The next morning, the Enemy came, and the Vedek was killed.” Mama always said this flat. Matter-of-fact.

Ziyal had never seen death, either. She knew Mama had.

“But the Vedek’s single lilac remained. She lived, but life in the mountains was not the easy life of Madin. The lilac’s roots wrapped around rock. In the summer, the sun beat hot and angry, but the lilac learned to stand tall beneath it, turning heat into life. In the autumn, winds whipped, but the lilac swayed with them, and looked to her roots. In the winter, the lilac withered. Against the cold, she made herself as a stone, unfeeling. For every season, the lilac lived as she must.” The tears touched Mama’s voice now.

Ziyal felt her fear open a little wider.

“And when the next spring came, the lilac bloomed, and her beauty was even greater than in Madin. It was the beauty not of blessing but of strength.”

Strength is knowing how to survive, Zizi, she would usually say, when she finished the story. Knowing when to stand in the sun and when to sway with the wind.

She didn’t say this tonight.

Instead she said, “We have to leave tomorrow, love. We won’t be back.”

Yes, that was the shape of her fear. She could feel it coming, like a storm.

They were being replanted.

Mama held her, and they pretended to sleep.

******************

2370 – Breen Labor Camp, Dozaria

Emah grumbled about his back as Ziyal sipped her tea. Well, not tea, really. Not like the tea Mama made back home.

But Emah had brought it with a smile, and so she drank it. It looked like moss steeped in a ration of sweetwater. It tasted like everything else: like sand.

Emah sipped, and grimaced, but sipped again. “I miss ettaberry,” he sighed as he leaned back against the wall, kneading his neck ridges. “Do you like ettaberry, little flower?”

At seventeen, Ziyal might have objected to such an epithet, no matter what her name meant on Cardassia. But on that first night Mama had been gone, when Ziyal had been some place beyond reach, Zahan Sukhet had sat with her. Talked endlessly. Told her of his own daughter, little Meya. A flower like you. Have you seen a meya lily, little flower?

And she’d called him emah as she’d been taught to do with the soldiers at the compound. She hadn’t known what it meant.

Uncle, he’d laughed. Yes, call me that if you like, little flower.

She couldn’t bring herself to begrudge him the same courtesy.

“Ettaberry?” she said. “I’ve never had ettaberry. Mama made hala tea.”

“Oh.” Emah’s tone was tight. They didn’t talk about Mama. Sometimes Ziyal thought he tried to forget she was part Bajoran. Sometimes she thought he tried to forget she wasn’t Meya. “Well, I’m sure it was better than this, at any rate.”

They both drank. Water was too precious to waste.

“You didn’t sleep well.” Emah had sat by her while she slept, as he did every night. Discourages the filth, he’d say.

Ziyal knew what that meant. She’d heard others scream during the nights. “I had bad dreams.”

“About the crash again?”

It hadn’t been, though she dreamt of it often. Of Mama lying there, broken. Of the Breen in their suits and the way they’d made her leave them. Just leave them in the sand.

But tonight, she’d dreamt of Father. Of him coming for her.

It had been one of her favorite dreams, before. Until Emah told her.

No man like that would bring you home, little flower. He’d sounded sad. If he does come, it will mean—

He hadn’t finished. He’d simply looked at her, and touched her shoulder, gentle. Let’s hope he doesn’t come.

She didn’t need to hear more. She understood.

Mama had never said it, but Ziyal listened to the soldiers talk, bored and insolent the way she imagined was natural for soldiers guarding a commander’s mistress. Yad had a family on Cardassia. A wife who, by those accounts, was a formidable woman. There were other children—children who stood to inherit all Yad built. Mama and her…the word had been foreign to her then, when the soldiers said it, but Emah had translated.

Dheyak. Materials for temporary use. Intended for destruction when they’d served their purpose.

Now, when she dreamed, it was this name Yad gave her. Dheyak. Purposeless and best destroyed.

