Chapter Text
In retrospect, Sisko’s expression really should have been warning enough.
“Dr. Bashir,” Sisko had said. “I have something to ask of you that I should never ask.”
“That sounds ominous,” he’d said. He hadn’t fully been paying attention. There was a fresh study on Bajoran epigenetics and the impact of exposure to certain ore refining compounds that was cued up on the padd on his desk in the infirmary, and this meeting was an unfortunate interruption. “What is it that you need?”
Sisko had cleared his throat. “You know that the station was damaged very badly in the recent attack.”
Who could miss it? Half the machines in the infirmary weren’t working properly. “I thought Miles was working on that.”
“I won’t bore you with the details,” Sisko had said. “We need items that only the Cardassians can provide.”
“That sounds like a bit of a challenge.” They weren’t exactly on good terms with the Cardassians. Or non-shooting terms.
“There’s—another station like Deep Space Nine.” He’d been able to hear the disgust in Sisko, the way that whatever Sisko wanted to ask was eating at him, and Julian’s stomach had clenched a little. “It’s called Empok Nor.” Julian turns the name over in his mouth as Sisko keeps talking, as though he won’t be able to go through with—whatever he’s trying to say if Julian interrupts him again. “It has the supplies we need.”
“I’m guessing there’s a catch.” Quite the understatement, there. Julian has always had a gift for that.
“Empok Nor is controlled by some kind of—beast. It’s told Quark that it will provide the parts that we need, but in exchange, it requires a doctor.”
How naive he’d been. “I’d be happy to assist, sir.”
“No,” Sisko had said. “No, it doesn’t want a doctor’s visit. It wants a doctor.”
* * *
Of course he’d said yes. What else was there to say? More than a thousand people on Deep Space Nine, there at the mouth of the wormhole, against his own personal comfort? Surely, whatever this beast was, he could reason with it. Julian is very good at reasoning with people. And with his own particular—gifts—he’s likelier to survive than any other of the station’s doctors might be.
Now, watching Empok Nor grow larger in the viewscreen, he’s not as sanguine. Cardassian stations are designed to be imposing, and this one is worse than Deep Space Nine for the way that the battle scars stitch across it. A section of the habitat ring is hanging on at a strange angle, certainly depressurized. The entire station is dark inside, devoid of the bustle of ships that Julian associates with Deep Space Nine. Off one of the shuttle bays, he can see some kind of floating bundle. He hopes it’s the parts they need. Whatever is about to happen to him, it can’t be for nothing.
“We’ve been targeted by three different weapons systems, and we’re being hailed,” the Bajoran security officer says. “Audio only.”
“This is Chief Miles O’Brien.” Miles can’t seem to meet Julian’s eyes.
“Have you brought my doctor?” The audio is badly distorted, intentionally or not.
“I’m here,” Julian says.
“Transport him to the coordinates that I have transmitted,” the voice says. “Then I’ll release the supplies that you need.”
“Miles.” Julian clasps his shoulder. “It’s all right.” He hoists one duffel bag in each hand. “I’m ready.”
“Good man.” Miles does look at him then, and Julian sees the sorrow in his eyes. “We’ll find a way to get you back, Julian.” Julian nods, his throat tight. He’s doing this for everyone on Deep Space Nine—for everyone battling the Dominion—but it doesn’t mean that he likes it.
“Energize,” he says at last, to be the author of his own destiny, and the runabout disappears around him.
He re-materializes in a dark cargo bay. “Hello?” he calls. “This is Doctor Bashir.” It’s shockingly hot inside.
There’s no one there with him, but that distorted voice says over the comm system, “I’ll be with you momentarily, doctor.” It’s a very long moment, long enough that he begins to explore the cargo bay. The control console is dead, but when he presses the door control, it opens onto another dim hallway. Quark told them that the stations are identical and Julian believes it as he walks gingerly down the corridor. He can picture this particular spot on Deep Space Nine, though there’s a good deal less destruction in this corridor, for all that it’s dark. He knows his way to the infirmary from here, and since the creature—whatever it is—demanded a doctor in particular, he assumes that’s where he’ll be needed. After a few minutes, it occurs to him to say, “Computer, lights,” and the lights blaze on around him. It gets warmer and warmer as he walks until he’s sweating. His feet carry him to the infirmary, which is—well, it’s intact in its Cardassian iteration, which is hardly what he’s used to working with. But he’s brought everything that he could reasonably carry with him, as well as the replicator formulas for a variety of equipment, and he begins to set up the infirmary. What else is there to do, after all? He chose the frontier, didn’t he? Is it any different than all those times that he started over, every time his parents moved them?
Well, yes, it is. Those were only new schools, new classmates who would resent him when he surpassed them. This is some kind of—monster who’s traded away station parts to obtain him, for whatever obtuse purpose. He hears someone enter before they say, “Very industrious, Doctor,” and it’s not at all like the voice over the comm.
When Julian turns, slowly, he expects to see something truly monstrous—something as externally freakish as he is internally. He’s not disappointed. It’s half in shadow, but it looks like the prehistoric forebear to a Cardassian: it’s at least seven feet tall and silver-skinned with an exaggerated scoop-shaped horn in the center of its forehead. Its shoulders are broad and hulking, and the bony ridges running down its forehead and around its eyes are formed out of stiff scales reminiscent of armor; those along its jawline and neck are far thicker than a modern-day Cardassian. One of its hands is visible in the light and Julian sees curved claws.
“You’re the—”
“The Beast of Empok Nor,” it—he?—says with some relish. The crisp voice is at sharp odds with the face from which it issues. “In the flesh.”
Julian steels himself and offers a hand in introduction. “Dr. Julian Bashir,” he says. “I’m—here to help.”
“Help, indeed.” The Beast looks him over from head to toe. “Starfleet does make them pretty, doesn’t it.”
Julian stiffens—and the funny thing is, it’s the word make that bothers him far more than pretty. He’s confident in his own strength, if he needs it, but the secret that lurks under everything—that’s far more dangerous. “What should I call you?”
“You don’t like ‘Beast’?” There’s amusement somewhere in that dark voice.
“It seems a bit impersonal.” If Julian were anyone else, his heart would be positively rabbiting. “I imagine you have a given name, or had one.”
There’s a long moment of silence, and then Julian sees the gleam of blue eyes in that monstrous face. “Garak. You may call me Garak.”
“Well then, Garak. Pleased to meet you.”
“Come now, Doctor. There’s no need for lies between us. You needn’t pretend to be pleased to meet me, or to be here, not when your people sold you for spare parts.”
Julian bristles at the word ‘sold.’ “I assumed you were in need of medical attention,” he says. “I’m a doctor.”
“Yes, of course, a doctor.” Garak steps closer, out of the shadows, and Julian keeps his breathing even. There’s a set of long scars across Garak’s face, as though something with a great wide handspan clawed him there, and another along the thick ridge that runs directly from his shoulderblade to his neck. In the light, Julian can see that Garak is wearing only a thin pair of pants and a loose white shirt buttoned halfway up his chest; the gaps reveal more scarred slashes.
“What is it you’d like me to do?”
Garak gestures at his body as though it’s the most obvious thing. “Fix me.”
“Fix you.”
“You don’t think I was born like this, do you?” Julian can recognize frustration even on this alien face. “No, I don’t know what happened—all I know is that I woke up on this station, alone, like this.”
“You’re Cardassian,” Julian ventures. This, he knows—the examination of the patient, the questions to determine etiology of the disease, identify symptoms, and rule out possible diagnoses.
“A brilliant deduction.”
“Do you know how long you’ve been here?”
“No.” Garak doesn’t elaborate.
Julian gestures at the examination table. “I’ll need you to be a little more specific,” he says. “Sit down.” He doesn’t see anything like a medical tricorder, so he rummages in his own bag until he finds one.
Garak flinches away when Julian reaches toward him. “You can scan me, ask me questions, whatever you please, Doctor, so long as you don’t touch me.”
“I’ll certainly endeavor not to.” Garak isn’t the first patient to try to avoid contact. “But I can’t promise that whatever treatment I’m able to devise will be entirely contact-free.”
“Until then.” Garak sits on the table and allows Julian to begin scanning him with the medical tricorder. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here, Doctor. I remember a time before it. But there’s a long blank period—a time without conscious thought that I know existed, when I remembered nothing and didn’t mark the passage of time. Years, perhaps.”
