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"Why?"
Julian sighed, glancing away from Miles's confused expression. "I don't suppose there's any chance you'll just do this for me without asking questions or poking around or—"
"If this is for some weird sex thing," Miles starts, waving his spanner in Julian's direction.
Julian splutters. "No! Damn it, Miles, you're not going to do it until I give you a full explanation, are you?"
"Manually override the environment controls for a single set of quarters, for a civilian no less? What do you think?"
"I can't tell you much," he hedged. "It's a doctor-patient matter..."
"I'm going to need to know the patient's name, and unless you want to flex your rank and force me to do it, you'll have to get me to sign off on the modification."
"Deep Space Nine's overall environment controls have been set to accommodate the species that comprise the majority, which is fine, except the thermostats in the quarters have been calibrated so that the range of available temperatures are only those ranges comfortable for the majority. So species who run warmer, and reptilian humanoids – "
"Not Garak!" Miles said.
"I'm trying to prevent recursions of his illness," Julian said. "As his physician—no, don't interrupt me again, I've had quite enough of that—I'm morally obligated to make sure he's got access to medical care."
"You're telling me his leukocytes needed replaced because he was cold?"
Julian hesitated.
"That's what I thought," said Miles, starting to turn away.
Julian grabbed his arm. "I can't tell you how, but the two are linked. And even if he weren't my patient - he's my friend, Miles. And I get that you can't understand why I feel that way, but if you won't do it for him, can you do it for me?"
Miles looked at him for a very long time, his eyes narrowed and assessing. Julian wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he seemed to find it. "Oh, all right," he muttered.
-
"I heard you spent the day working on plans for a special set of environmental controls for a certain tailor," Keiko said, smiling.
Miles set down his fork with a dramatic sigh. "Does anyone on this station have anything to do besides gossip?"
"I think it's very sweet of you," she said. She leaned forward to kiss his cheek. "I'm proud of you for being willing to set aside your prejudices, even if it was just as a favor to Julian."
"It's just... he didn't leave the whole time Garak was in that coma or whatever it was," said Miles. "He set up Garak's quarters like a hospital room, just because he wanted a bit of privacy, and then he asked for leave to be able to sit at his bedside for 26 hours. What's more is, I don't think he slept more than an hour or two a night those whole two weeks it was touch-and-go. And now that Garak's back to being all right, you can see the difference. He's back to being as annoying as ever. I guess I never realized how happy his little lunchtime book club meetings made him."
"Julian said that Garak liked the flowers I had delivered," Keiko mused. "You know, I could probably get a cultivar of some Cardassian flora, now that his quarters will be able to sustain them."
"Oh, don't start, if you join their book club I'll never hear the end of it, and I don't want to discuss Cardassian literature in the little free time I have..."
Keiko laughed, and her husband's mock outrage softened as he stretched to steal another kiss.
-
"Are you all right?" Dax asked.
"Hmm? Oh, yes, sorry, I'm just a bit distracted. Did you – that is, did Curzon ever get lonely being the only Trill among all those Klingons?"
Ah, she thought, and hid a smile. She placed a hand on Julian's arm.
"It was difficult, especially considering that they didn't fully trust me," she said. "But eventually I realized it didn't matter that most Klingons were still wary of me, not when I had people whose opinions I valued as allies and, later, friends. When you have a strong support system, in any society, no matter how isolated you are from people like you... it stops bothering you so much when public opinion is against you."
Julian frowned down at his noodles. "Do you think it's possible for a support system to be just one person?"
"You can't be someone else's entire world," she said, feeling the ache of firsthand knowledge several times over. "It's not fair - to you, or to them."
He nodded, expression a moue of resignation and dashed hopes, and she patted his arm before she walked away.
She'd lived a lot of lives. Maybe something in one of them might help her find common ground with a lonely ex spy...
-
"I'm guessing you know already why I've called you in here," Sisko said.
Things had changed, the old man's face had changed, as had his reactions to certain things, but there were enough similarities, enough time with this new Dax, for him to read his friend's expression. Her eyebrows were arched, her lips pressed together in a thin line.
"It's about Mr. Garak," he continued.
Not a single flicker of surprise.
"I've heard that you stopped by to ask him about fashion?"