She took another sip of tea. She wondered what ettaberry was like.

If he comes, do I stand tall and draw life from the heat? Do I make myself as a stone? She might be a flower, but she wondered sometimes if she would ever have a flower’s wisdom.

She thought of Mama. Mama had always known.

“Time for work,” Emah sighed as the Breen overseer barked and croaked at them to report to the mines.

Ziyal stood and helped him up from the sand. He looked almost frail: he wouldn’t last much longer.

Perhaps none of it mattered: they were all dheyak here anyway.

She poured her tea into a puddle at her feet and went on with another day.

************************

2372  - Habitat Ring, Deep Space Nine

It was cold. She hadn’t been cold in years: not since those sunny-frozen winter days when Mama let her play in the falling snow. She’d caught flakes, light, on her tongue. Let them melt into the vague taste of earth. She’d hit one of the soldiers with a snowball, once. He’d laughed and seemed almost fond and then he’d shown her how the Bajoran children laid down and made the shape of robed vedeks in the snow.

She’d liked the snow.

She didn’t like this.

The cold here had teeth, and they’d sunk in the moment the airlock rolled aside.

That was her first impression of this new home: winter without the snow.

Nerys had clearly noticed. Along with lunch, she’d brought a jacket, down-lined and a beautiful shade of blue. It fit like a dream, and, though the material was Dakhur wool, it had a Cardassian shape. Subtle, but Ziyal recognized it: the asymmetry of a pas’set, trimmed to Bajoran sensibilities.

It was warm.

She sat on the strangely soft bed—her bed, she had to remind herself—and hugged the jacket close.

All around her was cold, but this: this felt warm.

It had come from the tailor’s shop, though Nerys avoided saying so. Yad had warned her about the tailor: he wasn’t to be trusted. He’d killed her grandfather, and, if given a chance, would do the same to her. She should look to Nerys. Nerys would protect her.

When Ziyal mentioned all this over lunch, Nerys had simply said, I’m sure Garak did the same to plenty of people. But nothing more than—

Their eyes met: Nerys looked away first.

Nothing more than her father had done, of course.

And they’d gone back to hasperat.

Ziyal knew some of what Father had done, though she and Nerys didn’t speak of it. She knew what he could do, what his work outside the compound had been. The housemaids talked. The soldiers had given Mama looks. Sometimes Yad had come home angry, and Mama had to soothe him with extra warm springwine and soft words.

In Ziyal’s brief time on Prime, there’d been no talk of it either, but she’d read things. Read enough to understand. Some nights, when in a dark mood and several glasses of kanar in, Father would even talk about it—what he’d done. What he regretted. What he wished the Bajorans understood. He’d held her face the same as he’d held Mama’s in those moments, with a desperation in his eyes.

And she found herself speaking the same words, offering another glass of kanar. Swaying with the wind.

What he’d done, he felt at least. Some of it.

But not like Nerys.

They’d finished lunch, and Nerys had left, and Ziyal sat on the soft bed in the quiet. Outside her window, the wormhole unraveled and cast the room in blue.

She was lucky to have Nerys. Nerys reminded her, sometimes, of Mama. The sound of her laugh or the way she swore when Yad upset her. Mama had been gentler, maybe, but their eyes were the same. Like looking through a window into a fire-lit room.

Nerys was doing this for her, bringing her here. It was a better way to survive. As much as Ziyal had sometimes imagined the relief of a sudden terrible bat’leth to the gut, this would be easier. Nerys said it would, anyway.

The best way to avoid a knife fight is not to get in one in the first place, she’d said.

There were lilacs in a vase on the table. Nerys had brought those, too. She said they’d been her mother’s favorites.

Ziyal had never seen them before: she’d only had Mama’s words and her imagination.

They looked nothing like she’d thought: they looked frail. They were fresh-cut, but in a few days they’d start to wilt. Fade.

She wished she could save them. But they’d been cut from their roots; there was nothing left but to wait.

