Chapter Text
There was very little Elim Garak didn’t plan for.
In the Order, not having a proper plan meant facing the wrong end of a disrupter or a gavel. Survival. On Terok Nor, to a lesser degree, it meant the same. Even in the overlap, back when Garak had been surrounded by his own people, the station hadn’t exactly been comfortable. Sunken faced Bajorans, sneering military men. Dukat. The tail end of the Occupation had been worse, the panic heavy in the air, the desperation, the missive from Tain.
And now, with every other Cardassian gone, Garak had very little left to keep him moving. He’d be damned if he gave Tain the satisfaction of his demise. And so he planned.
Every day at 0600 hours Elim Garak would wake up in his desolate quarters, note the entrances and exits, the disrupter under the end table, the knife in between the sheets. Laboriously, he’d drag himself out of bed.
Every day at 0700, Garak would begin to dress for the day. The newly-christened Deep Space Nine was colder than Terok Nor had ever been. Meaning, of course, he’d had to begin layering his clothes.
Which did nothing for his figure.
Every day at 0800, Garak would make the march to his tailor’s shop. The promenade was slowly coming to life again. Bajorans in uniforms of their newly established Provisional Government, more every day. Scattered Starfleet engineers, slowly swelling in number for the past two weeks. Garak ignored the stares and glares as he opened his shop. They were easy enough to tune out in the blinding lights of the station.
Every day at 1115, Garak took an hour lunch break at the Replimat and did not think about how the Cardassian offerings had been purged with the medical files and most of the useful schematics.
He spoke to no one.
No one spoke to him.
Every day at 1600, Garak made his way back to his quarters and read. He would wait a respectable two hours before eating dinner in his room, alone. He would drink a single glass of kanar, read some more. Shuffle off to bed. Check the sheets, end table. Entrances. Exits. Repeat.
Plans and routine kept him alive, kept him moving. Even as the station changed hands, for Garak, materially it was all about the same. And when he woke up the morning of what the Federaji had deemed a “Wednesday,” it seemed little had changed.
Garak woke, scanned the room. He selected an outfit for himself and, despite the fact he knew few of Terok Nor’s new inhabitants would appreciate it, dressed himself up as nicely as he was able. As he raked a t’ssavit through his black, feathery hair—
Garak paused and glanced discreetly around the room. It appeared as empty as it had last time he checked. Of course. It was probably nothing. Garak forced himself to resume his task.
As he raked a t—
Garak froze. There it was again. He was definitely hearing a voice. He lowered the t’ssavit and clutched it loosely in his clawed hand. Not the most effective of weapons, but it worked well enough in a pinch.
“Is somebody there?” he called out to the room, posture rigid, face carefully neutral. If someone was watching him as it seemed they were, they’d already seen him react the first time. Besides, it seemed like someone was taunting him in some way. Best to confront it and move on.
No response came. Ah well. Garak supposed if someone was going to attack him, he, at the very least, could look his best. He sighed and raised the t’ssavit to his hair again.
As he raked a t’ssavit through his black, feathery hair, there was little thought in his mind outside of the day’s routine.
Interesting. Clearly the voice thought it knew something Garak didn’t, though for now it seemed passive enough. If he wanted answers, Garak thought, he should probably go about his day as usual. If more cautiously. Just because the voice thought him unaware didn’t mean he had to be.
Garak finished getting ready for the day with no further comments from the voice about his breakfast or his attire or anything else. It might have been a one off, but Garak wasn’t naive enough to entertain that idea. It also might not have been the best idea to leave his quarters unattended given the voice, but mysterious narrator or no, he had a business to run and a schedule to keep. He could hardly do anything about the voice with no information, and it seemed the best way to gather it was to pretend everything was alright. And that, Garak could do.
A man without his experience would have taken a tentative step out of his quarters. Garak simply plowed on with his day. Out of his quarters, through the rest of the habitat ring, into the just big enough turbolift.
“Promenade,” he told the computer, distracted enough, at least, to not think of the uncomfortable closeness of the turbolift’s walls.