Dax cocked her head. "There's been a move towards a particular shade of violet on Trill, just since I came to the station. I was simply wondering if he had anything like it on hand."
"Because of your long-standing fascination with the world of fashion," he said flatly.
She shrugged. "I seem to recall you and Curzon talking quite a bit about hemlines and necklines," Dax said.
"Jadzia."
"He's the only Cardassian on a station full of humans and Bajorans and Ferengi and Lurians, and every other imaginable species, except for his own. And as the only Trill - let alone the only joined Trill - on this station, I can kind of relate."
He studied her inscrutable look. "Am I not company enough?"
"Benjamin," she said. "You are my best friend, and I cherish your company, you know that, but it's lonely to be the only one of your kind. Even when you share your head with so many memories."
"I suppose I can see that," he allowed. "But Garak? We can't trust him."
"You let him borrow a runabout. He helped us blackmail Gul Dukat, after all. Ben, Julian really cares about Garak, and even if I don't trust Garak, I care about Julian. Besides, he's actually good conversation!"
"I can see that," Ben said, relaxing. "I was wondering when you'd get around to the young doctor's involvement in all this."
"Honestly, I think I could easily come around to eating with the man once a week myself, even if Julian weren't so attached."
He didn't bother asking if she thought that attachment would interfere with Julian's loyalties - thus far, he'd seen more good come of the doctor's association with the tailor than bad, and Julian was steadfast as ever in his dedication to the goals of the Federation.
His concerns answered, but not entirely set aside, he focused on the more urgent matter at hand here.
"Are you lonely?"
Jadzia smiled. "It's a little difficult to be so far from Trill, but this place is my home now, and I don't regret being here. Especially since I get to work with you."
"You've made it feel like home here for me too," he said, and then shook his head. "You'll keep an eye on our Mr. Garak, won't you?"
"Of course," she replied, rolling her eyes.
He moved back around to sit behind his desk, already thinking about what to make for dinner, and whether he should invite Jadzia over to eat with him and Jake more often. He hadn't previously considered that she was the only one of her kind – and oh, wasn't that an idea...
-
Odo's tip line on the subspace network remained silent, for the most part. Anyone who had useful information was a criminal or didn't know they had it, generally. And certainly people brought him petty grievances, but humanoids liked to do that in person, to gesticulate and make a grand show of whatever their problems were.
So the tip line was quiet, and on the occasions where it wasn't, his focus on the tip at hand tended to involve analyzing whether its presence - an anomaly to be sure - indicated a truly concerned citizen, or a sinister plot that necessitated his distraction.
Obviously his first suspect was always Quark, who could fall under both categories, the former in the cases where he got himself in over his head and needed Odo's assistance surviving his latest 'business deal'. But in this case, he knew immediately that Quark wasn't involved. He'd spent a lot of time reviewing their communications and his recordings of Quark from his surveillance or past statements. As such, he could recognize the man's speech patterns. This, he concluded, after cross referencing the missive with communiques from other people onboard the station, was a Human Starfleet officer, though beyond that the message was too short to contain defining characteristics to further narrow the search.
Human and Starfleet. Hmm. Given the subject matter, his first thought was Bashir – but Bashir didn't talk like other Humans. He was an outlier.
Attempts to find the log-on information and location of the origin of the message proved useless. Whoever it was had done it in a public terminal, and recent subspace interference from radiation from the wormhole could have delayed its sending anywhere from five minutes to two days, making surveillance footage garbage.
Perhaps he could determine the sender by following the suggestion within and working backwards to see who benefited from that. Yes, that could work.
"Odo to Garak."
There was a brief pause, and then Garak answered, wearing an expression of polite bafflement that Odo didn't trust for a second. "Constable! What an unusual - though not unpleasant, of course - surprise! What can I do for you?"
"I'd like to speak to you. It's up to you whether we conduct that conversation in the Security office, or somewhere more... unofficial," Odo said. That wasn't technically lying. It was up to Garak because he couldn't exactly haul him in without charges or reasonable suspicion, not because Odo would bring him in if he didn't cooperate. But it didn't matter, because the 'tailor' was smiling blandly and saying,
"I'm more than happy to assist security in whatever little way a simple tailor is able. Would you like to join me in the replimat? I was just thinking I could use a cup of - "
"I'll meet you at the replimat at 1600 hours," Odo interrupted.