She hugged the jacket closer and sat still as a lilac in winter.

Outside the wormhole spun shut leaving only the stars.

********************

2372 – Deep Space Nine holosuites, Cardassian sauna

Garak was lying again.

This time it was about gardening on Romulus. It had been at the Cardassian Embassy, he insisted. There had been orchids. All very dull, he’d said, and she didn’t have to look. She could hear him smile.

Ziyal liked it when he lied. He did it prettily, elaborately, and if you let him go, sometimes he gave in and said something true. She could usually tell a truth by the way he said it—at a run, trying to clear its height and breadth.

She closed her eyes and tried to picture it. The gray skies of Romulus. Sharp spines of greenery, and Garak, knelt among them with a gleaming knife, dripping sap. He’d stop, lean close to inspect the blossoms. Smell. Trim away the sneaking vines.

She drifted in the steam, eyes closed and heat close. She let the image take her and let Garak go on. She’d have to look up pictures of these orchids to paint. He’d hung her painting of the ziyal above the workbench in his shop.

“Unfortunately after a year or so, I’m afraid the good proconsul died. Quite mysterious.” Garak’s tone was the embodiment of ellipsis.

“Do you miss gardening?”

The silence was longer than he usually allowed, and Ziyal knew why. He’d expected the questions the others would have asked—Doctor Bashir, Constable Odo. They would have asked about the proconsul. About the death. They would have plucked at the mystery or the spycraft or sought to follow that ellipsis where it led. They would have wanted the story.

Ziyal wasn’t interested in stories like that. She’d had enough of them. She wanted the truth.

So she pressed. “I mean, it sounds like you enjoyed it. You know almost as much about plants as you do about hemlines, so I imagine you miss getting a chance to put that knowledge to work.” She opened her eyes, but she didn’t look in his direction. After three of these sauna sessions, she knew better. Once you were looking in his eyes, he couldn’t possibly be honest.

“I still garden occasionally.” His tone was light, but Ziyal sensed the tension beneath it—like the creak of window opening but only just.

“You do?”

“Mmm. With Professor O’Brien, in the gardens she set up across from Cargo Bay 36. She showed me the best way to deadhead Bajoran roses just last weekend.”

Ziyal visited the O’Briens often, watching Molly at least once a week to give the couple a night to themselves. Keiko talked about her gardens all the time: their produce often garnished dishes and their blossoms decorated the dining table.

But Keiko had never mentioned Garak. “I had no idea.”

“I suspect Doctor O’Brien fears her husband might not appreciate the arrangement. She does have a tendency to discuss the state of their marriage whilst we prune.” Garak clearly wasn’t trying to hide his amusement at this.

“And what do you talk about?”

This time, there was no pause. The light tone had returned, and she knew the briefly-open window was closing. “Oh, this and that. Mostly, I listen.”

“Listen? Like a spy in the enemy camp?”

He chuckled. “You’re beginning to sound like Doctor Bashir, my dear.” She heard him sit up, and there was a sizzle. Steam rushed new and hot into the air above.

She watched it puff and eddy and tried hard not to think about Doctor Bashir. That wasn’t a topic she wanted to discuss with Garak.

No, she found that in the close, hot air, she wanted to prop that window open a little longer. “I—I didn’t see many gardens when I was on Cardassia.” She forced her eyes closed, trying to see it again. “There were a few flowers at Father’s house, though we weren’t there long. They were orange and spined. Mekla, I think…?”

He gave a relaxed hum of agreement.

“And there was a little patch of garden at Tarlak, too, I think. Pretty, but even that wasn’t much. Not like the things Nerys has shown me on Bajor.”

Garak never sounded as honest and content as when she asked him about Cardassia. His voice lost its insinuating edge, and the warmth felt real. “Yes, well, greenery is difficult to manage there. What plants we can grow are, by and large, not the delicate beauties you see at the florist or at the temples in Ashalla. Cardassian blooms show more of the obstinate. Thorns.  Hard, brown stems. Petals rough as burlap and with no fine scent. Not pleasant and, unfortunately, usually rather short-lived.”

