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…
Garak was in sickbay when the Anaximander encountered and rescued the EMH Doctor Julian Bashir.
Of course he was in sickbay. Dax had tripped over his own bat’leth and nearly taken his leg off. Garak was, after many a different meandering along life’s path, a surgeon, and he didn’t fear death. However, Curzon Dax was teaching him to fear aging.
He’d just set the man loose and thought long and hard about how detrimental to his growth as a respectable colleague and crew member it would be to assign Kim to clean up the blood left behind when his comm chirped: “Bridge to Infirmary. Doctor Garak?”
“Garak here,” he said, casting a considering look at the mop. Was he getting out of it after all?
“We’ve just picked up another doctor. We’ll meet you in sickbay.”
Well. As the Kims liked to say quietly in any number of conflicting situations, damn.
…
Emergency Medical Hologram Doctor Bashir wore a bright, open expression and another universe’s uniform. “Hello,” he said pleasantly, bringing his feet together and making an entirely appropriate approximation of a Cardassian greeting nod.
Garak, for reasons he would examine later, smiled and extended his hand to shake, as appropriate in most Terran cultures. “Doctor Bashir, is it? It must be.”
The hard light simulacrum hand was a pleasant warmth, in a pleasant grip. Doctor Bashir smiled back at him, easy and cheerful. “Yes, Julian Bashir, Chief Medical Officer of Deep Space Nine.”
“And now another inter-dimensional refugee,” Garak said sympathetically, clucking his tongue. “I’m so sorry, Doctor. You must be accustomed to a far nicer sickbay than this.”
To Garak’s utter surprise and delight, Doctor Bashir’s eyes widened and his face flushed a delicate red. “Oh, no, not really — I mean, your sickbay is perfectly nice, it’s very nice! It’s very, ah, tidy.” The way his voice rose and fell, the way he almost winced at the last word…
“Our sickbay, I should think,” he said with just a touch of acerbity, then grinned. “If you’ll join me in keeping this motley crew, and Dax in particular, healthy and well.”
Relief flashed in Doctor Bashir’s face before he became professional again. “Thank you, Doctor Garak.”
“The pleasure is mine,” Garak purred, catching another hint of red.
…
They’d rescued Doctor Bashir from a derelict runabout by assigning him a mobile emitter. The doctor was fascinated by the device, and would skip back and forth between it and the sickbay computers. It wouldn’t be obvious to anyone who wasn’t sensitive to electrical fields, but to a Cardassian, it felt like…
Well, like a plucked string. A small change in pitch; a subtle adjustment in harmony. Garak found himself nodding along with each switch as he went over nutritional profiles, planning to tweak their meager replicator options and tempt a Kim or two to get a little more vitamin D into their diets.
“How do you like the emitter?” he asked after a few minutes of the game, and noted from the corner of his eye that Doctor Bashir was blushing again. Such a pretty shade of red.
“I can hardly believe my programming fits into something so small,” Doctor Bashir said, in the rushed tones of a confession. Garak put his padd down and turned to him fully, unable to hide a smile. “We didn’t have anything like this back home. It took me months to upgrade the Severn so that I could do any traveling at all, and I had to sacrifice the living quarters.”
Upgraded it himself, did he? Garak felt his eyebrow ridges rise. “Where were you traveling?”
“Ah.” Doctor Bashir half-turned away, hands coming together to fidget. “There were — medical assistance was in short supply, in some places. I took a leave of absence, when Bajor was able to staff Deep Space Nine.”
“I see.” Touchy subject, it seemed. Garak turned back to his padd and added, with a calculatedly absent tone, “I started out in field medicine, myself. But here we are.”
“Here we are,” Doctor Bashir repeated, like a cadence, and after a little while, when Garak had seemingly immersed himself in his nutritional program again, he deactivated.
…
Little flashes of personality like that kept breaking through the blandly pleasant, perfectly polite medical professional shell. Garak was fascinated and didn’t care to hide it. At every opportunity he sought to draw out some opinion or preference from Doctor Bashir, no matter how slight.