“You know that the Occupation is over.” The medical tricorder doesn’t know what to make of Garak. “Can I access the medical databases on this station? I need to calibrate the tricorder for Cardassian physiology.”
“That terminal there. Yes, I know, though even that I couldn’t tell you if I knew before the—empty time, or only after Quark made contact.”
Julian makes himself busy jury-rigging a connection between his tricorder’s data port and the infirmary’s terminal so that Garak won’t have to look him in the face as he admits all of this. “And after Quark made contact? Do you know how long it’s been since that?”
“I suppose you could check the communication logs for the date,” Garak says. “The passage of time doesn’t have a great deal of meaning to me, here. You’re quite the engineer, for a doctor.”
“Starfleet Medical extension course.” The lie rolls pat off Julian’s tongue, though there’s no reason he should need to tell it. For all Garak knows, engineering of this kind is part of the standard curriculum. “Now, lie back.” Garak is eerily still as Julian scans him from head to toe. The tricorder beeps angrily, over and over, and the picture it paints on the diagnostic screen isn’t pretty. “There’s—extensive scar tissue. Do you recall receiving these injuries?”
Garak laughs a little and gestures at the scars across his face, his neck, his chest. “I was not always the only terrible thing lurking in the depths of Empok Nor, Doctor.”
“And are you now?” Julian realizes how it sounds and doesn’t bother to amend it.
“Certain areas are safe. I can’t speak for the rest.” Garak lifts one clawed hand. “I didn’t have the manual dexterity to operate the medical equipment, at the time.” He’s watching Julian very carefully. They’re speaking Kardasi, Julian realizes. They’ve been speaking Kardasi since he arrived. It’s dangerous, this brain of his—he must have understood Garak better in Kardasi than through the Universal Translator, and so he’d switched to Kardasi automatically, without considering what it revealed. “You’re a clever creature, aren’t you.”
Julian’s face must have revealed his realization about the language they’re speaking. “Second in my class.”
“Second?”
“I mistook a pre-ganglionic fiber for a post-ganglionic nerve.” An explanation even more familiar than his engineering extension course. “Don’t worry, it shouldn’t impact my treatment of you. I never make a mistake twice.”
Garak’s deep-set eyes are hooded. “Naturally.”
“What did you do, before you woke up here? It’s a standard examination question,” Julian says, when Garak hesitates. “I need to know if you might have been exposed to any substances that could have triggered your memory loss, or your—transformation.”
“I was a tailor.” Julian is intimately familiar with the sound of a lie that’s become an article of faith. “On Cardassia Prime. My mother was a housekeeper. My father was a maintenance worker.” The housekeeper story, at least, sounds true. “Are you quite finished with your scans?”
“You can sit up.” Even seated on the exam table, Garak is a head taller than Julian. “I take it you’re not aware of any—Cardassian medical condition that presents this way.”
“I’m a tailor,” Garak repeats.
“All right.” Julian is getting a headache. “All right, I’m done for now. Am I to sleep in the infirmary, or are there quarters that I can use?”
“Quarters. Whichever you want. You can go anywhere in the station,” Garak says, “except the west wing.”
“The—west wing?” It must be a quirk of Kardasi. He’s never heard the station described as having wings before. “Why?”
“It’s forbidden.”
“Oh, thank you, that clarifies it greatly.” Julian is tired and hungry and the headache is getting worse. He hopes there’s a replicator in one of the quarters that can replicate something for him to eat. “All right then.”
“As for the rest of the station, if a door is locked, it’s locked for a reason,” Garak warns. He stands again and it brings him close to Julian, close enough that Julian can feel the heat radiating off his body. The medical tricorder had registered his body temperature at nearly 105 degrees, which the database said was just above normal for a Cardassian. Julian has never been this close to any Cardassian, let alone one half-regressed to some primal ancestor.
“I thought you said I could go anywhere.”
“Yes,” Garak says. “And if you’re stupid enough to go through a locked door, you’ll probably be staying on the other side of it.” He huffs out a short breath. “You should lock your own door at night, too.”
“You’re not the only terrible thing lurking in the bowels of Empok Nor?”
The look Garak gives him is entirely alien. “What should that have to do with it?”
* * *
Julian chooses the quarters closest to the infirmary, after testing the replicator to confirm that it will, at least, produce some kind of edible substance (he scans it with his tricorder to be sure). There’s not much to unpack from his duffel of personal belongings. He slots the data rod with the basic formulas into the replicator—clothes, mostly, as well as padds and basic data input devices. Beyond that, there’s the set of data rods containing his favorite literary collections and a few holovideos. It had felt wrong to bring Kukalaka, who he’d left in the infirmary back on Deep Space Nine to keep some of the younger patients company, and there’s a sort of sick feeling inside him when he thinks about setting out holo-images of his parents, of himself with Miles or Dax or the particular one at Quark’s, when they were all drunker than they should’ve been, before the wars began, when there was only the new adventure of the station. It’s all there, in the replicator patterns—he could produce them if he wanted to. He could decorate this room wall-to-wall with images of the people he’s left behind.
But Julian has spent a lifetime training himself out of that kind of sentiment, at least when it’s dangerous—and every kind of sentiment seems dangerous here. There’s a kind of clever cruelty to Garak, a mercurial nature that Julian knows better than to trust. “Doctor Bashir,” Garak says over the comm, and Julian resolutely does not jump. “Please join me for dinner.”
Julian considers his answer. He’s running on adrenaline now, primarily, adrenaline and the small amount of edible gruel that came out of his replicator, and he’s going to crash eventually but it won’t be any time soon. “Where?”
It’s the replimat, on Deep Space Nine. Here, it’s a room with a long table and a single chair at either end. Garak is already sitting at one end, and he growls, “Sit.” The light is dim, probably a little too dim for ordinary Human eyes, but Julian can manage fine
“Is someone going to be serving us?”
Garak plants one elbow on either side of the platter in front of him and growls, “Zabu steak.” Two thick and very bloody steaks appear.
“Is that a single-source replicator installed in the table?” Julian has heard of them, but they’re not exactly standard-issue on reclaimed space stations. “Does it know anything non-Cardassian?”
Garak shrugs. He’s dug his claws into one of the steaks and is ripping off bites with his teeth. His incisors are flat, like a Human’s, but there’s still a feral hint to the way he eats. “Try it.”
“Ovis aries, rack,” Julian says, and then adds, “Medium-rare,” because he doesn’t fancy the blood dripping down Garak’s chin. The rack of lamb that appears is uninspiringly bland-looking. “Dishes of sodium chloride and ground piper nigrum.” He doesn’t trust words like “salt” and “pepper” in an alien replicator. It duly produces salt and pepper, which he adds abundantly.
“Were you ordered to come here?” Garak is a hulking figure at the other end of the table, hunched over his half-raw steak.
Julian considers his answer. “My commander asked me to, if that’s what you mean.”
“Could you have said no?” Garak finishes the first steak and fixes his gaze on Julian.
“Someone had to. We needed the supplies.”
“Are you the best doctor on your station?”
“Yes,” Julian says, unhesitating, and he would be a little more humble elsewhere, but here it’s only him and the Beast of Empok Nor, so what’s the point in pretense?
“Then it was a waste to send you away. You would have better served your commander by remaining on the station.” Garak’s hand leaves a red smear on his cup when he takes a drink.
“I disagree. He and I acted under the belief that there was someone here in need of medical attention. As the best doctor, I’m best equipped to treat someone like—you. The obvious hope is to form a longer-lasting mutually-beneficial relationship with the person in control of the station.”
Garak’s eyes are inscrutable. “And now that you’re here?”
“That’s still my hope.”
“It would be more efficient to kill me,” Garak points out.
Julian hesitates for a long time. He isn’t going to insult Garak’s intelligence again by pretending that that hasn’t occurred to him. “That isn’t the Federation way of doing things.” Then, because he’s being honest enough, he says, “And I don’t know how to kill you—efficiently.”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” Julian agrees. He looks down at his plate. “I’danian spice pudding,” he says hopefully. His plate remains empty.
“The replicator can produce base ingredients fairly well,” Garak says. “It’s not much good with particular preparations. Unless you brought recipes.”
“Only medical ones,” Julian says regretfully.
“What a shame.”
They lapse into silence. Eventually, Julian asks, “How late is ‘night,’ exactly? I need to do a great deal of reading from the infirmary database to even begin to analyze what might be wrong with you.”