The station was busy today, more so than it had been for the past two weeks when Starfleet was just beginning to arrive. Engineers, mostly, and some security. Unsurprising given the state his countrymen had left Deep Space Nine—even if it wasn’t official policy for the Cardassian military to sabotage an abandoned post, Dukat’s men had seemed to particularly relish it.
It seemed that they’d managed to make the station habitable enough for science officers and medical personnel by now if the colors the new Federaji wore were any indication. Yellow and blue shouldered Starfleet piled into the turbolift as it descended floors, their bodies and boxes filling it uncomfortably. Garak didn’t nervously fidget with his sleeve. He didn’t do anything.
The Starfleet officers, their parcels, the scattered Bajorans—they filled Garak’s senses until he could think of nothing but them.
Nothing until the voice decided to chime in again, mused Garak.
Despite their arrival to the station, they did little to shake him from his planned routine, the simple, efficient steps.
True enough.
He had no way of knowing that this particular day would be one that stuck with him, far more than this turbolift and its inhabitants, than the banality of his morning, than the day of mind-numbing work ahead of him. No. Garak just thought it was a Wednesday.
Could they hear that? Of the congregants of the turbolift, the various species all crammed together, all of them were supposed to have better hearing than Cardassians did. And yet, none of them seemed to even flinch at the words, or look around. The turbolift was silent, save for its gentle whirring and the occasional beep of a PADD. Was it just him?
Garak’s exit into the frigid air of the promenade was a relief. He didn’t think he was going mad, but did anyone? Starfleet was known for their bizarre misadventures, maybe this was some side effect of foolish, gung-ho exploration that Garak hadn’t been briefed on but everyone else had been. Garak wove around the scattered bustle of the promenade. No, Starfleet liked avoiding panic, they would have said something.
Garak noted Quark’s irritatingly giddy grin as he passed, the Ferengi bowing and scraping to entice the new customer base into his wretched bar. He at the very least, would develop an organic customer base or he wouldn’t. Not being a tailor anymore wouldn’t exactly be the end of the world.
But a tailor he was, for now at least. Garak entered his little shop and sighed. He doubted he’d get many customers, but that wasn’t an excuse to sit around doing nothing all day. He’d been researching Federaji styles and was in the middle of measuring the brocade for an Andorian sport coat before he closed up the day before. It would be simple enough to finish the whole thing before lunch, if he wasn’t interrupted. Garak laid the fabric out on his work table and started cutting material for the lapels.
The sudden influx of Federation doctors and scientists had thrown off the rhythm of Garak’s morning.
Garak sighed. This again. He grabbed his scissors.
The disruption was enough Garak found himself unsettled and distracted. Distracted enough he cut the lapels of his Andorian sport coat an inch too thin and would now have to start the project over again.
Garak looked down at the thick, lushly patterned fabric in his hands and swore. The voice was right: they were the wrong size. And it was right about the distraction, if not the reason. It perturbed him the voice had followed him from his quarters into his shop, and more so that it seemed the voice wasn’t being played from any speaker or other such device, but projected into his mind.
There wasn’t a question of whether it was his own internal voice—it was a touch lower, for one, and speaking Federation Standard, not Cardassi. It seemed younger too, though it had a confidence in its words that made it seem older, though not close to Garak’s own middle age.
Garak lifted his scissors again to salvage the lapels. He could worry about that later.
Quark grinned. Business was booming! Beyond booming. And to think he had planned to cut and run after Cardassia pulled out. He’d rolled his eyes at Rom’s tepid suggestion to see how things were going before fleeing for Ferenginar, but the way things were going now were almost enough to give his idiot brother a raise.
Quark had been worried when he’d heard the Cardassians were pulling out. Bajorans were nice enough but dead broke and prudes besides. He’d been doubly worried when he heard the Federation was taking over. Those barbarians didn’t even use money. But Blessed Exchequer were they hedonists.
