Chapter Text
Julian was looking at his reflection in the mirror.
To be more accurate, his computer brain was cataloguing every individual grey hair with a ruthless accuracy.
"Julian, darling," Garak said, closing in behind him. "You keep insisting you like the grey, and then I catch you like this."
The human's face remained skeptical, turning his head this way and that. "I like the grey on you. You look romantic, statesmanlike. On me it'd be no good. My complexion--"
"--which one of us was the fashion expert and which was the one who couldn't dress himself properly to save his life? I think I'll be the deciding voice on what your complexion does and doesn't suit."
He turned Julian around, away from his reflection and quite conveniently towards himself. With his hands on the sink, Julian was hemmed in. The human didn't seem to mind his predicament, particularly.
"I think your tales of my so-called fashion disasters are a little overblown."
"I think you are the most beautiful creature in this quadrant," Garak said, murmuring it into his ear. "And you should be in prison for doing your best to disguise that fact under a Starfleet uniform for all those years."
"Flattery will get you nowhere, you old lizard," Julian reprimanded, but his face was tucked into Garak's shoulder and he could feel the smile. "Though I'm sure it'll get me late for work."
"You could always take the morning off. Kelas would--"
"--Kelas would not," Julian said, pulling away from him. "You've burned all of your credit with him, Elim Garak."
Garak kissed him regardless, and noted his reluctance to stop with pride.
"Off, then," he said, smug. "My intrepid little frontier doctor."
Julian shoved him lightly in annoyance, turned back to the mirror to straighten his appearance out. "You're horrible."
"No chance of convincing you to take a lunch break with me, then?"
Julian quirked an eyebrow leaving the bathroom. Garak followed him out.
Their home was modest, considering. Garak had previously been living in a mansion they'd converted into the Castellan's residence under Ghemor, and frankly couldn't wait to move to something a little more cosmopolitan. The old-world Cardassian finery reminded him uncomfortably of his father.
This suited him much better. A penthouse that soothed his aesthete sensibilities, kept him close to people, however much it annoyed the security experts. And it kept Julian's commute to the hospital short.
Garak had free reign to decorate the place, thank the Gods. There was a holo-image of Old Torr, before the bombings; an old Hebitian-style desert carving mantle; a healthy, thriving bookshelf full of actual printed literature; and the rest he had tried to keep relatively simple and warm. The space was a mix of sandstone and glass, modern and old, and very quiet.
There were a few interventions on Julian's part, though. A framed news article about A New Cardassia and the election of Elim Garak to the Castellanship, written for a Federation paper by Jake Sisko. A gift from Miles: a floating holo of DS9, hyper-accurate, on the mantle. It rotated gently, mesmerizing, and when Garak looked at it for too long he found he could hear the faint hum of the gravitational systems.
All those years spent out in the far reaches of space. All on such a fragile little thing. It seemed impossible. Doubly so that he'd found Julian out there in all that cold and empty. Not for the first time, Garak marveled at his luck in life. Julian, after the war, after everything, pulled back from the brink of death after his positively Herculean struggle against Section 31's AI. He'd been terrifyingly, horribly unresponsive for months, but it all felt so distant now. He'd woken up, and saved Garak from one of those final death throes of the AI in the nick of time, just like the men in all his spy thrillers.
And now Julian was here, politely asking their replicator for a raktajino.
A task that would have been excruciatingly, inordinately lavish only a few years ago here on Cardassia. Somewhere in the recent years they'd shifted from just reconstruction, towards construction. Natima Lang was spearheading wholly new avenues of development as the new Castellan. And Julian, too. Together, with Kelas, Prime Central Hospital research was making the first advancements in Cardassian medical technology in years.
"Not hearing an answer," Garak prodded gently.
"Well, you only said I was the most beautiful person in this quadrant. What, is there someone in the Delta quadrant you'd swoon over?"
"I suppose there are some who might find a genocidal goo planet quite attractive, really."
Julian hummed. "I'm going to be busy today."
"I'm not. There's a geleta house I want to take you to."
"In Torr? During daylight? It'll be full of students."
"Feeling old again, already?"
Julian pouted, and something in Garak's bones melted. He took Julian's cup aside, kissed him gently, and began undoing buttons on his shirt. Julian's hands swatted his away.