“In a hurry, doctor? I wouldn’t get too attached to the passage of time,” Garak says. “You’ll find it slips away from you here.”
“I would think you’d be eager for a cure, and I can’t find that until I get the basic understanding of Cardassian physiology that the database provides. At what point, exactly, do I need to have my doors locked?”
“The station is set on a 24-hour cycle,” Garak says. That will be a change from Deep Space Nine and its 26-hour Bajoran day—an unwelcome one for Julian, who doesn’t need as much sleep as the average human. “From 2300 to 0400, I would say.”
“All right.” It’s only 1900 now. Julian stands from the table. “I have a lot of reading to do.” Garak doesn’t try to stop him.
The infirmary database is slow going, even for him. He’s fluent in Kardasi, but much of the database involves particular technical terminology. Often he has to cross-reference a word with several others to understand what it means, and it wears on even his mind. There are only a few diagrams or anatomical drawings; the rest is all written out in exhaustive detail. Cardassians are largely humanoid, but there are certain substantial differences, and Julian remembers the headaches of learning Klingon anatomy, the way they appeared humanoid but were internally very different from Humans and Vulcans; of the way that human and Klingon anatomy battled it out in human-Klingon hybrids; of the bizarre quirks of which species could cross-reproduce and which could not.
“You should be back in your quarters.” Garak looms in the entrance to the infirmary. His voice is thicker now, guttural, not so precise. “It’s getting late.”
“I have more work—” Julian thinks better of it. He picks up the next two data rods and stuffs them in his pocket. “Fine,” he says. “Back to my quarters.”
“Lock your door,” Garak reminds him.
* * *
“Computer, lock doors,” Julian says when he returns to his room. Somehow, it feels less than reassuring. “Computer, remove any overrides that allow access when doors are locked.”
“Delete medical override?” The computer sounds doubtful.
“Confirmed.”
“Override deleted. Compartment inaccessible without internal release of security lock.”
That’s something, at least. “Night” has always been a strange feeling to him out in space, when it’s always dark and starry outside. He used to spend his excess waking time reading, mostly, not wandering around the station—but being restricted to quarters chafes at him. It would be foolish to test Garak’s orders now, on his first night here, but his hand is almost to the door controls when he hears the screams.
They’re inhuman—of course they are, Julian is the only Human here, and not much of one—and they set his teeth on edge. It sounds like someone in agony, and there are pounding steps coming closer, heavy footfalls that come with crashes. The doctor in Julian takes over, the part of him that can’t allow suffering to continue untended, and he opens the doors and steps into the hallway.
It’s pitch-dark, but he can hear heavy breathing—then there’s a sound like a body being flung into a wall and another scream of pain. He can see well enough in the dark to see the hulking Cardassian shape of the body, and he goes to it, against all of his better judgment. In a second, he’s flat on his back with a clawed hand around his throat. There’s no recognition in Garak’s eyes, nothing beyond empty instinct, and Garak yells again and draws his other hand back for a killing blow. In the instant between that movement and the next, Julian uses all his strength to fling Garak off and scramble back into his quarters, panting, “Lock doors!”
The noises continue for what seems like hours. There’s something terrible about them—about the mindless way that Garak flung his own body against the walls, the screaming, something so far beyond the bounds of the control that he’d displayed earlier. Eventually, when it quiets, Julian lies in bed and closes his eyes and trusts his enhanced senses to wake him if danger approaches. It still takes him a long time to fall asleep.
* * *
He doesn’t ask Garak about it. Garak either doesn’t remember or isn’t interested in discussing the fresh slashes in the wall outside Julian’s room. Garak doesn’t insist on breakfast or lunch together, and dinner is often painfully quiet. What is there to talk about, really? Garak won’t say anything more about his life before Empok Nor, beyond his eminently preposterous claim that he was a tailor. Julian doesn’t feel like talking about the war, and wants even less to talk about himself. No, his mind is focused on a single task: figuring out what has triggered this transformation. If he can figure that out, he can begin the process of reversing it.
Julian spends the first week taking extremely detailed scans of Garak and more or less memorizing the entire medical database on Cardassian physiology and the rarer illnesses, and Garak is clearly unhappy with his lack of progress. “Only more scans today, doctor? Nothing to try?” He tries to pick up the tricorder, but the sharp curve of his claws makes his grasp clumsy.
Julian pulls up the scan of his hands and examines it. “One thing,” he says. “If you’d like. I could remove the claws.”
There’s the briefest unguarded moment of surprise, and then Garak’s face is a mask again. “What, pull them out? I imagine that would be quite painful, and I’m not sure what it would accomplish.”
“No.” Julian turns the screen so Garak can see the scan. “It would be painful, but with a laser scalpel, I could cut them down until they’re simply—fingernails. You would have substantially increased manual dexterity, at least.”
“And substantially less ability to defend myself.” Garak shifts just slightly on the examination table, just enough that Julian can see that he’s nervous.
“I’m not going to attack you.” Julian is a little hurt. He’s done nothing to warrant distrust. “And you’ve quite a few other advantages.”
Garak looks surprised. “Not against you, doctor.” He flexes his hands and examines his claws. “Very well. It would be nice to regain more use of my hands.”
Julian turns away and rummages through his stack of replicated tools for the laser scalpel to give Garak a moment to compose himself. He replicates a hypospray with the strongest numbing agent he can find and says, “I don’t know exactly how strong this will be, in your body, but it should provide at least some localized anesthetic effect.”
“No, thank you,” Garak says.
“It’s going to hurt quite a bit—” Julian would never offer to do this to a patient without any anesthetic.
“I said no, doctor. Go ahead.” There’s a ring of finality in Garak’s voice.
“We’ll go one finger at a time,” he says. At least that way there will be time for Garak to change his mind. “Lean forward and set the heels of your hands on the tray. Spread your fingers.” Garak splays out his fingers. The claws keep him from laying his hands flat, and Julian can’t imagine what a struggle it must be to accomplish anything day-to-day with those claws. “Hold very still, please.” He adjusts the setting on the laser scalpel to cut through keratin—and nerve—only, not skin, though he doesn’t know how the scalpel will register proto-Cardassian hide. He’ll have to be extremely careful. “If you want the analgesic at any time, please tell me and I’ll give it to you immediately.”
“Yes, yes,” Garak says. “Get on with it already.”
It’s a long, delicate process, made worse by Julian’s awareness of the pain Garak must be suffering. He begins with Garak’s right pinky, shearing off the length of the claw and then reshaping the chunk left behind until it’s only slightly curved, like an ordinary fingernail. Garak’s lack of reaction makes Julian wonder if he misread the scans, if perhaps there’s no quick at all in those claws. He seals the shape into place, so that it won’t grow further. “Doctor.” Garak sounds almost pleased. “You’re worth something after all.”
The note of surprised pleasure in his voice gives Julian the courage to say, “It would be easier if I could touch your fingers. I have to go very slowly because of the risk that you might flinch, and if I hold the finger in place as I work—”
“I will not flinch.” Garak hesitates infinitesimally. “Very well. My fingers only, and only as long as necessary for each claw.”
For all his bluster, Garak does flinch when Julian gently grasps his next finger at what would be the distal phalanx on a human. “Any discomfort?” Julian keeps his hold soft, as guidance rather than grip. Garak’s skin is hot beneath his hands and surprisingly tender. The sheen of sweat is the only indication that Garak feels anything at all.
“No.” Garak’s voice is regressing to that alarming guttural tone that Julian hears sometimes, when he begins to lose control, but he makes no aggressive moves. “Go ahead.”
It’s oddly intimate, holding each finger in place as Julian turns it from a weapon back into something good for much more—and how strange, to think of this kind of contact, with a beast holding him captive, in that way. He keeps his head bent close so that he can’t see Garak’s face, though his vision is good enough that there’s no need, and moves methodically. He rubs his thumb across each fresh fingernail to ensure that it’s smooth and even, and he can hear the way that Garak’s breath catches slightly each time. “How does that feel?”
Garak flexes his hand again, his fingers, and then runs his fingernails along the ridge at his jawline. Then he presses his fingertips against the metal examination table. “Remarkable.” His blue eyes are very bright as he looks at Julian, and he offers his other hand.