Something in the way he said it made her, suddenly, sad.

 “Of course, there are exceptions,” he added. “The meya. The perek, at times. And the ziyal has little of the obstinate or prickly.”

When she turned her head to look at him, she found him smiling back. It filled her with a warmth that had little to do with the steam all around.

He’d smiled that way the first time they’d lain beside each other here. When she’d told him she had better things to do than finish Father’s vendettas. When she’d spoken, for the first time of the camp. Of how comfortable she’d become with hopelessness.

But not today. Not here, when he was smiling and the window was open and he was speaking of home.

He was a dangerous man. Nerys and Yad had been right, and he’d admitted it, too.

But he’d also told her she had nothing to fear from him. And that hadn’t been a lie.

She sighed and turned back again to the ceiling, reveling in the length of hot stone beneath her back and the warm smile of the man beside.

****************

2373 – Deep Space Nine, Garak’s quarters

The door hissed open, and Garak appeared.

He looked worse than she’d expected. His scales were dull, and his eyes rimmed dark gray. In them lurked something even darker, though he was attempting a smile. “Ziyal? What an unexpected pleasure.”

“I wanted to see how you were doing. I know you haven’t been well.” She peeked past his shoulder and  into his quarters. The lights were dimmer than usual. On the table, she could see two empty bottles and a third decanted and half-drunk beside.

“How considerate. But I assure you, it’s nothing serious. Sukarran fever, I’d guess.”

He made no move to welcome her in, but she was determined. It had been three days. Three days since he’d opened his shop. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t Sukarran fever.

“I’ve made aytlik broth. It might help, especially with Sukarran.” She lifted the cover of the tureen. “Could I come in? I can warm some up.”

She’d been in Garak’s quarters before. During his stay in the holding cells, she’d come by at least twice a week to water his plants. Once he’d been released, they’d played kotra here on more than one occasion, and he’d made her little treats. Zabu steak and canka nuts and once, for her birthday, they’d shared cake and ghevet. Her impression of his quarters had been that of a museum: pin-neat and tasteful, everything cleaned to gleaming. Everything in its place.

Nothing gleamed now. A pile of books lay toppled on an end table. Blankets, unwashed and rumpled, lay in a heap on the couch. A mijast had been hastily thrown over one of the chairs in favor of the nightclothes Garak now wore. He’d clearly worn them for longer than the day. Wrinkles had pressed stubborn in one of the pant legs.

She’d never seen him in wrinkled clothes.

“I do hope you’ll forgive the state of the place,” he said. Even this attempt was tired, softened at the edge with kanar. “I’ve not felt well enough to tidy.”

 “Have you gone to see Doctor Bashir? I’m sure there’s something better than kanar for Sukarran.”

She knew he hadn’t been to see Doctor Bashir. Doctor Bashir himself had said as much when she’d asked.

And the doctor had given her the same tight look at the mention of Garak that Garak now gave her at the mention of the doctor. “I’m sure Doctor Bashir has plenty to keep him busy without every station inhabitant moaning about a case of the sniffles.” He took an unsteady seat at the table. At the half-drunk glass.

“The sniffles?” She abandoned the broth for the seat beside him. “Garak.”

“My dear?” He blinked and took a sip of kanar and gave her that too familiar smile.

It was the saddest smile she’d ever seen.

She thought of Mama and her soft words. Of Yad’s dark moods. Mama might have leaned in and touched Yad’s face. Stroked his cheek and kissed his brow. She might have pulled him into her and pressed his face to her breast.

She didn’t think Garak would want that, and it wasn’t what she wanted either.

“Garak, did something happen…” She wanted to ask about the Gamma Quadrant, but the sad turn of the smile stopped her.

She settled on: “Has something happened?”