"What part of I'm going to be late don't you understand?"
Garak just rolled his eyes. "Take off your shirt. The color's all wrong. I've put a white one out, I ironed it earlier this morning while you were sleeping in, which is the real reason you're going to be late."
He nodded towards the bar chair where a white shirt laid gently folded over the back. Julian huffed reluctantly and swapped out his green one for the white.
Julian had been working Cardassian style shifts, with a massive break in midday to sleep and shelter from the summer heat. It took a period of adjustment, as did the temperature, but Julian seemed thrilled by all of it. He loved the evening shift, but still hadn't quite got the hang of the morning one. Up before the light of dawn, was the key. Still, Garak liked seeing him in early daylight. He looked... He looked...
Julian looked a little too good in white. His dark hair, the contrast. That skin of his, put against white linen, revealed a multitude of warm shades. Garak's possessive streak was loathe to release him to the hospital and meaningful work. The shirt reflected the soft light of the morning, so that he sat on the bar stool, quietly lambent, drinking from his cup.
"You look much better," Garak said, finally.
"I can tell. You haven't been quiet for that long in days."
Small, lopsided smile. Suddenly Julian looked boyish in the extreme: Garak's aggressively Cardassian memory threw him back into their first night together.
"I've never seen you this quiet before," said Julian, half-undressed, lounging at the edge of Garak's small bed. He'd been looking at the ceiling, grinning, but after he spoke he turned, expectant, leveling the full weight of that contented, mischievous smile at Garak.
Garak was certain that if he tried to say anything it might all fall apart. If he tried to play the game, if he tried to follow his well-honed instincts, Julian would see straight through him. Lose this miraculous interest in a washed-up old exile.
But Julian's expression needed to meet an answer. Garak leaned up and over, cupped Julian's giddy face.
"Funny, I could've sworn we'd been talking the whole time."
The memory ended abruptly, leaving Garak at a loss. Too short. Too quick by half, and then the war would deepen, and they'd both put their relationship to the side for it; with Garak focusing on Cardassia and Julian on Starfleet; and it took them years to get back to--well, no. It was better, now. Garak felt secure, fulfilled. He wasn't an exile eking out a precarious existence on a hostile space station, with no hope of a real future. And Julian wasn't the young Starfleet poster boy, suddenly untethered by the revelation of his genetic status.
Now, when he replied, he didn't need to deflect. He didn't need to protect himself, or the both of them.
"I was just thinking about..."
"When we started?" Julian asked, softly. "So was I. And I always think the same thing: too many interruptions. We really were unlucky."
"Come have lunch with me, then," Garak said. "Call it making up for missed time."
Julian circled around the little island counter to kiss Garak. His small mouth, soft, no longer alien to Garak in its different qualities. Odd, how that happened. He wondered out of curiosity if it'd feel strange, now, to kiss a Cardassian.
"I was never going to refuse," he said. "What does a superhuman need with a siesta break, anyway?"
"You certainly don't need any more beauty rest," Garak replied, demure. "I'll meet you at the hospital. We can walk."
"As long as we're out of the heat."
Julian had one foot out the door in a matter of moments. It was charming, though, how despite his efficient movements the younger human still seemed a little awkward. A side effect of long, loping limbs and a youth spent hammering in the instinct to hide his superhuman grace.
"Undo a button or two," Garak called after him. "Speaking of heat."
"Yes, mother," Julian called as the door closed. Garak found himself laughing.
The morning passed inconsequentially. Garak consulted, now, for Lang's administration, but on an informal basis. When there was a crisis, he'd be in the room. When things were going well, Garak could reliably answer messages on his Padd and twiddle his thumbs. He'd taken up a bit of gardening, soon he figured he and Julian would move to a house that'd have a real space for it. For the first time since his long exile, he was really quite without direction.
The only real long term project he was committed to was in his study. He'd begun collecting as much historical information about the revolutionary leaders of the CLF and the early members of the new Cardassian government as possible. He had it splayed out, half physical and half digital. Two screens, one the table itself and one to the side.
Occasionally, it felt a little like being in the Order again. Right now, on his desk, were a collection of medical records and firsthand accounts attesting to the fact that the great Corat Damar, revolutionary martyr for the new Cardassia, was a recovering alcoholic.
