Chapter Text
Bite-sized bits of reality. Remembering what was HERE, what was not.
The anger, the fury, the sheer stubbornness that had kept him alive through so much.
Temper it. Lean into what is verifiable. Keep the rest at arm's length until it could be sorted through, passed into the piles of real-in-the-present and not.
Who could be trusted and not.
Many fewer of the former than the latter. But more than zero. More than many times in his career, his life.
No drugs needed. Only time. Would he get that time?
Only Time would tell.
Endless time spent outside of time.
What was time? A nearly-forgotten construct. Time had become the present. No more journeying to the past, the future.
Only now.
A now comprised of pain. The fear of the unknown – who was he? what was he? Now? Then? Future?
What would happen to him? Would he, could he, survive this?
Did he want to?
What was the point? There was the stubborn satisfaction of survival, the chance to rebut all those who thought him lesser – for his birth, for his living.
But that satisfaction was beginning to be eroded under the pain.
And on the other side of that lay an endless night.
But then, into the space between here and that endless night came a voice. A calm, caring voice. A voice that hid its fear, its worry, under a mask of compassion. Except the mask wasn’t worn to harm. The mask was worn to allow for the ability to heal.
How Garak knew that, he couldn't tell. Also, why the voice sounded so familiar, when it wasn’t Cardassian.
It was human.
It was familiar.
And for some reason that he again could not recall at this moment – eidetic memory buried under the pain – the voice was familiar.
He knew that voice.
It belonged to someone who… cared for him.
Beyond all reason or sense.
Cared for him.
Despite… moments. Moments of anger, of fear. Moments in which he tried to defend himself from this voice.
Why?
Why did the voice care? Why did he fight?
He didn’t know either of those things right now. But he did know that he would listen to that voice, endeavor to do as it commanded, to his last breath.
His dying day.
Would that day be today?
He did not know.