This hand goes faster now that Julian has a feel for the correct shape and pressure. When he finally finishes, he releases Garak’s left pinky and steps back so that Garak can stand up without coming too close. “There,” Julian says. “At least you’ve got the use of your fingers back while I work on figuring out the rest of you.”
“Remarkable, my dear doctor,” Garak repeats, and Julian isn’t sure how he feels about being called ‘my dear doctor.’ “Do you know, I haven’t been able to pick up a data rod to read a book since I first woke up here. I’ll have to hope that I haven’t forgotten how to read as part of this—transformation.”
“Is there a library on this station?” At the rate his medical research is going, Julian is going to run through a re-read of every book he brought long before he finds a way to cure Garak.
“An extensive collection of Kardasi literature, I believe,” Garak says. Then he frowns. “It seems I remember that, if nothing else.”
“Would you show me? A man can’t survive on reading medical texts alone, Garak.” At Garak’s hesitation, Julian adds, “I’m happy to trade some of what I brought.”
“Oh?” Julian can’t help but be struck by the incongruity of Garak’s voice coming from that hulking body of ropy muscle and bone. “You thought you would have a great deal of time for reading?”
Julian sighs. “I don’t sleep that much, and I have to lock myself in my room every night,” he points out.
“All right. Follow me.” Garak leads the way through the scarred hallway of the promenade—what would be the promenade, on Deep Space Nine—and through one of the locked doors that he’s warned Julian against, down to an expansive storeroom. Julian has never been to this area at home, but he makes note of the route that they take. The room is full of shelves and shelves of data rods, each labeled in printed Kardasi, as well as a stack of readers.
“This is—incredible.” Some of the weight on Julian’s shoulders lifts, knowing that at the very least there will be this escape from drudgery. He loves medicine more than almost anything (perhaps just as much as tennis) but his mind has always craved variety, ever since (and perhaps before) his parents redesigned the Human that was Julian Bashir. “Thank you, Garak.”
“A fitting trade for the use of my hands, my dear doctor.” Garak plucks one of the rods from the nearest shelf. “If you’ll accept a recommendation?” He offers it to Julian, though when Julian takes it, Garak holds on for just a little too long—testing his newly revealed fingertips, Julian thinks.
“What is it?”
“A classic. The Never-Ending Sacrifice. A good introduction to Cardassian literature, if you’ve never had the pleasure before.” There’s something a little eager in Garak’s eyes. “Do tell me what you think of it, when you’ve finished it.”
“Something to talk about at the dinner table,” Julian says.
* * *
If someone had asked him to guess what a Cardassian novel might be like, he would have said patriotic, perhaps highly structured, and The Never-Ending Sacrifice does not disappoint. “Well?” Garak asks at dinner. “Have you had the chance to start it?” He’s eating with silverware for the first time. Julian tactfully does not comment on his awkwardness maneuvering the fork and knife.
“I read it last night.”
“What, all of it?” Garak looks startled. Julian is getting better and better at reading the expressions on his face, even beneath the sharp ridges and protrusions. “I do hope you don’t mean that you skimmed it, my dear doctor. Much would be lost—”
“No, I read the whole thing. I stayed up most of the night, in fact.” Julian fakes a yawn, realizing belatedly that he’s revealing too much about his reading speed.
“Isn’t it superb? Without a doubt, the finest Cardassian novel ever written.”
“Do you really think so?” Julian keeps his tone light, not accusatory.
“The repetitive epic is the most elegant form of Cardassian literature, and The Never-Ending Sacrifice is its greatest ideal.” Garak takes a bite of some sort of Cardassian casserole-type dish. “I suppose you disliked the emphasis on patriotic sacrifice? I should think that your presence here demonstrates your approval of such sacrifice.”
Julian considers how best to put it. “I found it repetitive without enough variation. I mean the author's supposed to be chronicling seven generations of a single family, but he tells the same story over and over again. All of his characters lead selfless lives of duty to the state, grow old and die. Then the next generation comes along and does it all over again.”
“But that’s exactly the point, doctor!” There’s the hint of a growl in Garak’s tone. “Your pedestrian misunderstanding—”
“No, let me give you an example of what I mean.” Julian has forgotten his food. “There’s a poetic form in English called the sestina.” Garak actually allows him to continue. “Thirty-nine lines long, and each line must end with one of six words, in a particular order. It forces the poet to be creative within a particular structure, and it keeps the repetition and the theme while allowing variation. Do you see? The Never-Ending Sacrifice could have been much more powerful that way. Or perhaps—maybe a villanelle is a better example? It’s even more strictly structured with greater repetition.”
Garak turns the word villanelle over in his mouth. “Go on.”
“It requires—repeating not only words, but lines, and then also rhyming some of the lines. I can—do you speak Federation Standard?” An example isn’t going to make a lot of sense to him if it’s garbled through Julian’s off-the-cuff attempt to translate it, let alone the Universal Translator.
“I do.” There’s a hint of humor in Garak’s voice. “If you’d like to share one to demonstrate how your repetitive Federation poetry is superior to the Cardassian repetitive epic.”
“I didn’t say that,” Julian protests. “Only that I would have found the novel more compelling if the author had introduced greater variation into each repetition.” Garak looks skeptical. “All right, here’s one.
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
He thinks there’s a sudden flash of sorrow in Garak’s eyes.
“Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.”
It’s not even one of his particular favorites—a little maudlin—but only one that he’s always remembered.
“Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
“Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Garak’s face is tight with some emotion that Julian has never seen there before.
“And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
He clears his throat. “You see, how the poet—it’s Dylan Thomas, an Earth poet from the 20th century—he begins and ends with the same refrain, he rhymes the first line of each new stanza with one of the lines of the refrain, he rhymes the second line of each new stanza with the next. The lines change and grow and return to their original form. For me, a repetitive epic would be strongest if it worked the same way.”
“Maudlin,” Garak pronounces, as though he can read Julian’s mind. “A great deal of unnecessary sentiment.”
Julian huffs out a breath. “You know very well that I’m not talking about the subject matter, Garak. A person could write a dreadful villanelle or a beautiful one, as they could anything. I’m not even saying that characters in novels shouldn’t all fall prey to the same failings that their parents did.” He wonders if This be the verse might be a bit much to introduce into the conversation now. They fill you with the faults they had/And add some extra, just for you. “My point is that in The Never-Ending Sacrifice, there’s no variation at all. It’s a tragedy, certainly—”
“It is not a tragedy!” Garak sounds outraged. “It’s a—a demonstration of the Cardassian ideal, that to which every Cardassian should aspire.”
“Really,” Julian says. “Where are the tailors in it? The housekeepers, the garbagemen?”
“It is a form,” Garak hisses. “Not a children’s story!” He picks up his fork and jabs it into his dinner.
Julian’s ears are hot and his heart is pounding and he doesn’t know what’s just happened, exactly, other than that it’s intoxicating. “I look forward to whatever you’ll have to say about my selection.”
“Your selection?”
“It’s only fair.” Julian takes a bite of his stew, now cold. He’s been gradually experimenting with the replicator to find the closest Cardassian ingredients to the foods of his childhood, but tonight he’s been lazy. “I’ll pick something that you’ll like.”
“I highly doubt that,” Garak says, but Julian thinks there’s a smile lurking on his face. “You might as well give it to me tonight so that I can get this torment over with.”
After dinner, he follows Julian back to his quarters. Julian sees his eyes alight on the fresh gouges in the wall, and Garak flexes his fingers a little, almost unconsciously. “Doors,” Julian says, and Garak doesn’t follow him in. “Any particular requests?”
“You seem to be greatly enamored of poetry. If you have anything less sentimental—”
Maybe it’s the wrong choice. Julian glances back at Garak, who’s leaning carelessly against the door and keeping it from closing, and says, “I don’t know if you’ll find it less sentimental, but there’s a great deal more adventure in it.” He plucks a data rod from his collection and hands it to Garak. Garak takes it delicately between two fingers. “It’s a translation into English, but it maintains much of the poetic structure of the original. I’ve—never read it in the original language.”
Garak raises an eyebrow. “I admit to some disappointment, my dear doctor. I should think that you, of all people—”
“If you enjoy it, we can teach ourselves ancient Greek and read it together.” There’s that startled hint of a smile on Garak’s face again. He seems about to say something when the computer announces, “It is 22:45.”
The smile disappears from Garak’s face. “Lock your doors,” he reminds Julian, and then he’s gone.