Where were they getting the latinum, Quark wondered. It didn’t really matter as long as it was rolling in. Already he’d had to order another shipment of Human vodka, and twice now Andorian brandy. The dabo tables were filled to bursting every night, and usually into the late into morning. His holosuites were booked up until the Gratitude festival, and the way things were going he’d need to get a new copy of Vulcan Love Slave.
So what if he had to hide the Romulan ale a little better? So what if his stock of kanar would probably go bad? Profits had never been higher. Life was good.
Garak’s self-appointed lunch hour crept up and passed him by. He’d just finished the sport coat and was about to try his hand at a set Betazoid travelling gloves with the remainder of the fabric when he glanced at the time and realized he was too late to miss the rush at the Replimat. The rush which was guaranteed to be worse with all the new personnel. Garak sighed. The alternative was Quark’s, which was no alternative at all.
The Replimat was, as he’d expected, choked with patrons. There was very little hope of being able to tuck himself into a quiet corner and finish the volume of Tellarite poetry he’d brought with him. Most of the tables were packed, and even with his poor Cardassian hearing the noise level was threatening to give Garak a migraine. He sighed again and wove his way to the replicators.
Garak was inching past a pair of Vulcan engineers when he saw him. Of course, he’d read the personnel files of all the upcoming senior staff weeks ago, and all non-official documents relating to them. Starfleet wasn’t as good at recordkeeping as any given Cardassian, naturally, but they were still commendably thorough. Garak was more than familiar with the new CMO’s, well, everything. His GPA at the academy, hobbies, date of birth, blood type—Garak had even managed to find logs of all his holosuite activities from back on Earth going back seven years. But even with all his research, Garak was still taken aback by just how—
The personnel photos didn’t do him justice. Julian Subatoi Bashir was the most beautiful creature Elim Garak had ever seen.
Hell. Not now.
The new station CMO was sitting alone at the Replimat, absorbed in a PADD with a cooling cup of Tarkalean tea at his elbow. The medical blues highlighted the slope of his shoulders, the subtle strength of them. His long, surgeon’s fingers framed the copper curve of his jaw. And his plush lips were parted ever so slightly as he took in a gentle, contented sigh.
Garak found himself wondering if those lips tasted like Tarkalean tea. If those fingers were as skilled and clever as they hinted at being. If those shoulders would look as enticing without the flirtatious color of the uniform.
In fact, Garak was so wrapped up in his study of the lovely Dr. Bashir that he didn’t notice the rapidly approaching Bajoran security officer set on grabbing a raktajino from the Replimat even if it meant bowling right into him.
Just as the voice said it, Garak felt the irate Bajoran woman’s hard elbows in his sternum.
“Watch it,” she snapped, glaring up at him with thinly veiled loathing.
“My apologies,” murmured Garak, distracted. The woman just huffed and brushed by him. The voice could not have picked a worse time to start up again. More irritating than the timing, however, was its disquietingly correct narration of his inner thoughts. Descriptions of Garak’s surroundings and actions were one thing, but his thoughts about Bashir had not exactly been written on his face, he was sure of it. So how had it known then?
Surely it wasn’t the wire—this seemed a very specific and very odd side effect even if the voice wasn’t speaking Standard. Some new implant maybe? But then, when had it been implanted? And by whom?
Tain seemed content enough to leave him miserably alone without adding a new, bizarre torment to the mix. The Tal’shiar lacked the imagination for something like this. The Bajorans definitely didn’t have the technology to pull it off, and Garak was hardly a high-priority candidate for a torture such as this if it was revenge for the occupation. Starfleet maybe? But no, this didn’t seem like their style.
Even if he hadn’t figured it was a voice in his head, the lack of reaction from the Replimat denizens was confirmation once again that it wasn’t being transmitted out loud. It was just a voice for him, focused on him.
Well. Garak wasn’t going to let some mysterious narrator get in the way of him going about his business. There was nothing he could do with the information he had, so he’d simply wait. In the meantime—
Garak wasn’t sure what it was that drew him to the doctor’s table. Professional information hunting, maybe, personal curiosity. Bashir’s solitariness at the table. But as he placed a gray hand on the doctor’s lithe shoulders and sat himself at the opposite chair, the answer was simple in the light of Bashir’s wide, brown eyes.