"I will see you then."
He looked back down at the message.
The Cardassian tailor is looking lonely. Maybe he's even lonely enough to reveal sensitive information, if you can befriend him.
Well, he'd never been very skilled at the humanoid art of verbal subterfuge, but perhaps a straightforward approach. Two men who didn't quite trust each other, meeting to discuss useful – but not classified, at least not on Odo's side – information. They both disliked Gul Dukat, after all.
It was essentially the same common ground he'd had with Kira, when they'd met. And if she was an exceptionally upstanding sort of murderer, maybe Garak could prove somewhat decent.
And if not, well, it'd still flesh out his security profile on the enigmatic Cardassian.
-
Garak hit the bell to Dr. Bashir's quarters rather more forcefully that strictly necessary. If it had been built to the fragile design standards of the Federation, it might be a bit worse for wear.
After a moment of infuriating silence from the other side, the door to Bashir's quarters slid open. The man himself stood there, bleary eyed from sleep, face wrinkled in confusion. "Garak," he said. "It's the middle of the night!"
"I do apologize for waking you, doctor, but I'm afraid I can't stand it any longer. Call off your friends. I cannot be assaulted by Federation pity on all sides every day! I'm sure you think of it as a kindness, but it is grating in the extreme to be – "
"Garak! What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about your charity. Or is it revenge? Hmm? Have you grown tired of kindness, doctor? Are you exacting some cruel retribution by besetting me with insincerity from your little friends?" Oh, it was, wasn't it? The bright eyed young doctor had finally lost patience, had selected a plan of attack so perfectly tailored to—
"Garak, you need to take a deep breath and step back and realize that I have no idea what you mean."
"Oh really, doctor? Your engineer friend showed up at my quarters with the brilliant idea to reconfigure my environmental controls to produce a more comfortable atmosphere for my 'health'. His wife came over, with their child, and offered to get me Cardassian plants for my quarters. And then she left me alone with her child, doctor, do you realize people used to hide their children from me – "
"Well, I can understand why one might hide a child from a man who wakes people up at all hours to yell at them from the doorway," said Bashir.
Garak huffed and stepped past the doctor, into his quarters.
("Oh, come in, Garak, I wasn't sleeping," the doctor said, rolling his eyes.)
"As if that weren't bad enough," he continued the moment the doors closed, "your Trill friend came by three times in a single week to ask about color theory and Romulan poetry and vintage kanar and all manner of other contrivances. Even the damned security chief suddenly wants to discuss the Cardassian justice system over afternoon tea!"
"Wait, Jadzia and Odo?"
"I'm not finished! Your Commander invited me to dinner, saying you were always declining to bring anyone along so he thought he'd make the offer to me directly. And then his son, and the Ferengi boy, they both ask me for help with their homework! Then today, O'Brien's daughter brought me a craft. Crafts."
The boy, damn him, started to laugh. Just quiet, helpless little snorts of it at first, and then full peals of laughter that shook his slim frame as he buried his face in one hand and waved the other at Garak, who scowled. He did not appreciate being mocked twofold, and opened his mouth to say so, but then Bashir drew in a sharp breath. "Sorry, sorry, you're just – I've never seen someone so upset by people being nice before."
"It's not 'nice', it's condescending."
"I didn't do any of that," said Bashir, sobering somewhat, though he was still grinning. "All I did was put in a requisition form for the work on your quarters. Molly brought you a craft? What was it? Tell me it had glitter."
"It had no such thing, perish the very thought of the stuff in my quarters..."
He was thoroughly wrong-footed, now that it seemed the doctor was guileless as ever. Maybe he was a better liar than Garak estimated? But then, how would he have convinced so many far more suspicious Starfleet officers to have gone along with his little plot?
"Are you coming to dinner? Sisko is an excellent cook, I think you'll find it a better example of Human cuisine than anything the replimat has to offer."
"This is madness," said Garak.
He got a bright, mischievous smile in response. "So you'll come."