The noises are quieter that night, but they’re still pained, and Julian can almost envision Garak flinging himself against the walls. The next morning, Garak is very quiet as Julian scans his hands—the claws haven’t grown back, which is a good sign—and Julian sees a large, bloody scrape blooming across Garak’s shoulder. “I could help with that,” he says, gesturing.
“What? Oh, this?” Garak glances down at his shoulder absent-mindedly. “I suppose.”
Julian fetches the dermal regenerator, which he’s calibrated to include Cardassian specifications. “It shouldn’t hurt.”
Garak raises an eyebrow. “Pain is inevitable, my dear doctor. Suffering is a choice.”
“What a dreadful thought.” Julian holds the dermal regenerator close to Garak’s skin. The skin is slow to knit back together, and it returns only to the thinner hide of an ordinary Cardassian, not the thick armor that covers Garak’s body—like the way that his nails have remained ordinary, in fact. “I suppose it’s not going to heal any further.”
“Lovely,” Garak says. “If you flay me, at least my skin will return to normal.” At Julian’s look of horror, he clarifies, “My dear doctor, I am joking.”
“Of course.” It’s not that it hasn’t crossed Julian’s mind ever since he cut off Garak’s claws, the idea of returning him to a Cardassian form through a series of surgeries. But they’re not the sort of surgeries he would risk performing without at least two nurses for assistance, and certainly not with hand tools and dubiously functional Cardassian medical technology. “Have you had a chance to start on the Odyssey?”
“Yes.” Garak twists his body stiffly, then prods at the healed skin with two fingertips. “I expect to have finished it by dinnertime. Don’t you have work to do?”
“Yes. I have everything I need from you today, so you’re free of the infirmary for now.” Garak nods abruptly at him and walks out of the infirmary, and Julian settles in for another day of trying to understand what could have happened to an ordinary Cardassian body that would turn it into this. The memory loss—well, there are portions of Garak’s brain that look wrong, as though chunks have been dug out of them and replaced by something that doesn’t belong there, and he doesn’t have the faintest idea where to start. But Garak is unpredictable and Julian doesn’t know how he would react to news like that, so he continues to focus on the physical instead.
At dinner, Julian manages to replicate himself a reasonable Cardassian facsimile of a stir-fry and then looks at Garak. “I finished it,” Garak says, and then hesitates.
“Sentimental twaddle?”
“It was—” Garak looks acutely uncomfortable. “Extremely frustrating. If Odysseus had only kept better control over his men, they could all have reached home very quickly.”
“I suppose so,” Julian says. “That’s not really what it’s about, though.”
“No? It seems like a cautionary tale. He’s insufficiently strict with his men and makes the mistake of leaving his home unguarded, risking the safety of his wife and child.” Garak frowns. “The family—children—are extremely important in Cardassian culture.”
“I saw that in The Never-Ending Sacrifice.” Julian shakes his head. “It’s not a—cautionary tale, or a parable. It’s about—grief, and loneliness, and searching for the place where you belong. And how you can never really go home again after war, not really.”
There’s one of Garak’s tiny flinches. “A very fanciful way to say all of that.”
“Well, it’s a story, not a technical manual.”
“A story with some truly overwrought poetical writing.” Garak wrinkles his nose. “Those endless similes—”
“You’re arguing for the sake of argument!” Julian is enjoying it, too much. “Like the spear is formed in a mold, then sharpened to a keen edge so that it may draw the blood for which it thirsts in battle, so Rugal’s father formed his sons—you’re telling me the author of The Never-Ending Sacrifice didn’t bother with similes?”
“That was different,” Garak insists. “It was necessary to make clear the way that there was no room for individuality within the Cardassian ideal; each man made from the same pure core stuff, honed in the same way.”
“Go on, then, tell me that this doesn’t tell you what’s happened to Penelope’s suitors more effectively than ‘Odysseus killed them all’:
“Like fish which, in the meshes of a net, sailors
have pulled from the gray sea up on the curving beach,
lying piled up on the sand, longing for sea waves,
while the bright sun drains away their life—that is how
the suitors were heaped up, piled on one another.”
Garak takes a delicate bite. “That one, perhaps, does paint a very different picture. I suppose it improved the book. But I would hardly say that they were all necessary.”
“Literary devices don’t have to be necessary. A book exists to do more than—convey an idea as efficiently as possible.”
Garak shakes his head, but there’s a smile playing on his lips. “Neither should it be a constant expression of sentiment. Odysseus could scarcely go ten lines without being driven by his emotions.”
A small part of Julian thrills at the argument. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
“Happily, my dear doctor,” Garak says.
* * * * *
Julian spends four days focused exclusively on research before he gives in to temptation. He knows the way to the library now, and he’s impatient to find another book. True, Garak told him that locked doors were locked for a reason, but Julian was watchful when they first walked to the library. And too, he isn’t an average Human, not nearly as fragile as even some of the stronger men he knows. Beyond that, he’s feeling a certain claustrophobia, and the library is one place that can provide some respite.
The path to the library is still and dark, and he doesn’t disturb that. His feet are nearly silent on the floor, all of his senses on high alert, and there’s no motion in the shadows. When he reaches the library, he increases the light only slightly, just enough that it’s no strain on his eyes to peer at the titles of each of the data rods. The reader lets him find out what each one is—repetitive epic, enigma tale, war drama—and he finds himself collecting a handful, tucking them into a pouch to choose between later.
Then comes the noise in the shadows, and Julian says “Lights” because whatever it is already knows he’s there. There are four of them, wraithlike Cardassians that are barely more than skeletons, their necks too elongated and their empty eyes too wide. Two have spears, two have curved knives that Julian has never seen before, and he takes it in in an instant and considers his options. He has no weapon—stupid, to go wandering without one—and they’re between him and the door. “Garak,” he says into the comm, and there’s no response but a distant roar. It’s too late at night. No help there.
When they attack, he ducks low and grabs the haft of a spear, just below the head, and yanks it from the creature’s grasp. A staff is an equalizer and he uses it that way, blocking the other spear with it and dodging to the side to chop at what should be tendons behind the creature’s knee. It goes down and he finishes it, but the two with knives are upon him—he has one by the wrist, desperately blocking the blow, but the other is inevitable, and he won’t close his eyes even as he knows what’s coming—
The roar is louder now, and Garak’s monstrous shape thunders into the room. He rips the attacking creatures free of Julian and tries to claw at it with his missing claws, and the three remaining turn their attention from Julian to him. Garak howls in pain as a knife sinks deep into his side, a spear into his shoulder. That gives Julian time to strike as hard as he can at the spinal cord of one of them, and as it collapses it manages to stab Garak again. Garak isn’t fighting anymore but thrashing, trying to escape, like a dog with its paw caught in a bear trap, and his flailing knocks the other two creatures to the ground. Julian gets to them before they can rise and cuts what little throats they have, one after another. They fall still.
For a moment, the only noise is Julian and Garak’s harsh breathing. The creatures all appear to be dead, thankfully, but there’s a lot of blood everywhere, and as far as Julian can tell, it all belongs to Garak. He approaches Garak’s hunched body slowly and says, “Garak.” The muscles in Garak’s back clench, as though preparing for a blow. “Garak,” he says again. “I have to get you to the infirmary, but I can’t help you and fight you off at the same time.” He carefully lays down the spear so that Garak can turn his head and see empty hands. “Will you come with me?”
The wounded noise that Garak makes is probably the best that he’s going to get. “Computer, emergency medical transport.”
“Operation unavailable,” the computer says, and Julian curses whoever it was that saw fit to disable emergency medical transport.
“Garak,” he says. “I’m going to touch you, all right? You can lean on me, but we’re going to have to walk to the infirmary.” He tries to help Garak stand, half-lifting him onto his feet. It would be better if he could bandage the wounds first, but Garak is barely tolerating his touch. He wants to pump some heavy sedatives into Garak before he starts trying to treat them.
The walk back to the infirmary is agonizing. Garak leans more and more on him, and if not for Julian’s own inhuman strength, they would both collapse. Julian listens hard for any more of those creatures and wishes that he still had the spear just in case, but Garak’s reactions make quite clear that he would never have come with Julian armed. Twice he tries to shove away, staggers, and allows Julian to lift him again.