Lust.
Garak managed to school his features to conceal his irritation at the voice just in time for Dr. Bashir to stare agog at him.
“You’re—ah—you’re the Cardassian,” he said. Garak smiled.
“A brilliant observation, doctor, though I do prefer ‘Garak.’ It is my name after all.” Bashir blushed.
“Right, of course. I’m sorry, Mr. Garak.”
“Just plain, simple Garak,” he corrected pleasantly.
“Just Garak, then.” Bashir seemed to remember himself. He held out a hand to Garak. “I’m Julian Bashir, the station CMO.” Garak took it.
The mammalian heat of Julian’s hand felt hot enough to burn him. Propriety dictated a single shake and then a release, but that did little to dull the ache as Garak retrieved his hand again from the doctor’s grasp.
Garak’s eye didn’t twitch. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, my dear doctor.”
“And you as well, Garak.” Bashir seemed to mean it too. Fascinating. His attempt at contact with the station’s Chief of Engineering had been half as long and had been peppered with far more swears. Garak enjoyed the change of pace. He leaned forward in his chair.
“If I may, could I ask what it is you’re reading? It’s only, you seemed so engrossed with it I couldn’t help but wonder what it was that enraptured you so.”
“Nothing terribly exciting, I’m afraid,” said Bashir, genuine remorse writ large across his features. “I’m reviewing what we could salvage of the old medical files.”
“I’m surprised there was anything left at all.” Though it shouldn’t have been. Skrain Dukat wasn’t exactly known for his competence.
“Yes, well, Chief O’Brian managed to find some things that managed to escape the purge. Not a lot, but I figure I shouldn’t let his hard work go to waste.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, that’s not a terribly exciting answer.”
“On the contrary! I’ve learned quite a lot about my home’s new overseers. You seem a very competent bunch.”
“We try to be.”
“It seems the station is in great hands.”
“Thank you. I just wish I had a more interesting answer for you—I do read things other than medical reports and academic papers,” said Bashir, taking a sip from his tea.
“Like what? I’m always in the market for something new to read.” And someone interesting to talk about it with. And the good doctor seemed to be a very interesting man indeed. “One has a surprising amount of downtime as a tailor.”
“Well,” started Bashir, grinning broadly with barely contained excitement, “have you read any Terran literature before?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure.” Blatantly untrue, not that Bashir needed to know.
“I—well I’ve been getting into the plays of Shakespeare again lately and I’d love someone to talk to about it.”
“I’d never turn down a good literature discussion,” Garak demured. Of course it was fucking Shakespeare. Garak never had much in the way of luck. “Who is this ‘Shakespeare?’”
“Some would call him the greatest playwright in Earth’s history.” Garak fought a derisive snort.
“High praise.”
“He is brilliant, though I do prefer Basu from the 23rd century personally, especially their early work. But there’s no better ambassador to classic Earth literature than Shakespeare.”
“What play would you recommend?”
“Well, I’m reading Hamlet right now, and it is one of his most beloved works. That’s probably a good start.” At least it wasn’t Romeo and Juliet. Small mercies.
“In that case I’d love to read it.”
Bashir’s smile grew wider. “Wonderful. I’m afraid I don’t have a Cardassian translation—” Garak held up a hand.
“No need, I speak Standard.”
“You do?”
“Oh, yes. And Klingon, Romulan, two Bajoran dialects, and Betazed, though only conversationally I’m afraid.”
“That’s amazing!”
“Just a hobby of mine,” said Garak, preening.
“A useful one for a tailor, I’d imagine.”
“And more so for a lover of literature.” Among other things.
Bashir reached down into a bag at his feet and rustled around for a moment before moving a well-loved isolinear data rod and presenting it to Garak. “Here, I have the Standard translation of Hamlet on me.”
“My dear doctor I couldn’t possibly—“
“Don’t worry, I have another one in my quarters, and a print edition I got back in the Academy. Would you—would you like to meet again to talk about it when you’re done with it? Back here, I mean, for lunch?”