“I told you. It’s a fever. It will pass.”

 She put a hand to his temple. His scales were cold. “You don’t have a fever.”

“Well, then. Perhaps the kanar is working after all.”

“Is it because of Doctor Bashir?”

Something sharp flashed through his eyes. It reminded her of an angry stab of sun barely softened by cloud.

He said nothing.

“You haven’t been back to the shop since our interviews with that Starfleet doctor. And then Doctor Bashir’s—”

“It will pass, Ziyal,” he said with hard finality. And then softer, “I’m fine.”

They sat for a long moment, and she watched him. Blue eyes sinking into his kanar, raising to hers. He leaned back, and she breathed deeply, and they were silent.

This was what he offered: it was the most he could. Companionable silence, entry into his quarters, a seat at the table—but no further. Nothing within the tightly guarded circle of himself.

It was all he would accept.

“Alright, then,” she sighed. “Let me get you some broth and myself a proper glass.”

She served him a bowl, and he took it without fuss. As he ate, she poured. She didn’t like kanar, but here, in the dreary closeness of his quarters, it was welcome no matter the taste.

She found it more agreeable than expected.

“Do you like it?” he asked over a spoon of broth. There was something hopeful in his expression that made it taste even better.

“I do. I’ve never had kanar like this before.”

“It’s Indaran white: made with minta blossoms instead of fruits. Makes it drier than the kanar Quark serves. And more expensive.” His spoon arced through his bowl. His eyes arced subtly away. “It was my father’s favorite.”

Garak enjoyed speaking of Cardassia, but he rarely spoke of it in personal terms. “Your father? He was a gardener, wasn’t he?”

A nod, sketched, over steaming broth.

Normally, she wouldn’t have pressed. She was no interrogator, nor did she wish to be.

But he‘d confessed, so she followed his lead. “Is he still on Cardassia, your father?”

A clink of spoon on bowl.  “No. No, he’s dead.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she sipped and nodded and said, “I’m sorry to hear it.”

When his attention turned back, several sips later, there was something genuine in it. It wasn’t a smile: it was too honest for that. But it warmed her just the same.

“Thank you, my dear. For the broth and for the company.”

Broth and company. It was what he would accept, and, just this once, it felt like enough. It felt close.

She raised her glass. “To your father, then.”

He paused. She watched his eyes consider his glass before he raised it, too, and tipped it with a clink against hers.

“To family,” he said.

The kanar really was very good.

**********************

2373 – Deep Space Nine, Garak’s Clothiers

Garak was handsome, she decided, when he worked. He bent over the cloth, and his eyes sharpened to a needle point. She’d sketched the look many times, but she’d never quite caught it. It wasn’t in the lines, maybe, but in the action. In the certain yet delicate way he moved.

She tried to capture it again today. These were softer charcoals, and their slide was pleasant. She fancied they cut across the page as easily as Garak’s shears moved through cloth.

“Ettaberry as usual, my dear?”

It was a custom they’d long settled into: her behind the counter, sketching. Him filling orders, dealing with customers, handling accounts. Some days, he sat beside her and sketched. He’d hold up a design and ask what she thought, or she’d show him a work in progress, and he’d offer advice.

It was warm and comfortable, and nothing in her life had prepared her for it. There was a soft ease to time spent with someone who wanted nothing more. Needed nothing more. It was a way of living that, before the station, had never occurred to her in the slightest.

Teatime was her favorite. He brought her an ettaberry, and she set aside her work. He drank red leaf, and they talked about whatever crossed their minds.

Today, that was Leeta’s wedding dress.

“It’s a losing proposition, I’m afraid. The bride likes nothing at all, and the groom only likes…well, nothing at all.” He held up the half-stitched work. The neckline plunged, which should satisfy some of the groom’s nothing. At the same time, thick velvet formed a bodice and a flowing skirt, sure to please Bajoran eyes. It was as easy a marriage of the styles as she could imagine: he’d clearly put thought into it.