The lights of the infirmary are very bright after the gloom of the station’s depths. “Computer, lock doors,” he says, even though he knows Garak is the thing he’s been locking doors against. Garak either can’t or won’t get onto the examination table and Julian isn’t going to try to lift him as he’s bleeding out; instead, he lays Garak out on the floor. An ordinary hypospray wouldn’t penetrate his thick hide, so Julian has to put it on that soft patch of skin on his shoulder. The combination of sedative and analgesic is a potent one. Garak’s body finally relaxes, enough that Julian can cut away his shirt and pants to find the sources of all the blood. There’s only the one dermal regenerator and three deep wounds, so Julian holds the regenerator in the crook of his arm and points it at the worst wound while he wads up Garak’s clothing into a pad and presses it to the second wound. Then he pulls off his own bloody, sweaty shirt to apply to the third wound, and they’re all filthy, but better to staunch the bleeding now than worry about an easily-treated infection in the future.
It’s very slow going. The dermal regenerator isn’t meant for wounds this deep, which means that it takes a long time to knit the layers of skin together and will still only heal it to the point of ordinary Cardassian skin. Julian switches to the second wound, and thankfully Garak’s breathing is even, no blood on his lips that would suggest damage to his lungs or major organs. When the third wound is nominally closed, Julian drops the bloody, dirty clothing into the medical recycler, sanitizes his hands, and replicates a very strong antibiotic hypospray. He gives it to Garak, just in case. After some internal debate, he applies regenerative patches to each of the three wounds; the fresh skin should hold, but the wounds were deep and once again, he lacks the medical technology that he would typically use to treat wounds like this efficiently.
Julian knows it will test his strength to lift Garak’s limp body for any length of time, but he doesn’t want to leave Garak sprawled out on the floor. He brings a bed over next to where Garak is lying, crouches, says a lot of expletives, and then heaves Garak up onto the bed. Garak looks strangely vulnerable like this, those four patches of plain unprotected skin a stark contrast with the rest of his body. Julian uses a biohazard sponge to clean away the rest of the blood on Garak’s body and then tosses it onto the bloody patch on the floor, whatever good that will do. He’s so exhausted that he barely manages to push Garak’s bed back into the proper area of the infirmary before he collapses into the next bed over. If Garak wakes up before the nighttime madness has worn off, well, Julian will probably die before he wakes up.
* * *
“What happened?” Garak’s voice is nothing more than a croak. “You’re injured?”
Julian opens his eyes to find that Garak has rolled onto one side and is staring at him. “I’m not injured, you’re injured.”
“You’re covered in blood.”
Yes, that particular grubby stickiness is making itself felt now. “It’s all your blood. Mostly, anyway. I was in the library. There were—things—”
“You shouldn’t have gone to the library alone,” Garak says. “I told you the doors were locked—”
“Yes, for a reason, I know. You didn’t mention that that reason was several mutant Cardassian—skeleton monsters!”
“I killed them? How many?”
“Four.” By his count, Garak didn’t kill any, but there are four dead monsters and no need for further questions about how Julian survived. “Then we—walked here and I treated your injuries.”
Garak’s face says plainly that he doesn’t believe Julian. “I take it I’m going to survive?” His gaze drifts down from Julian’s face to his chest, which Julian remembers is bare. It’s too hot in this infirmary—it’s always too hot.
“That’s the plan.”
“I didn’t—hurt you?” Garak looks puzzled.
“I think you knew I was your best chance at survival.”
Garak reaches across the space between them, his big hand closing gently around Julian’s wrist. “Thank you.” His voice is hesitant. “You know, if you’d left me to die, you would have control of Empok Nor now.”
Oh, Julian knows it. “I’m a doctor,” he says. “You’re my—patient.” Of all the words. Captor. Enemy, Miles would say. None of those seems quite right. “Are you in pain?”
“I’m not suffering.”
Right. “I’m going to—wash up. You might as well try to sleep a little more. I’ll want to check your wounds when I get back.”
The infirmary’s sonic shower is harsh. They all seem to be, here on Empok Nor. Julian’s skin feels raw when he steps out of it. He replicates himself some fresh clothes, but after he’s pulled on the undershirt, he looks at the shirt and contemplates putting it on and sweating through it and thinks, why bother? There’s no one but him and Garak here.
Garak is sitting up when he returns. “Careful,” Julian tells him. “The dermal regenerator barely held up through healing your wounds, I don’t want you opening any of them again. May I check?” He holds out his open palms as if to show that there’s no danger.
“By all means, my dear doctor.” Julian lifts the first bandage, on Garak’s shoulder, very carefully as Garak says, “Incidentally, it seems odd that you would be entirely unscathed after being attacked while all alone.”
“I called your name,” Julian says. He keeps his voice even. “You saved me before they could do any damage.”
“Really.” Garak squints at him. “That seems—unlikely.”
“Sure, Garak, you’re right, I fought them all off myself, then let them stab you a few times, and then killed them all.” He pours the sarcasm into his voice.
Garak tilts his head. “Perhaps not all. But more, I think, than zero.”
To say ‘I thought you didn’t remember anything from your nights’ would be to tell Garak that he’s right. Instead, Julian laughs, and even that sounds forced. “I’m afraid not.” He moves to the leg bandage. The skin beneath is still whole, though also still soft. “One more and we’re done, and then I’ll force you to rest more if I have to sedate you myself.” When Garak leans back and moves to prop himself on his elbows, Julian says, “No, don’t pull at your shoulder, lie back.” He realizes a moment later what he’s asked of Garak, to expose his belly—his wounded torso—to Julian.
“Go on, then.” Garak’s voice is guttural in a different way than just before he goes feral, and Julian can see the muscles of his abdomen tensing. Julian lifts the edge of the bandage very lightly and then smooths it back into place, and finds that his hand is resting on Garak’s bare skin. Garak makes a kind of small hurt noise.
Julian meets his eyes to apologize and sees a kind of terrible longing there. “I’m sorry,” Julian says.
“Whatever you need to do.” There’s a lie somewhere in those words, like perhaps Garak knows that Julian doesn’t need to touch him any more than he already has, and perhaps Garak doesn’t want him to stop.
In the old days, Julian knows, a medical examination involved significant physical contact. Palpating, manipulating, all to reveal the things that a tricorder will tell him now. Still, the texture of Garak’s skin beneath his fingers is unique, and he explores it very gently. The ridges that rise from beneath his skin are as hard as rebar, the skin covering them almost metallic in its unyielding nature. Between the ridges, his skin is thick but clearly not nerveless; Julian can feel Garak shift or draw in uneven breaths beneath his fingers. He keeps his touch slow, gentle, up that armored chest and even slower along the ridges of Garak’s neck.
When his fingers reach Garak’s chin, though, Garak says, “Stop.” Julian halts with his hands on Garak’s neck, the heat seeping from Garak’s skin into his own. “Do you know,” Garak says, “I can’t remember the last time another person initiated—unnecessary physical contact with me.”
Julian can feel the vibration of Garak’s vocal cords beneath his fingers. He doesn’t lift his hands away. He’s struck with the strangest desire to keep exploring, but he won’t, not when Garak has told him to stop. Garak’s lack of physical contact—even when Julian is single, there’s always the camaraderie-fueled incidental contact on the station, whether it’s bumping shoulders with Miles or an affectionate shove from Dax or the occasional approving hand on his forearm from Kira. It’s not as though they all walk around hugging each other, but— He drops his hands to Garak’s bare shoulders, to the firm shape of them beneath his palms. “I thought you were a tailor,” he says.
“Sizing scanner.” Garak’s voice has gone a little guttural again.
“You must have had—” Julian swallows back the word ‘lovers,’ which has always seemed a little silly to him but is the most appropriate word he can think of now.
“Not in this form,” Garak says. “I think it is safe to say that you are the only person who has ever touched me, in this shape.”
Julian looks at the stark contrast of his own dark hands against the silvery paleness of Garak’s skin. Garak brings one of his own hands up and lays it over Julian’s, almost curiously, as though something might happen when their hands meet. “This is—” He can’t quite bring himself to say necessary. “In the course of medical treatment.”
“Of course.” Garak lifts his hand away from Julian’s. “Don’t let me stop you, my dear doctor.” He tilts his chin down a little, and Julian doesn’t know what this is, what exactly is happening, but he touches Garak’s face very lightly with one hand—traces the hard ridges around his eyes, strokes his thumb into the dip of that spoon-shaped horn, and Garak’s breathing is harsh now. What would it be like, Julian wonders, and is horrified at himself. The way that Garak is breathing, he thinks it would be cruel to touch his lips, to see if they’re as feverishly hot as the rest of him. Instead, he cups his hand gently on Garak’s cheek and then withdraws.