Or not-so-recovering, but Garak knew down to the second when he'd relapsed. It was one of the moments he was most desperate to convey: Damar found out over the relay about his family's slaughter at the hands of Cardassia's Dominion overlords. Garak could still feel the tension of that moment, all these years later, every time he saw the conservative, pro-military fringe claim that Cardassia was a force for civilization.
"What kind of people give those orders?"
"Yeah, Damar," Kira said, quiet but with that direct voice of hers, "what kind of people give those orders?"
Damar took her meaning in an instant. For one brief second, Kira and Damar were picturing Bajor in the same language. One of shackles, generations of violence and trauma, millions of individual tragedies just like Damar's, only perpetrated by the Cardassians.
It was the basic message he'd hoped so desperately to reveal to the Cardassian people. And the story of the revolution might be a safer vehicle than the story of the half-Bajorans living their fragile lives here on Cardassia Prime, as well as on Bajor. The revolution was over, for one, and almost all its heroes dead.
He wanted to convey how unprepared the CLF were until Kira had shown them how to fight a resistance. It was almost laughable at the time. They'd all been picking fights, pot-shots across the bow at Kira, at Odo, at himself, even each other. Their entire organization was frighteningly exposed, some of them had never even heard of a cell.
Kira had whipped them into shape against all odds. Once Garak began uncovering just how deep anti-Bajoran sentiment ran among some of the early leaders, it was like a floodgate had opened: he just couldn't stop. Some of the men they'd shared those caves with had been colonial military figures. Some had kept Bajoran slaves. Rusot, he remembered how Kira would fight with him before the eventual confrontation. It was inevitable, of course, even at the time Garak had known that. But now, he was shocked it hadn't happened sooner.
He'd been messaging with Commander Kira over the possibility of writing a historical record. Of him writing it, rather. He felt as though it wasn't his place, and yet, there was no one else left. Kira was encouraging it. He found an unopened holo-message from her on his terminal.
She looked serious, but in a different way than she'd used to. The severity had worn over the years. She didn't look exactly happy, but fulfilled. Garak wondered about how things might've gone for her if Odo had simply stayed. He wondered whether it was worth it, his Great Link. Cardassia, all of it, hadn't been worth it for Garak when Julian had been comatose.
"Garak, I've been looking at some of the stuff you sent me, and it's really--well, illuminating doesn't do it justice."
Her smile was wry, angular. She tilted her head forward, as if privately conveying a joke.
"Frankly, you have me looking back and wondering how we ever did it."
"My sentiments exactly," he said, as if this were a conversation. One of his new old-man traits, he supposed, was to reply to holo-recordings. Now Kira's expression changed to something more wistful.
"I understand your reservations about this whole thing, but really, Garak, I've been giving that some thought too since we talked last time and it's not just that you're the only one who can, Garak, you're perfect for it. You've always been an observer. Honestly, it's what used to freak me out about you. You picked up on things that went right over my head, you were the one who, within a day or so, could brief me on all their standings. All that infighting. Julian told me once that you were actually very understanding, and at the time, you know, I rolled my eyes at him. But during the revolution, I got what he meant. I don't think I knew you at all until I heard the way you talked about a future for Cardassia, divorced from... how did you put it? A romanticism about the past? I'd never heard real conviction from you until then."
So she was thinking of that moment with Damar, too. It would be the linchpin of the whole thing. If he could put that moment to the Cardassian people, it might be as important as anything he'd done as Castellan. Kira shook her solemn expression aside, and Garak flicked through some of his papers. She hadn't even seen the aftermath, Damar in the dark, drinking replicated synthol after their mission was over, wounded.
And then there had been the cellar. He never really knew Kira, until the three of them had been stuck down there.
"How's Julian, by the way? He hasn't called in weeks."
"He's got his head in a new project," Garak replied, making a note absently on his Padd next to some of the Rusot files.
"Probably thrown himself into some new project," she mused. "Anyway, give my love, and since he probably hasn't opened up his last message from me, I'll pass on my warning to you. Let him know his mother just arrived on DS9 and she's heading Cardassia Prime-wards."
At this, Garak did look up. Kira ended her transmission with a wink. Suddenly his work felt very draining, indeed. He needed to make a call to his secretary, Akret. Several calls, actually. Hm.