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The Tarlak Gardens, at the very centre of the city, had at one point been the playground of a young Cardassian boy with no prospects for the future and even fewer friends.
Elim Garak had not had an abundance of toys to play with, but his mother had been an excellent seamstress. From scraps of cloth and leftover yarn she’d crafted dolls and puppets - at her son’s timid request, she’d carefully hand-stitched tiny military uniforms and formal gowns, letting the boy pick through her basket of unused fabrics to choose his favourite colours for the dresses. He’d brought the dolls along to Tarlak, playing out weddings and military processions and Union days among the monuments, giving each character their own, distinct voice.
The monuments, yes - they had been beautiful. Stark white marble against the orange sky, empty eyes of Legates and Guls staring into the distance, their faces chiseled into a blank but undeniable determination. They had seemed so large to him then, unconquerable - when Garak returned to the same spot ten, twenty, thirty years later, they seemed less like gods towering above him and more like an army of ghosts, shoulder to shoulder, the ceremonial daggers at their hips gone dull with the passage of time.
His uncle, the person who had made sure that the grounds were well-kept and orderly, had been dead for decades already. Oh, the gardens were still neat, of course, the beds of flowers perfectly straight and carefully weeded, the dust meticulously swept from the mosaic floor each morning.
And then there was the Fire, and there was no one left with the time or energy to spend on the long departed, not when there were children starving in the street.
-
“Legate Menik,” Kira reads, holding her translator film against the bronze plaque at the base of the closest statue. “What was he up to?”
“He was the leader of the military campaign in the Betreka Nebula incident, if memory serves.”
Kira stands from her crouch, brushes the dust from her knees, and slips the translator film back into her pocket. Garak suspects that she doesn’t actually need it to read the Kardasi script - but who is he to deny her some manufactured distance from her own brutal past? They’re already standing in the middle of a history they’d both rather forget.
“Too bad about his nose.”
“I think he looks quite fetching without it, actually. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Kira shoots him a quick smile over her shoulder, and moves on.
“And who’s this?”
Garak follows her to the next statue, carefully stepping between the snaking vines that have overtaken most of the neatly laid stonework on the ground. It's crawling its way upwards to circle the ruined monuments in a lover’s embrace - or perhaps it’s a prison, an eternity wrapped in mekla, a death shroud in the making.
He bends, brushing the dust covering the plaque with a handkerchief produced from his pocket. “Legate Jesin. I don’t know much about him, I’m afraid. Terrible haircut, though.”
“I thought all children on Cardassia were forced to reel off all the military leaders before you even learned your multiplication tables.”
A year ago, five, ten, his answer might have been different. But Garak is tired, and hungry, and sick of stories that lead to nothing more than death and ruin.
“History wasn’t very high on the list of priorities when it came to my formal education,” he says, wincing when his knees pop as he stands. “In fact, education wasn’t very high on the list of priorities set out for me.”
“Learn by doing, huh?” Kira says, shooting him a sideways glance. “I know a little something about that.”
Kira, Garak thinks, has a way of extending her hand towards him in a way that doesn’t make him flinch back on instinct. Back in Mila’s basement, she was the one who would jump into action, to shake the would-be revolutionaries out of their self-pitying melancholy and make them act, make them both believe that there was something they could still do, still accomplish. And later, when Damar was reduced to a death rattle cradled in Garak’s arms, she had been the one to snap him out of his despair, make him move.
Without her, Cardassia would no longer exist, not even in the broken and scorched state of the present. Not that she is being showered with praise and flowers by the populace - Garak is not sure if Kira even realises the fact herself.
The Commander has already moved on to the next monument, the gravel crunching underneath her heavy boots. The translator film is tucked away safely in her uniform pocket.
“Gul Ayet… that almost sounds Bajoran.”
“So you do read Kardasi,” Garak says, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.
Kira just looks at him for a beat, then sighs.
“It made things easier, if we didn’t have to both crack the coded supply routes and translate Central Command orders at the same time.”