“I think that’s everything I need to know,” he says, because Garak is too much to be careless with. It’s too damned warm in here.
Garak clears his throat. “Don’t let me keep you, doctor,” he says again. “I imagine you’ve a great deal of work to do.”
“Curing you and all? Yes, I suppose so.” Julian wonders, as he often does, who Garak will be if these last few years of his memory ever return—if, somehow, Julian can reconstruct the portions of his brain that have been replaced with biomechanical implants, or if his brain has always been like this, and it’s only the programming in those implants that’s been wiped. “For now, I want you to stay there and rest. I’ll just be in the next room.” It’s a sign of how exhausted Garak must be that he doesn’t even argue.
Julian loses himself in the research—he’s been experimenting with applying various types of radiation to cellular tissue that he’s taken from Garak to see if that will flip some genetic switch, but so far all it’s done is caused the tissue to decay rapidly. Perhaps Garak was changed into this shape via radiation, but he certainly doesn’t seem to be amenable to changing back. When Julian’s stomach growls, he replicates a sandwich for himself and swallows it down without paying attention, absorbed in tracking his results. It’s an unfortunate thing to think, but if he had more patients like Garak, he would have a better chance at finding a cure. With so little data from which to extrapolate—well, they might both be here for years, and that idea is—unthinkable. The Dominion might win the war and he would never know it until the day they showed up at the station.
“That’s a dreadful face.” Garak’s voice startles Julian so much that he nearly falls over backward in his chair—so much for his situational awareness. There are three different padds on the desk in front of him, each tracking different sets of results, and a collection of carefully labeled dead cell cultures, and his own notes half-entered in the data terminal. “No progress?” Garak leans gingerly against the wall at the threshold of Julian’s office.
“I wish I had some kind of news for you,” Julian says.
“Surely you can come up with good-sounding news.”
Julian considers. “I do not plan to bombard you with alpha, beta, gamma, or delta particles.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“I haven’t ruled out axion or graviphoton, if that helps.”
Garak grimaces. “What you’re saying is that you’ve spent days contemplating what kind of radiation might fix me, and you have yet to come up with anything.”
“Which is more important to you?” Julian has never asked him this. “If I could only fix one, your body or your mind?”
Garak freezes. “My—body, I suppose.”
Julian is surprised to hear it. He’s focused on Garak’s body because the amnesia is much harder to begin to figure out, but, “I’d have guessed the opposite.”
“Really.” Garak examines his fingernails, the one part of his body that Julian has been able to affect. “It’s the body that traps me here, after all. Like this, I am—obvious. Vulnerable.” An interesting way to describe being a seven-foot-tall man with an armored hide. “Memory—will return or it won’t. It’s dangerous, not knowing why I’m here, or who did this to me, but at least if I looked ordinary again, I could seek out just a few more avenues to discover the answers.”
“You’re very certain that someone did it to you,” Julian says. “Make many enemies as a tailor, did you?”
“Come now, don’t be tedious. I suppose you learned to sever spines at Starfleet Academy?”
Oh. “Luck,” Julian tries. “Medical school.” It sounds weak. He should’ve denied it altogether.
“You mean that you’re extraordinary, which is a matter of luck?” In other words: there’s no need to push each other too hard about their respective backgrounds.
“Garak, your brain—do you already know about the biomechanical implants?”
Garak stiffens. “Yes,” he says. “One of them, at least.”
“The one in your parietal lobe?” Unlike whatever else has been done to his brain, which appears to be fresh, there’s extensive scarring around that one. “I’d like to remove it.”
That prompts a harsh laugh from Garak. “Remove it? Doctor, it would kill me if you touched it.” Julian stays silent, in the hope that Garak will say more, and maybe Garak is just tired of lying. “It is designed to—keep me from yielding to torture. If such a situation occurred, it was designed to stimulate the pleasure centers of my brain to trigger the production of vast amounts of natural endorphins.”
“Make you immune to pain?” It would explain the lack of his reaction to the claw removal, but— “I hear you—screaming at night, Garak. In the hallways. It sounds very much like you’re being tortured.” If Julian had ever believed the tailor story, he certainly doesn’t believe it now.
Garak looks as though he’s just tasted something very bitter. “Yes, it does appear to have stopped working. I suspect my—nighttime experiences are due to its malfunction. But you can’t remove it. If it were easily removed, it would be useless.”
“Are there any other traps waiting in your mind?”
“An excellent question, my dear doctor. I promise you, none that I remember.”
Julian tries not to sound too frustrated. “I’m not about to give up, but—Garak, I can’t find anything resembling what’s happened to you in any of the medical databases to which I have access, including this station’s database. Physical regression to an earlier evolutionary state, occasionally, but never of this magnitude, and never so persistently. If you were exposed to some kind of—space phenomenon, or some chemical that my scans can’t detect, I suppose that could have done it, but without knowing, I can’t exactly arrange to re-expose you.”
Garak’s lips tighten. “I have faith in your abilities, doctor.” He’s starting to list heavily to one side.
“You should be back in bed!” Julian stands and walks to him, and then takes one of Garak’s arms and puts it over his shoulder. “Come on, I’ll get you back there.” Garak is an overwhelming line of heat pressed against Julian’s body, the ridges of his fever-hot body rubbing against Julian through Julian’s undershirt. Julian hasn’t replicated clothes for Garak yet to replace those that were destroyed in the fight and so Garak is down to whatever passes for Cardassian underwear. His arm is heavy on Julian’s shoulders, and Julian can tell that he’s fighting hard not to grab Julian’s upper arm too tightly from the way his fingers grip and release. The pads of his fingers are searing on Julian’s skin.
When Julian deposits Garak back into his bed, he sees the wince. “I’m going to lose my mind lying in bed here,” Garak complains.
“It’s—nearly 2300,” Julian says. He keeps his voice even as he adds, “You should get more rest.”
Garak blanches. “I should go back—”
“I’ll shoot you full of sedatives if you try to attack me.” Julian says it with more confidence than he feels, but Garak was less violent when Julian brought him to the infirmary, and he’s still injured. Julian could stop him, if necessary. “I can shoot you full of sedatives now, if you prefer.”
“No,” Garak says. “I’ll rest, if I can. But at the slightest hint that I’m a threat, doctor—”
“You’ll be unconscious before you get within three meters,” Julian promises. “Go lie back down.” It’s a good thing that he doesn’t need very much sleep, because he doesn’t think he’s going to get much over the next five hours.
There’s no roar when 2300 strikes, no crash of a heavy body against the wall. Only a series of quiet pained noises, and if they were screams Julian would intervene, but he has his own nightmares and he would never want someone to see him when he’s just woken from them, so he leaves Garak alone. He putters around instead, tidies up the infirmary, and finally sits down to stare blearily at his notes. By 0400, Julian is yawning, and the last thing he notices is the chronometer’s soothing numbers before he falls asleep in his chair.
* * * * *
“Doctor!”
Julian startles awake to find Garak very close, frowning at him. “What?” His neck twinges and he barely swallows the “bloody—”
“You fell asleep!”
“Yes, even I have to do that sometimes.” Julian glances at the chronometer. 0800.
“I might have hurt you!” Garak thrusts a mug of something at him, and Julian accepts it automatically.
Julian yawns and takes a sip. It’s steaming and spicy, almost floral, and the surge of warmth in his body is certainly only due to the heat of the tea. “I waited to fall asleep until 0400, don’t worry.”
Garak looks mollified, if only slightly. “It was irresponsible.”
“It would’ve been more irresponsible to let you leave,” Julian says. “Let me see your wounds.” He makes Garak sit on the examination table. if Garak’s breath quickens when his hands brush against Garak’s skin, well. It’s been a long time since anyone touched Garak.
They eat breakfast there in the infirmary, scrambled eggs that are certainly not chicken eggs. Finally, Garak puts a hand on his wrist and says, “If you’re going to keep me trapped here, you have to give me something to do.”
“I suppose I could get you a book.” Julian doesn’t think a holo-video is really Garak’s speed.
Garak’s hand tightens on his wrist. “I don’t want you to go to the library alone again. I don’t know how many more of those things there are.”