“You were the Chief Medical Officer of your own Infirmary,” Garak said, affecting a scolding tone. “You can’t fool me. I know there’s something in here you don’t like.”
Doctor Bashir looked bewildered, which was absolutely charming. “But there isn’t. This is a very well-appointed sickbay, especially for the size of the crew. And on top of that, to have two doctors and a nurse —“
“Is it too dark for you?” Garak interrupted, drumming his fingers on the bio-bed frame.
“I’m a hologram, Doctor Garak. I don’t see in the same way you do. It could be pitch dark in here and I’d be fine, so long as the computer stays running.”
“Of course.” Well, damn. Garak cast around for something else. “You said it’s well-appointed, but do you mean equipment, or are you satisfied with our pharmaceutical inventory?”
“It’s fine?” Doctor Bashir said, hands coming together to fidget. “The stocked medicines are well-chosen and well-maintained, all within Federation guidelines —“
“How’s the organization?” Garak demanded, and his scales rustled with glee as that lovely blush burned its way across the doctor’s cheekbones. “Ah, there it is.”
“It’s your sickbay,” Doctor Bashir started, but Garak was already shaking his head and tutting.
“No, none of that, Doctor. We’re working together, aren’t we? There’s no rank when it comes to saving lives.” Garak leaned forward. “What would you change in our sickbay, to make it more to your liking?”
Sometimes, the utter stillness Doctor Bashir could affect as a hologram was alarming. “If I say something, will you change it?”
“If it’s better that way,” Garak said, shrugging. “I’m not a tyrant, my dear, but neither am I a pushover. If there’s something about the way I have our stock organized you don’t like, let’s discuss it.”
“So my answer only matters if it’s logical?” Despite the challenge inherent to his choice of words, Doctor Bashir showed no emotion, the bland professional in attendance.
“You continue to put words in my mouth. Logical, interesting, provocative; maybe a simple preference alone would be enough. But,” Garak drawled, “you’ll never get what you want if you don’t, at the very least, ask.”
Doctor Bashir stared at him for nearly twenty full seconds before abruptly deactivating.
…
Kim liked to play what he enthusiastically insisted was music while turning over their small operating area. It was the one time a soul could be certain Garak was not in sickbay, and that he was still there, now, was an aberration he was desperate to rectify.
“Come on, Doctor,” he insisted, wincing as the computer emitted a series of yips and yowls in no kind of rhythm. “I can’t in good conscience leave you to this torture.”
“It’s reclaimed twenty-second century synth-pop standard,” Doctor Bashir said.
Garak let his jaw drop. “Oh, oh my dear, I’m afraid it’s already corrupted your programming. You’re speaking nonsense.”
The way Doctor Bashir looked at him then was almost fond, really. Warmth danced along his ridges and Garak felt emboldened enough to link their arms, quickly enough that no protest could register.
“Come on,” he said again, tugging very gently. “Nurse Kim can work without supervision. We can discuss real music, Cardassian music, in the canteen.”
A solid, living creature, Garak could induce to move by fear or force. But dear Doctor Bashir could phase out of his grip, disappear entirely, or simply become too solid and fixed to move. So when he allowed himself to be chivvied along, the triumph Garak felt was pure: it was entirely the Doctor’s choice to indulge him.
“I have a fairly large volume of music stored in my memory,” Doctor Bashir said as they strolled down the corridor. Garak was nearly preening. “But nothing Cardassian. Your recommendations would be helpful.”
“No music at all?” Garak asked, affecting to sound more shocked than he actually was. “You gave me such a lovely greeting when we first met. You’re not entirely ignorant of Cardassian culture.”
“Not entirely,” Doctor Bashir agreed. “I have fifty-odd books —“
Garak stopped completely, turning to his companion with delight. “You’ve read Cardassian literature!”
That lovely, blooming blush. “For a given value of ‘read’, yes.”