“As I predicted, it’s beautiful. Something to please them both.”

“And to displease them both.” He sighed as he draped the dress across the table once more. He looked it up and down as if it annoyed him terribly.

He was in a mood today. It happened now and again—perhaps more often since the Gamma Quadrant. Or perhaps, she sometimes allowed herself to think, he simply didn’t bother hiding it, at least not all the time.

Sometimes, when here and with her, he let the smile fade.

He didn’t need to explain: they were all given to moods these days. Ziyal stared out the viewport windows along with everyone else, watching ships buzz toward Cardassia like a plague. Militiamen stalked the promenade with new phase rifles. Nerys tensed each time a comm from Sisko interrupted their meal.

It would be war. Everyone could see it.

Ziyal knew the feeling well. It was an old friend by now, the dizzy stutter at the cliff’s edge. The peek over to see darkness open like a throat below.

On that edge, Garak’s instinct seemed to be to freeze: to smile and to work and to make no move at all.

Her instinct had always been to clutch for balance.

And so she reached.

“What sort of wedding clothes do they wear on Cardassia? I’m guessing it’s not as risqué as Ferengis or as modest as Bajorans.”

She was sure he knew it was a reach. She always saw it in his eyes, when he spotted her maneuvering. Sometimes he spotted it before she did.

But he never did seem to care. “Oh, nothing too fussy. A more formal mijast, perhaps; a pas’set of finer silk. It’s the color that’s important. You wear your family’s color. With embroidery in the color of the partner’s family as well.”

 “And what’s the Garak family color, then? I want to be able to picture it.” She set down her teacup and closed her eyes theatrically.

The silence lasted a beat too long, before—

“Black,” he said. “My father’s color was black.”

She opened her eyes to find him staring dully at the dress on the table in front of him.

He’d sped up to it: it was some kind of truth.

“Black?” She retreated to her teacup and away from whatever tender spot she’d prodded. “Hmm. I’ve never seen you in black. Doesn’t seem like your style.” She eyed the warm-gold satin of his tunic with its intricate filagree and bold pattern.

“It’s not a bright color, I admit. But it does go with everything.”

Yes, that was true. She could see it clearly enough in her mind’s eye: Garak in black, shot through with embroidery of Dukat silver. How lovely he would look. How poised. On him, perhaps, even black could be bright.

Their eyes met, and she knew he was picturing it, too. Picturing it, but in a different palette.

Something had passed between him and Doctor Bashir: they barely saw each other anymore. When they did, their smiles were strained, their exchanges cool.

But whatever had happened, she knew it hadn’t changed what Garak saw when he closed his eyes.

She looked into her tea. “And…what do humans wear?”

“Oh, any number of things, I’m given to understand.” He set to folding the dress away with conspicuous precision. His tone was as crisp as the folds he pressed in. “But not black. Never black. It’s a color of mourning, I think.”

Mourning.

That’s what it was, this mood. She couldn't be sure exactly what he mourned, but she recognized it perfectly. She’d seen it every day since Mama had held her close. Whispered that story.

She clutched.

“Have you ever heard the story of the lilac of Lonar?”

She wasn’t entirely sure why she asked, but she didn’t want to hold on to it anymore. Not alone.

Garak made a polite noise that was barely interested. She told him anyway.

When she’d finished, he picked up his tea and sipped it. Looked at her. Tried, she imagined, to connect the dots.

“Survival is an art, it’s true,” he said finally. “And one I flatter myself I’m rather an expert in.”

An unspoken something hung, heavy, on the corner of his smile.

It wasn’t like him to hesitate. “But…?”

“Are you sure that’s the point of the story, my dear?” 

Her grip on the teacup tightened. Something inside tightened, too. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a dangerous thing to be uprooted.” With a look of half amusement and half bitterness, he gestured around them. “You may survive the mountains, yes. And that is strength: it’s to be admired. But it isn’t life. It doesn’t last.” He sighed and looked away. “Better to stay in the garden and risk the boots.”