“Of course,” Garak says. For a long moment, they are both quiet.
Kira doesn’t ask about the statue of Gul Dukat. If she did, Garak would tell her that it was already toppled when the Jem’Hadar descended upon the city, spirited away in the middle of the night and broken up for parts. Central Command never did like admitting to mistakes in judgement. Better to sweep it all under the rug, pretend that they had never given a man like that unrestricted power, that the populace had never celebrated in the street when the deal was struck with the Dominion.
But Garak is tired, and hungry, and sick of old monuments to death and deception. He’s had enough.
“Why don’t we take a break? There’s a little restaurant just off that way.” Garak waves his hand towards the setting sun in the west. “Federaji food, mostly, for the aid workers.”
“Sure,” Kira says, stretching out her back and wiping the sweat from her brow. “I think we’re done here, anyway.”
-
Over watery coffee and chocolate-flavoured ration bars, Kira tells him about the station. About Quark’s latest schemes, the new chief engineer, the cafe that has moved into the space where Garak’s Clothiers used to be. Garak listens, interjecting with a follow-up question or a hum whenever the moment calls for it. In truth, though, he’s waiting for a name in particular - in the meantime, he lets his mind wander.
“... and after Ezri broke up with Julian, she decided that… What?”
Garak has set his coffee cup down too hard against the saucer, the clatter drawing stares from a nearby table. Careless.
“Oh, nothing, I just tire of the taste of this Federaji drink. Please, do go on.”
Kira eyes him for a long moment over the table, apparently weighing her options.
“You really haven’t spoken at all?” she asks, finally, then snaps her mouth shut. “Sorry.”
“Not to worry, Commander. We weren’t very close, Doctor Bashir and I.”
“That’s sloppy work, Garak.”
“Fine,” he concedes. “We weren’t very close, those final years.”
“Better. Approaching the truth, I think.” Kira is still watching him carefully across the table, running her finger along the rim of her empty cup.
Garak sighs, leaning back in his seat. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m a bit out of practice when it comes to deception, it appears.”
“Seems that way. I’m not sure if it suits you.”
“Neither am I,” Garak says, tapping his knuckles on the table. “But let us return to the matter at hand, Commander.”
“Sure,” Kira says, dropping her hands into her lap. “But only if you start calling me Nerys.”
“What about Kira?”
“Good enough.”
-
On the walk back to Garak’s house, they pass by the gardens again. Kira stops for a moment, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sunset with her hand. The destroyed statues look even more pitiful in the soft light, small white flowers at their feet swaying in the breeze. At the far end of the garden, two children are playing, clambering over the marble feet and toppled heads of the people who didn’t live to see the destruction they had wrought upon their world. Decades, centuries, wasted.
But there are flowers growing, and children playing. Garak forces himself to focus on their young voices, bright and lively, as they chase each other around among the vines.
“It could work,” Kira says, after a long silence. “I think it could work. But do you think you could convince the rest of the Cardassians of that, too?”
“Let me worry about that,” Garak says. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I do have some sway in the government.”
“They must be mad to let you run amok in there,” Kira says, and pushes lightly against his shoulder.
“I’m doing nothing of the sort,” Garak sniffs. “I’m merely nudging things along, here and there.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
“And you shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Commander.”
“Nerys,” she says, shortly.
“Kira.”
She nods, almost to herself, and starts walking. “What are you going to call it?” she asks, when Garak has caught up to her, falling into step at her side.
“Oh, I have a few ideas,” Garak says. “If it’s supposed to be a memorial to the Occupation, it has to represent the glory of our time on Bajor, of course, and everything we did to help the Bajoran people in their time of need… Maybe something to honour Gul Dukat?”
The shove against his shoulder sends him teetering off-balance, this time, but she grabs his arm before he can make his collision with the dusty cobblestones below, slipping her arm underneath his elbow.
“Fine,” she says, “I’ll come up with a name.”