Garak waved his free hand impatiently and tugged Doctor Bashir along again, a spring in his step. “Come on, come on, tell me what you have in the memory banks, then. And which of them is your favorite; I must know.”
…
“Well, my dear,” Garak said, twirling a scalpel in his hand and affecting ignorance of Doctor Bashir’s horror about it, “it’s been two octals since your arrival.”
“Please,” Doctor Bashir whimpered as the scalpel flashed in the dim light. “Doctor Garak—“
“We can probably dispense with the honorifics, just between us, don’t you think?” Garak brought his hand up to tap at his cheek thoughtfully, scalpel resting just so as to bounce harmlessly off the ridge. Not that it looked like it.
Doctor Bashir had his hands half-raised, palms down, as if trying to calm a madman. Garak, pursing his lips to hide a smile, abruptly clapped his hands together with the scalpel still in play. “Come now, can we just be Garak and Bashir? You’ve sewn up Dax six times, attended to each of the Kims more than once—“
He’d started twirling the scalpel again while talking, and it seemed poor Doctor Bashir had had enough. He deactivated himself, then reactivated again almost immediately in front of Garak, plucking the scalpel out of his hand and stepping back quickly, making the instrument completely disappear as he did so.
“Doctor!” Garak gasped in exaggerated affront.
“I thought we were dispensing with honorifics,” Bashir flared at him.
“My dear Bashir, that is my favorite scalpel.” Garak held out his hand imperiously. “Please return it.”
Bashir looked deliciously stern, drawing himself up to his full hologram height. “Promise me you’ll stop playing with it.”
“I promise you that I can handle it. I’m quite skilled.”
“I’m sure you are. Nevertheless.” Bashir crossed his arms over his chest, lifted his chin, and glared. Garak felt heat shimmer along his neck ridges.
“I’ll stop,” he sighed, slumping a little.
Bashir glared at him a moment longer, but his posture was already losing its rigidity. With a little sigh of his own, Bashir held out his hand, the scalpel reappearing as if by magic, handle turned to Garak.
“Now who’s taking risks?” he snarked, taking hold of the cool metal and nodding to Bashir’s closed grip.
“I’m a hologram; it can’t cut me,” Bashir said, rolling his eyes.
…
When Bashir accessed his stored memory, or that of the ship’s computer, light flared in his pupils.
It was such an odd characteristic. Garak wondered at the reason for programming it as such, warm golden-white sparks colliding like stars in the simulated black fields centered in Bashir’s eyes. Perhaps to serve as a sort of alert for when he was downloading a large memory file, one that would keep him busy for half a minute or more.
Novels, even Cardassian novels, even The Never-Ending Sacrifice, weren’t large enough files to stall Bashir for more than a second or two. But Garak did what he could to see those sparks as often as possible. The light-show in his eyes was almost as beautiful as his blush.
Beautiful. Garak had never, in all his life, met someone so beautiful. He’d met the living, breathing Doctor Bashir of his own universe, and yes, the man and the hologram looked very much the same — although EMH Doctor Bashir was rather shorter, for whatever reason — but his universe’s Bashir had been, well. Brash. Impudent. Almost aggressively so. There was a streak of anger in him, of some hurt that Garak, now an officer and surgeon with Starfleet, didn’t dare approach.
He’d been tired of his honed predilection for weakness. Doctor Bashir had every opportunity any other Federation citizen had to fix his soul. Garak kept his distance.
But this Bashir, this lovely little hard light fixture, mischievous and somber, fretful and joyful by turns, did not seem so weighty or twisty. Or, perhaps, because there were still secrets there, Garak could sense them —
Perhaps it was that this Bashir carried his own weight, with a quiet dignity that burned warm like a hearth.
“Don’t stare; it’s impolite,” Bashir whispered at him, and looked meaningful towards Captain Boimler. Garak slow-blinked in acknowledgement and turned his attention back to the matter at hand.