He was thinking of himself, she knew. Of Cardassia and his exile and how survival put him here, kept him here, far from the place where he thrived.

He was mourning.

But she wasn’t. This station, as cold and constructed as it was—it was a garden. Here, roots had taken hold, and she’d lived whole days, months—almost, she realized, years—of growth and joy. There’d been no need sway with the wind or suffer the sun. There’d been ettaberry and sketches and afternoons helping Molly O’Brien with homework. There’d been Nerys and Keiko and Jake and even, with his wide, toothless grin, little Kirayoshi.

There’d been love—love of every kind and shape and size—as nourishing as the rains of Lonar.

She didn’t want to be uprooted. She would risk the boots of the enemy, if she could.

But none of that mattered, of course.

“A flower doesn’t get to choose, Garak,” she said finally.

As happened on occasion, Garak seemed, suddenly, to see her. She was sure, sometimes, he forgot.

She was something of an expert herself.

“Oh, some flowers, perhaps. But Cardassian flowers can certainly put up a fight.” He gave her a smile. That smile. “Every flower benefits from a few thorns.”

She sat in silence for a long while, blowing steam from her cup and imagining what it might be. What it might be to remain planted and to never be plucked away.

“And if the flower doesn’t have thorns? If the flower…if she isn’t entirely Cardassian?”

He gave a thoughtful nod, and the mournful look in his eyes softened, a perfect marriage of brightness and black. “Well then,” he sighed as he touched her hand and smiled. It wasn’t a clutch for balance, but it reached nonetheless. “I suppose that’s what a good gardener’s for.”

It was brief, but after he’d stood and moved on, she felt it still. A touch—on her hand and somewhere deeper.

“More ettaberry, my dear?”

*********************

2374, Deep Space Nine, Garak’s Clothiers (closed until further notice)

It was teatime.

She wasn’t exactly sure how she’d wound up here. One word, and the soldiers had let her through the door. One word, and the replicator whirred to life. The ettaberry appeared easily—the same thin steam from the same pale cup, as if nothing had changed. The scent of redleaf was missing, of course, but she didn’t call it up. It would have been too maudlin—too much like the grieving gray cloths draped over everything around.

And so she sat at his workbench. Sat and held her teacup in both hands and sipped, alone.

Everything was still. The air was stale and un-breathed.

Outside, the station buzzed. The minefield would be coming down soon. Reinforcements were on their way. The last few days, though Father had tried to seem quiet and contrite, she could sense the anticipation. At breakfast, he’d spoken of ceremonies and parties and going down to Bajor to visit after all this was through.

Outside, everyone seemed to be bustling here and there with an order or a prayer or some arrangement to be made.

She didn’t have arrangements anymore.

She missed the university sometimes. It had been bright there and warm under the sun. She’d sat in the quad and painted the gardens--different styles and palettes and angles. Under the trees and breathing tilled smells, she could almost forget the rest. The threat of war. The closed shop door. The doom and death that lay past blue sky.

There was no sun here.

Nerys had become a stranger. They skirted each other on the Promenade. Exchanged uncomfortable nods. They’d spoken only of Rom, of a favor, and …

Ziyal had tried. She’d gone to Father’s office and dredged up old words to plead Rom’s case. They were words she’d learned through the wall, in the dark. Words spoken in a calm, earnest voice she found too easy to conjure.

She spoke of a great man, a compassionate man. Do it for me, she’d said.

How many times had she heard Mama say the same?

The words had failed her.

Father had failed her, and she’d failed Nerys.

And Garak…

When she set down her teacup, dust bunched on the countertop beneath.

Garak had been gone for months. He’d left her with a joke and a glib promise to survive as always.

She was alone again. The cold of winter was settling in: she needed to make herself as a stone.

She looked up.