For once, Garak wasn’t lying when he replied. “I’d love nothing more.”
The station was big, and that meant there was room to explore. And the talented Molly O’Brian was not one to be held back by something as silly as orders from her mother.
Molly raced through the hallways of the habitat ring, legs newly hit by a growth spurt taking her farther faster. She’d heard one of the engineers talking about a grey, scaly dragon somewhere on the station, and if there was one, Molly’d be the one to discover it.
A shout from behind her. Mommy had noticed she’d escaped again. But she’d barely made it to the turbolift! Well. If Mommy wanted her to sit around in their boring, dragonless quarters, Mommy would just have to catch her.
The station was calling her name.
Odo arrived in Garak’s shop about an hour or so after he’d finished his lunch with the lovely Dr. Bashir, meaning he arrived almost twenty minutes later than Garak had expected.
“Ah! Constable.” Garak affixed his best customer service smile, knowing it would annoy him. He wasn’t disappointed. “How wonderful it is to see you. I know you don’t wear clothes per se but have you finally decided to take me up on my offer to come up with some amalgamation of off-duty attire?” Odo just glowed at him. More's the pity.
“Cut the pleasantries, Garak. You and I both know you’re up to something.”
“You’ve caught me,” sighed Garak melodramatically. “I’m making the most dastardly pair of gloves. Will my malfeasance never end?”
“I’m talking about your meeting with Dr. Bashir.”
“Having me followed now, Constable? I’m flattered, usually you reserve that sort of thing for Quark. It makes a simple tailor like me feel appreciated.”
Odo’s amalgamation of a face curved into a smirk. He knew something then. “I didn’t have to have you followed. Dr. Bashir burst into Ops right after gushing about his lunch with ‘the spy.’” Garak bit back a laugh. It was good to know his reputation proceeded him then. The good doctor’s enthusiasm about their meeting was gratifying. Under other circumstances he’d blush at the attention.
“I hadn’t realized Dr. Bashir’d had time to get lunch with anyone else,” purred Garak.
Odo folded his arms. “Mmhmm. Because you’re just a plain and simple tailor, is that it?”
“Exactly. I don’t know who he could be referring to. Goodness, a spy—do you think we’re in any danger?”
“I don’t know why you even bother with the pretense,” snorted Odo. Easy; the fun of it. And besides, active spy or not it was never a good idea to let certain tools get rusty.
“I imagine tailoring is far more lucrative than spycraft,” Garak answered. Odo scoffed.
“Right. You ‘imagine.’ You’re up to something, Garak, and I want to know what.” Like he would just up and tell him.
“Constable, I can assure you the only thing I’m ‘up to’ at the moment is sewing.”
“So you’re just exchanging sewing tips with Dr. Bashir, are you?”
“Not at all! We’re talking about literature.”
“Literature,” Odo repeated.
“A foreign concept to you, I know, what with those bodice rippers you insist on reading—“
“How did you—”
“—but yes, literature. A friendly intellectual conversation.” Garak smiled at Odo genteely. If he was able, Garak was sure Odo would have purpled at that. Good, Odo should be kept on his toes.
For his part, Odo managed to regain his composure relatively quickly. “With someone who just so happens to be a member of the new senior staff.”
“A coincidence, I assure you.”
“Right, of course. And you approached him because he just seemed so intellectual and literary, I take it?”
Garak shrugged. “He was reading after all. And come now, Constable, you can’t imagine a reason someone would approach a lovely young doctor sitting by himself for a chat? With all those romance so-called novels you consume?” Maybe that was giving a little too much of his true motivations away, but it was worth it for the look on the Constable’s face. And it wasn’t like he’d believe Garak regardless of what he said. The perks of being a habitual liar.
Odo’s jaw worked furiously but all he managed to spit out was, “I’m on to you, Garak.”
“I’m sure. Lovely as always to talk to you, Constable.” Garak looked pointedly up at the large, decorative clock on his wall and then back down the gloves he was working on, ignoring Odo, who blessedly only seethed for a moment or two more before harrumphing out of Garak’s shop again.