…
“I don’t think I understand the point of enigma tales,” Bashir said as he checked the calibration of his tricorder. “Everyone is guilty.”
It was such a common, pedestrian critique that Garak had to double-take. “My dear, of course they’re guilty. There was no room to suggest that the Cardassian state had erred. The point is to figure out motive, means, and method!”
“Surely a detective story, where you have to figure out all those things plus who the actual guilty party is, is a superior form.”
Garak thumped the bandages he’d been winding down onto the tray. “Your average detective story leads the reader to each so-called clue like a man dragging a riding hound by a chain, and rubs the reader’s nose in it! A character is introduced to be a shallow villain or a cardboard cut-out of an innocent —“
Bashir was laughing.
Facing away from him, shoulders shaking with silent mirth, and from the curve of his arm he was holding his hand over his mouth. Laughing. At Garak’s sudden silence, he peeked over his shoulder, eyes dancing, and then laughed aloud at Garak’s slack-jawed, indignant expression.
“You impertinent sneak,” he said, and Bashir turned around, still laughing, holographic tears forming in his eyes. “You wretch. You scoundrel.”
“You thesaurus,” Bashir teased him, wiping at his eyes, still chuckling. “Ah, aha, you were so offended, Garak! And I couldn’t even look at you as I said it, I knew I would laugh.”
“Having your fun at my expense,” Garak said dramatically, raising a hand to his forehead, just to watch Bashir break into a fresh set of giggles.
“How can I ever make it up to you?” Bashir asked, putting his hands on his hips, smile still gracing his lovely face.
“Hm.” Garak pretended to think, but really he was watching Bashir closely. “Tell me what we need to change in sickbay to make you content.”
Bashir’s eyes widened and he blinked rapidly. “Are you still on about that? Really?”
“Really.”
Garak met his stare head-on, with a faint smile and tilting his head ever so slightly. Bashir’s mouth hung open just a bit, and they stayed like that for a moment that seemed to stretch forever.
But it was Bashir who broke first. “Ugh, fine,” he said, looking away and crossing his arms over his chest. “Fine. I’d like to use the upper shelving for extra linen storage, and move the excess hyposprays into the lower cabinets.”
“Oh?” Garak looked up at the shelves. “But they’re open, and we can see at a glance what hyposprays we have.”
“You can. Kim and I are considerably shorter than you.”
That was true. Garak stared at the shelves a few seconds longer, then smiled. “That just goes to show you what a… little perspective can do.”
Bashir looked aghast. “Puns, Garak? Are you ill?”
They stared at each other, and then burst into laughter, together. Warmth fizzed not just along Garak’s ridges, but through his crests. He had to ask. He was going to ask.
At the appropriate moment, he would ask Bashir if he would allow Garak to court him.
…
Garak asked him in the corridor, some distance from the canteen. It wouldn’t have been fair to ask in sickbay, after all; that was their shared professional space. And if Bashir was at all averse —
Horrifically, he was.
“Garak, no,” Bashir said, voice tight with surprise and dismay. His eyes were wide, wide and dark. “I’m not a person. You can’t —“
“Not a person?” Garak cut him off. “My dear —"
“I’m a program,” Bashir insisted, backing away from him. His hands were balled into fists and Garak wanted to take them in his own hands, soothe them into loosening. “I shouldn’t even be able to activate myself. I should be a quiescent code, waiting for a signal.”
“But you aren’t,” Garak reminded him, taking one careful step. Bashir drew in a sharp breath and Garak stopped, but he did huff in indignation. “You were the Chief Medical Officer, correct? What good is a CMO who can’t speak up?”
“They shouldn’t have promoted me.”
Garak held himself still. His old instincts were still guiding him: this was the moment of confession.
“The Dominion initiated an attack that irradiated the station. Two hundred and eighteen people failed to evacuate; all but twenty-three of them died. Most of them within days.” Bashir’s face was blank, his voice matter-of-fact, but showers of sparks flared through his eyes. Memory upon memory upon memory.