-
Kira ventured into Commander Sisko's quarters before the scheduled time, hoping to get situated in the space and have some sort of psychological upper hand over Garak. Unfortunately, it seemed the Cardassian had had the same idea - he was standing behind Julian's shoulder as the doctor prodded some sort of dough into roughly loaf-like shapes, and his eyes widened ever so slightly when he spotted her. "Major," he said.
Not trusting her voice to mask the hostility she felt for the spy, she just nodded to him, and then deliberately looked at anyone else.
Sisko was a safe subject, since Garak was too close to Julian to avoid looking at him, and also she kind of wanted to throttle the doctor as well. Sisko rolled his eyes. "New rule: if you show up early, you have to help. Jake, can you show Major Kira where the place settings can be found?"
Jake set down the bowl he was mixing, and Kira thanked the Prophets that the place settings were nowhere near Bashir and his Cardassian friend.
She set the table - Humans had strange protocols on where each utensil went, and even on which way the knife blade faced - and then settled into a spot as far from Bashir's usual place as possible. At least it was darker than usual, so she didn't have to see every ridge on Garak's face, and she could pretend not to notice if Bashir extended his tactile, casual affection to the spy the way he did Jadzia and Keiko and Miles.
Huh. It was unusually dim – the lights couldn't be at more than 80%, why –
Cardassian light sensitivity. They'd used the difference in eyesight to their advantage during the occupation, burning magnesium to temporarily blind Cardassians, working at night with lights that Cardassian eyes couldn't detect, but now that the station was Bajor's, they kept it far, far brighter than Dukat ever had. Miles had complained about the light system having limited capacity, even.
That was... well, it was certainly a consideration.
-
"Close your eyes," Julian said.
Garak fixed him with a long-suffering glare. "Really, doctor, I don't think you fully understand how silly it would be for a Cardassian to extend that kind of—"
"Close them," said Julian, more sharply. To his surprise, it worked. Garak shut his eyes, albeit not without a sigh that clearly conveyed how absurd he thought the human enjoyment of surprise was.
A lot of things were surprising lately, not the least of which had been Kira grudgingly informing him that there was a wavelength of light that most humanoids could process, but not Cardassians – a wavelength closely guarded by the Bajorans, and he'd agreed not to look into it as long as she passed the information to Sisko and O'Brien – and that it might make the station less unwelcoming to Cardassian vision.
She'd also made it quite clear that she'd kill Garak given the slightest provocation, and kept stressing that a few other species had a similar problem with the brightness of lights, but the end result was the same: in less than a minute, the station would be lit primarily by light at a wavelength that would scarcely register on Garak's vision, while also using supplementary wavelengths at less intensity for species who were not capable of processing the wavelength Cardassians couldn't.
There were some fascinating implications about night vision, light sensitivity, and atmospheric filtering of light during key evolutionary eras, but those could wait.
"Honestly, I promise you, this will be totally worth it."
"I don't suppose there's any way you can make this surprise of yours happen any sooner? I prefer to be aware of my surroundings. Contrary to Human beliefs, ignorance is not bliss…"
"Bashir to Ops," Julian said.
"O'Brien here."
"Is it done?"
"T-minus five, four, three, two… and we've done it."
Julian grinned. "Well! Come on then, open them," he told Garak.
For a second, Garak kept his eyes shut, and then they opened, and he was treated to a rare look of utter shock and disbelief on his friend's usually inscrutable face.
"How did you ever get your Bajoran and Federation friends to dim the lights on the entire Promenade?" Garak asked.
"Look around you, Garak," said Julian. "No-one else even blinked. Only Cardassians can see the change. Well, and a few other species, possibly including the Gorns, but really, I won't bore you with the xenobiology." The classified xenobiology, that was.
Garak, who had been surveying the Promenade with all the intensity of a man who had once been a major part of a terrifying order of spies, suddenly turned that sharp gaze on Julian himself. "You did this," he said, stepping closer, and his tone was deliberate, each word like a sharply honed knife, "permanently?"
"You're not the only one with connections," Julian replied. He fought the urge to lean back, away from the way Garak loomed into his personal space. He wouldn't give ground. His fear did nothing but isolate Garak, and confirm his wrongheaded ideas about the Federation, Starfleet, Humans, and Julian himself. Even if every cell in his brain seemed to short circuit with Garak's proximity.
"You impossible creature," Garak said, and kissed him.