“Then I suppose there’s only one solution.” Julian can feel the smile threatening to escape, and Garak’s expression changes from concern to suspicion. “You’ll have to suffer through another of my sentimental Human books.”
“I—suppose if it’s a choice between clawing my face off in boredom and reading one of your books, I’ll take the latter,” Garak says. “Particularly since I don’t have much of claws anymore.” He looks down at his fingers again, as though he still can’t quite believe that the claws are gone.
“I could use a few minutes outside of the infirmary. Promise me that you won’t try to stand up again while I’m gone.”
Garak grimaces. “Only if death is otherwise imminent.” He releases Julian’s wrist and Julian watches the marks of his fingerprints fade.
Julian leaves the infirmary almost whistling, to his horror, which makes no sense given that he’s still trapped on a half-dead space station bashing his head against a potentially unsolvable medical problem. Out of some unexamined desire to devil Garak, he selects his favorite of Shakespeare’s comedies, inserts the data rod into a reader, and replicates the closest thing to Tarkalean tea that he’s been able to concoct in the replicator. When he returns to the infirmary with a reader in one hand and tea in the other, Garak has found the bed controls and lifted himself into more-or-less a sitting position with a tray table in front of himself. “You’ve been busy.”
“Not really.” Garak sounds extremely put-upon. “What is that?”
“Tarkalean tea, or as close as I could get with these replicators. It’s my fav—I find it relaxing.” It is, in fact, his favorite, but it feels strange to tell Garak that. “Though I did enjoy the tea you gave me.”
Garak accepts the tea and sniffs it, then takes a delicate sip. “It’s not dreadful,” he pronounces. “Though I can’t imagine why these Tarkaleans would make their tea so sweet. Do they require a great deal of sugar to function?”
Julian takes the mug from him and sips it as well. “No,” he said. “No, I suppose I just—replicated it the way that I usually make my own. I have a very high metabolism.” Why did he do that? He hands the mug back to Garak and watches him put his lips just where Julian’s were, and Julian doesn’t examine too closely why that makes him feel a kind of satisfaction. “Here’s the book.”
“Don’t tell me, it’s a romantic comedy.” Garak’s exaggerated dread is hilarious.
“I suppose you got that from the title?”
“Why do you only give me old Human books to read? Don’t you have anything more recent, or beyond the narrow Human experience?” Garak frowns at him. “Don’t tell me you believe that Humans produce superior literature.”
“Not at all.” Julian should really get back to his samples, but he’d rather stay here and talk to Garak. “I didn’t bring the greatest literature of the Federation with me, Garak. I brought—those books that I loved when I was young, and I was introduced to Human literature—to what they call the classics—before anything else.”
“The Odyssey is three thousand years old.”
Interesting, the station database must have some amount of information about alien literature. “This one is only eight hundred years old.”
“And it’s not even a novel,” Garak points out. “You’ve given me an epic poem and now a play. Do Humans not produce novels?”
“Excuse me, we have a long and proud tradition of novels. I’m demonstrating the historical development of Human fiction.” Not that there aren’t pre-17th century novels, but he chose this play on purpose, to see how outraged Garak will become about it. “And I’m guessing that you don’t read Arabic or Chinese.”
“Very well,” Garak says. “I’ll drink your sweet tea and read your silly play and tell you precisely how ridiculous it all is in a few hours.” Julian doesn’t really want to stop talking, but Garak seems to be done with the conversation. He sighs and returns to hunching over his research. It’s tedious, which means he’s easily distracted by Garak’s periodic huffs of outrage. “My dear doctor!” Garak sounds positively scandalized. “Is this—behavior what Humans consider acceptable?”
“You’ll have to be more specific.” Julian abandons his work again and goes to look over Garak’s shoulder. “What? Suffer love! A good epithet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will?”
“Yes, and this.” Garak speaks almost hesitantly. “In spite of your heart, I think. Alas, poor heart, if you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours, for I will never love that which my friend hates.”
“Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably. That’s the play in a nutshell,” Julian says. “What’s wrong with it?”
Garak almost looks like he’s blushing. “Doctor, do you recall in The Never-Ending Sacrifice, when Rugal and Savela first meet?”
“What, the one spark of individuality in the entire novel?”
“They—argue a great deal.” Garak says it very delicately. “In Cardassian culture, argument is considered the chief form of courtship. Behavior such as that of Beatrice and Benedick is—” He’s definitely blushing. What a bizarre thing to happen to someone who looks like he does.
“Obscene?” Julian thinks he might be starting to blush as well, which is ridiculous.
“A single conversation, no, but the course of the book—Cardassian literature would never contain such a blatant display over the course of an entire story.” Garak shifts a little in the infirmary bed.
“Oh. I didn’t realize it would be so—stimulating.”
“That is not to say that it has literary merit,” Garak adds quickly. “The circumstances are preposterous, the situations manufactured. The choice of language is, perhaps, inoffensive, but it is in service of—”
“Wit? Humor? Don’t tell me there’s no comedy in the Cardassian literary canon.” The back of Julian’s neck is very hot. The book must seem like a—a proposition. “Garak, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t worry, my dear doctor. I’m well aware that you’re unfamiliar with Cardassian courtship traditions.” Garak is very stiff. “I have not—misinterpreted our discussions, nor your recommendation of this book.”
“I see.” That shouldn’t feel—almost disappointing to Julian, but he thinks of the immense satisfaction he derives from his arguments with Garak, the only real satisfaction that he gets from anything on this station. “You don’t have to finish reading it.”
“I suppose all the confusion is resolved and everyone ends up married in the end?”
“If you’re too uncomfortable reading it to find out—”
Garak looks insulted, though the blush hasn’t faded. “Uncomfortable! My dear doctor, I sit here with several large wounds that you stuffed with filthy rags and you worry that a vulgar play will make me uncomfortable?”
Julian walks to him, all joking set aside. “Are they bothering you?” Stupid of Julian not to notice that the bandage on Garak’s shoulder has developed a broad pinkish patch since he last looked. “Let me check.”
“I hardly think that’s necessary—” Garak doesn’t flinch away, though, when Julian touches the edge of the bandage and peels it up very carefully. The new skin over the wound is still intact, but clearly it’s seeped something into the bandage.
“I’m going to change all three,” he tells Garak. “Since, as you pointed out, I stuffed them with filthy rags while I was trying to keep you from bleeding out. Move the table out of the way while I get fresh ones, please.”
When he returns, Garak is sitting exposed on the bed. “Perhaps you might find some clothing for me when you’ve finished re-applying these wholly unnecessary bandages? I realize the temperature in here is above your comfortable threshold, but I prefer to be at least nominally clothed.”
“Right. As soon as I’ve finished.” Julian actually finds Garak’s body somewhat mesmerizing, the shadows created by the ridges in the silvery dips of skin between them, the shape of unfamiliar muscles beneath his hide. “It would be easier if you laid back.” Garak obliges, and he peels away the shoulder bandage entirely and drops it into the medical waste recycler. He does the same with the bandages on Garak’s torso and leg, and how distracted he must have been when he’d first applied the leg bandage, not to notice the strength of the leg beneath that wound.
“Is this an accepted medical practice, my dear doctor? Exposure to infirmary air, with whatever other biologics might be floating around?”
“It’s not as though there’s an outbreak of Rigellian flu,” Julian says, a little snippily. He’s never felt so unsettled around Garak as he does now, not even when he thought Garak might chop him up and eat him as rare steaks for dinner. “You don’t really even need new regenerative bandages.”
“I suspect you’re going to apply them anyway.” Garak lifts his head a little to watch Julian’s hands. “You’re strangely committed to keeping me alive.”
“You think it’s so strange? What would you do, if our situations were reversed?” His tongue feels a little thick as he asks it.
“If I were the eager young doctor and you’d been transformed into a monster and were keeping me hostage?” Garak hesitates for too long, far too long, before he laughs lightly and says, “You’d be long since dead and I’d be on a ship back to Terok Nor.”
“Naturally.” Julian smooths the edges of the fresh bandage on Garak’s thigh. He’s not—unaware of what his touch is triggering in Garak. He can admit, to himself, that he’s letting his fingers drag further than they need to, apply a little more pressure than necessary, and he’s learned enough about Cardassian biology in the last two weeks to know that they’re very like Humans in certain ways. He knows nothing of Cardassian societal attitudes, other than that the family is paramount, but he can’t exactly extrapolate further from a few of Garak’s isolated statements and a single novel.