The ziyal still hung above the bench, just as she’d painted it— flat and beautiful, awaiting the gardener’s return.

That was the trouble with gardeners, wasn’t it? They had their ideas about how things should grow and where. They designed it all. Rooted and uprooted. Did as they saw fit.

And when they’d gone, she was always alone.

Something new and red swelled at the thought. Something too bright for the gray shop. Too bright for a stone.

She wanted to tear it down, that painting. Take it back and make it different. Not a ziyal but something stronger. Something that didn’t sway or please or invite a hand to pluck.

Cardassian blooms show more of the obstinate, Garak had said. Garak had said it, but it prickled now in red. Tentative, maybe, but hard and sharp, just below the skin.

She reached up for the painting but stopped.

He’d smiled when he hung it there. He’d straightened it just so and told her she had an eye for beauty and that she should think about the Institute of Arts on Prime. He’d looked so honest and so happy, and he’d set his hand on her shoulder.

There was some warmth. A little sun here, still.

She’d paint him another one, when he returned. A different one. An entire garden of her own design. She’d show him how to grow here, too. That they could do more than just survive.

She would tend the garden for a while. 

Tea gone cold and teatime long past, she put her cup in the recycler. Ran a cloth across the dusty bench. She stacked scrap boxes and bolts of fabric neatly in the back and covered a mannequin on which, half-tacked, a jacket hung.

When the door to the shop closed behind her, she caught a glimpse of the ziyal hanging bright in the dark.

She locked it away and headed back to her quarters, cradling the new, red feeling as close as a bloom.

It was time, now, to risk the boots.

**********************

2376 – Cardassia Prime, formerly Tarlak Grounds

Everyone knew Elim Garak was a little mad.

There’d been whispers about it since the day he and his federaji human had walked into camp, hand in hand. One had to be a little mad to have survived exile so long, everyone agreed, and, occasionally, the glint in his eyes and at the edge of his smile seemed to confirm it.

But mostly it was the gardening.

It hadn’t started right away: there’d been too many other things to do. Streets to clear, identities to confirm. They’d buried bodies: there’d been no time for seeds.

But he hadn’t waited long. When someone found a plant—any plant at all, he didn’t care—Elim Garak bartered for it. Nutrition bars, laundry soap, even water filters. He traded anything for even the smallest and weakest sprout.

He planted them all.

Each night, after duties were finished and ration packs eaten, he’d go out to plant. Some said, with a sigh and a shake of the head, that he even saved his water rations to pour into the ground.

Nothing grew, of course. The Dominion bombing had hit Tarlak first. The ground was ash and bone. The earth was still hot with wounds.

Nonetheless, Elim Garak planted. On a small patch of dirt, he leveled and watered and sat as the sun set and moons stared back at such foolishness.

The human sat with him, too, even if, perhaps, he thought it foolish as well.

Until, after many moons, the soil yielded.

Impossible buds and stems cracked the ground: brittle at first, but, with help, they survived. There were black grasses and round, white heads of kissa. Sharp fronded succulents and even the beginnings of an ithian tree.

And one day, something altogether new.

“It looks familiar,” the human said, leaning down close to look at its leaves. Its closed blossom.

“I had a painting of one in my shop,” Elim replied. He lifted its stem with care, clearing off a few pieces of ash. “It’s a ziyal. Or… something like it.”

The human swallowed. Put a gentle hand on his lover’s back.

“I’ve never seen one with these.” The gray tip of a finger against a fledgling orange thorn. “Must be the radiation.”

The sun set, and the moons came out. The human gave his water rations to their newest bloom.

Elim Garak watched and remembered. He fed it water of a different kind.

“We could move it to the house,” the human suggested at his husband’s grief. “To our garden at home? It might be a nice way to remember her…?”

But Elim Garak knew better.

He would never let it be replanted. It would stay here, where it thrived, beautiful. Changed.

Like Cardassia. Like him.

He looked up at the foolish moon, and he smiled.

They were home.