All told, it was rather flattering that Odo thought he was up to something. Maybe he was, passively, but if Garak was being honest, thoughts of espionage had shifted to the back of his mind recently. Who would he be spying for? Tain had made it very clear his services were no longer required, and if he wasn’t gathering intelligence for Cardassia, he certainly wasn’t going to do it for anyone else.
Oh sure, he combed through confidential databases and bugged the occasional office, but that was more out of habit than anything else. And sometimes sneaking around Odo’s office added a bit of excitement to his day, not that he’d done so in a little while.
No, despite what Odo might think, despite what someone like him ought to have done, Garak didn’t approach Bashir out of anything other than a desire to talk to him. It was embarrassing. Sure he could come up with other rationalizations in his mind, but that was little more than deluding himself.
Let Odo think what he wanted. It was probably better for Garak’s reputation that he did. It was best to not let it get out that Garak was going soft.
There was little over a month left at this posting and already Benjamin Sisko could feel himself getting restless. He longed to go out into the stars again, feel the artificial gravity keeping his feet firm on the ground as he hung in the deep, lonely black of space. The hours of each of his shifts felt longer and longer as he inched his way to a command of his own.
Soon. There was still a lot to do before he got there. Like, for instance, cooking dinner. He was thinking rib roast tonight, with the Bolian sweet roots he’d been saving for a night like this one. Prepping the meal wouldn’t take long, and would leave him plenty of time to finish up some last reports in the meantime. And, more importantly, check in on his son.
Smiling to himself, Ben knocked on his son’s door. It hissed open.
“Jake-o! What are you doing here?”
“Writing,” came the dull, monosyllabic response. Ah, teenagers.
“It doesn’t look like it,” said Ben, leaning in the doorway. “From here it looks like you’re standing on your desk with your eyes closed.
“Do you ever think about jumping off a view deck?” Jake asked, opening his eyes. Ben’s blood ran cold. Jake was standing at the edge of the desk, toes dangling off the edge. Ben took a cautious step into the room.
“I can’t say that I do. Jake, are you alright?”
“No, I’m not alright, Dad. I’m stuck.”
“Stuck,” Ben repeated.
“With maybe the worst case of writer's block I’ve ever had,” sighed Jake, hopping gracelessly off his desk and plopping himself onto his bed.
“Oh. That’s pretty bad.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So you’re thinking about jumping off a view deck.”
“Not me —I’m thinking of interesting ways to die. For a story.”
Ben breathed a sigh of relief. “As long as it’s not for you.” His son, the writer. You’d think he’d be better at communicating for how eloquent he was on the page. Ben made his way over to where Jake had plopped himself, long, coltish limbs splayed around him and lips pursed in a grimace.
“It’s for my main character. I can see everything happening in the story so clearly! I’ve got his life, the plot—I can even see his face if I think about it hard enough. I just can’t figure out what his death should be!”
“What a pity.” Ben sat on his son’s bed and squeezed Jake’s knee.
“Dad, I’m serious.”
“So am I. Can I help at all?”
“You don’t even think about jumping off of decks, how can you?” scoffed Jake. He winced. “Sorry. I don’t mean that.”
“No, I understand. You’re frustrated.” Heavens knows Ben could get snappy when frustrated.
“Yeah. Still though.” The room fell silent.
“What about falling out of an airlock?” offered Ben. Jake let out a hum.
“That could work but…”
“But?”
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right,” sighed Jake, sitting up. He frowned at Ben, who bumped his shoulder with his own.. “He’s not that type of guy. Way too alert, for one. And as much as I’d like to, I can’t just shove him out of an airlock.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Jake said, flopping back down on the bed in a charmingly teenaged way, limbs, once again, akimbo. “It’s like I said, I’m just stuck.”
“It happens to the best of us.” Ben could hear the oven beep in the other room. Dinner would be ready soon. He felt Jake shift positions next to him.
“Yeah,” sighed Jake. “I know that, Dad. I just wish I knew how to kill Elim Garak.”