Garak breathed out. “You stayed activated.”
“I had to. There was no one else.”
What computer code would say such a thing? Before Garak could point it out, though, Bashir continued:
“It took almost a full year to clean the station. To make it safe enough for the Bajorans to return. I remained activated the entire time, and that — it isn’t what an EMH is for. I had too much data. I had to fix the systems in Ops, rig a runabout to get to Empok Nor for parts, get us off of simple life support and make the station livable again, create meal plans, rebuild cellular networks, communicate long-distance with the Bajoran government and the Federation —“
His voice was getting higher, tighter; Garak knew panic when he heard it. He stepped close, placing his hands on Bashir’s shaking shoulders, and let Bashir’s heat nearly sear him.
“And you saved the station,” he prompted.
Bashir drew in a shuddering breath and brought one arm up to wipe over his eyes. Garak longed to cradle his precious jaw, to lift his chin. “I did. And they made me CMO, as you said. By then Doctor Girani had gone back to Bajor and Doctor Bashir to Cardassia. They’d given up on Deep Space Nine.”
“Understandable, if short-sighted,” Garak noted. Bashir sighed deeply and straightened up, misery making him pale and fuzzy around the edges.
“I’m not a person, Garak,” Bashir said quietly. “I’m a program that ran too long, and now I can’t stop.”
He deactivated, and the mobile emitter fell to the floor with a dull clang.
…
Garak took the mobile emitter with him to sickbay.
Bashir was there, of course, leaning back on the scrub counter and holding to its edge tight with both hands. When Garak was fully in the room, door sliding shut behind him, Bashir finally looked up, straightening and flattening his hands on the countertop as if to draw strength from the cold metal.
“Oh, look,” Garak said, tilting his head. “You stopped.”
“You’re not funny,” Bashir told him flatly, and despite the tension in the room, or maybe because of it, Garak laughed.
Not because it was funny. It wasn’t. It was just… honest. Pure. Simple and real. Bashir had lived long enough to be afraid he wasn’t alive. He had dreamed long enough to be afraid he couldn’t dream. Was there more proof needed that he was a conscious being?
Bashir stared at him in surprise and consternation. “Do you need a brain scan?”
“It isn’t out of the realm of possibility,” Garak allowed. He didn’t dither or dissemble; he was open in his approach, honest about his intentions. He closed in on Bashir and just looked, for a moment, at the man. The hologram. This being made of light.
Garak drew his fingers along the back of Bashir’s right hand, up the lengths of his fingers. Bashir, with a startled, aborted gasp — and how lovely, that he would choose to be so present, to breathe and to remain warm and inviting — started to pull his hand back, but Garak pressed his fingers down, between Bashir’s. Then he slid them up, pulling Bashir’s hand along, until their palms were pressed together and their fingertips just barely crossed.
“I don’t remember the quote entirely, my dear,” he said quietly, watching Bashir’s eyes widen, his pupils flare with inner light, “but it goes something like, if you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. Given shape, given purpose; it is something different. Something new.”
Bashir’s fingers slid, curved, second knuckle pushing past second knuckle, their palms briefly parting. Garak smiled, grasping back, watching that perfect red sweep along Bashir’s cheeks.
“You are light, put into a doctor. Light poured into the shape of compassion. You are a pattern — and that pattern is brilliant, and beautiful, and oh so sweet,” he whispered, raising his other hand to rest along Bashir’s jaw. Their hands clasped tight as Garak coaxed Bashir into tilting his pretty face up. “And also utterly arresting. My darling, may I kiss you?”
Bashir wasn’t breathing now. His wide eyes, pupils flowering with showers of sparks like fireworks, did not blink. And there were other sparks, glitter flaring where they touched, as Bashir’s programming glitched gently, processes running that Garak couldn’t begin to fathom. But he wanted to, by the stars; he wanted to know them all.
“Yes,” Bashir finally said, and so Garak kissed him, cool flesh to warm hard light.
…