Chapter Text
All that I have are these bones
And all that I want is a home
And all you can do is promise me, bold
That you won’t let me grow dark, or cold,
As long as we both shall live.
As long as we both shall live.
- Excerpt from “Rest in Bed,” Laura Marling
*
“Mr. Garak, we need your help.”
Garak had only been in Sisko’s office once before, and that time unbidden. To stand here now, summoned– It didn’t matter that Sisko remained seated, that he never motioned for Garak to sit. His power play was a feeble one; a crumbling wall, easily scaled. Sisko had asked for his help one too many times. Any remaining animosity was by necessity, for appearance. Garak understood, and, thus, he stood.
“If there is anything I can do for you, I would be delighted, of course. A new uniform design, perhaps? I know Starfleet has only just changed uniforms, but you have to admit that the new–”
“Mr. Garak, I don’t have time for this.” Sisko’s voice was a whip crack, his words bitten off, sharp. Garak fell silent, feeling a little victorious. Worming his way beneath that veneer, seeing it crack– well, it was satisfying. Sisko was rubbing his eyes. Now he was staring at his silly little ball, taking emotional refuge in his children’s game. Garak waited. “First, I want to say again how grateful we are to you for your recent service in the Gamma Quadrant. You rescued two good officers. I’m sure the Klingon and Romulan governments are equally grateful to you.”
“I’m sure,” Garak said. He didn’t say, The gratitude of every government in the galaxy is meaningless to me so long as my own forsakes me. Those weren’t the sentiments of a survivor. And Garak had always chosen survival. Always chosen life, or at least, every time but one, and that time, the Doctor had chosen life for him.
“You didn’t have to do what you did. Save all of them, I mean. We never would have known they were even alive if… Well, I mean to say, thank you.” Sisko’s voice was stiff, his posture stiffer. He didn’t relish these words.
Garak smiled. Again, he didn’t say, Of course I had to, had to save them all, because the Doctor chose life for me, the one time I wasn’t strong enough to, and I will choose life for him forever.
“So, to the point,” Sisko said, still seated – Garak, still standing. “Are you familiar with a Cardassian station called Empok Nor?”
***
“Mr. Garak, I believe we could use your help.”
It wasn’t quite the same – nothing ever could be – and yet, here he was, Captain Sisko, the inscrutable human, standing in Garak’s temporary quarters on the Starbase, asking for his help. Four months later, millions of miles away, the entire galaxy turned on its side by war, his hands still red with Amaro’s blood, and here was Sisko, asking for his help. Standing.
Three months together on a small ship, Garak even wearing a com-badge from time to time – well, nothing was the same.
“Anything, my dear Captain, you know that,” Garak said. Sisko frowned, of course, and Garak’s heart faltered a little, stuttered in his chest, because– because it no longer felt like a triumph to break this man. Because he hadn’t meant to, not this time, but his friendliness was eternally enmeshed with his insincerity, because the cloak he had drawn about himself at the beginning of his exile was wearing thin for him, but still held sway for others. Because they had sheltered him, when they did not need to, when it would have been easier to leave him behind, leave him to his fate, when he had killed Amaro. “I am at your service,” he added, trying to make his tone heavy, trying to convey that he was earnest– but he had never been earnest in his life, and it came out light.
“Of course you are,” Sisko said, smiling slightly, his eyes roving the ceiling for instant. He drew in a breath, and Garak thought of Tain, thought of how Tain would draw in deep breaths this way, how he would shake his head and chuckle and roll his eyes and say, “Oh, Elim. You never change.” And it was a command, more than an observation – “Elim. You never change.”
But everyone changes. Everyone.
“We have been given a mission. It is very dangerous, as we are to go behind enemy lines.” Sisko paused. “Cardassian space.”
Garak felt a chill. Sisko was eyeing him, one eyebrow up in a manner he had learned denoted appraisal. “I understand,” Garak said.
“I have some flexibility to choose my crew. I have chosen you. Now, obviously, you are not under my command, so you are free to refuse. However, I hope you will–”
“I’d be delighted,” Garak said. The mission didn’t matter. Anything that worked against the Dominion would be for the good of Cardassia, anything, anything at all that he could do. And anything that was asked of him by Sisko, by the Federation, which, it seemed, had become his only chance at salvation (he thought of Quark, he thought of root beer), he would do, unquestioning.
And anything, anything that served Cardassia, that served his own salvation, and that allowed him to again rejoin the Doctor–
The Doctor, who only two hours earlier had come to him, shoulders stooped, with the news that he had been reassigned, some secret mission he couldn’t say a word about, very dangerous, might not return, probably shouldn’t have even said there was a mission…
Sisko, taken aback perhaps, let his lips hang apart for an instant. He wasn’t a man who was accustomed to being interrupted. But a calculated choice was made: he smiled.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “I’ll brief you once we are aboard.”
Sisko took a moment to peruse him again. Tain would have said, You should have seduced the station commander, not the doctor.
Garak almost laughed. Tain had always aimed him at every important figure that stood in his way, not caring really whether it was seduction or cold-blooded murder that gained his ends, but expecting results regardless. The thought had crossed Garak’s mind, back at the beginning, that he should do something about this man, turn him somehow. Sisko had been vulnerable when he arrived; it wouldn’t have been impossible.
The doors slid open and shut, almost silent, no ringing whir that he had become accustomed to on the station, and Sisko was gone, wordlessly. Garak had some time, moments only, to pack his meager things, the things he had snatched to bring with him aboard the Defiant in the scramble to abandon Terok Nor. Two changes of clothes, a toothbrush. A few books stored on rods. Everything else had stayed behind. Everything he had built, everything he had created, everything he had clawed into being since his exile, all left behind, again. Safely hidden, of course, in false panels, in secret crawlspaces all about the station. If he ever returned, he would return to it all. And if he didn’t, well–
He was serving Cardassia.
I’m asking you to serve Cardassia again. But that had been a lie, and this was not. Truth existed; he understood that now. He understood too much. Tain would have called him “compromised.”
“Well,” he said, thinking of the Doctor, of the bright look that would shine upon his face when he learned that Garak was coming too, “perhaps I am.”
***
“So what did Captain Sisko do to persuade you to come along?”
Garak checked in the corridor, the eery familiarity of the question raising his pulse. It wasn’t O’Brien this time though (O'Brien, who had made so many gestures of amiable friendship these past months, Garak hardly knew what to think); it was Doctor Bashir, leaning jauntily in the open the door to his quarters, arms crossed, head tilted, one foot resting on the other ankle. He was smiling, that closed-lipped, knowing smile he seemed to reserve for Garak alone. Perhaps Garak was just flattering himself to think so. Perhaps self-flattery was not too terrible a vice.
“He promised me larger quarters when we return to Deep Space Nine,” Garak said, and Bashir laughed. He seemed oddly careless on this Dominion ship, facing the unknown, careening into certain danger and probable death. Ah well, Garak felt oddly careless himself. There was something intoxicating in losing absolutely everything, again, and finding himself standing even so.
“You know,” Bashir said, stepping back with a hand stretched out. “Most people don’t even have quarters on this ship. They set up mattresses in the wider corridors. They gave me the room that they think must have been the Vorta’s – so that I could use it as a makeshift infirmary. The upshot is… I get a little privacy.”
“How nice for you.”
Bashir’s grin was flashing teeth now. “How nice for us.”
Garak knew enough to know he shouldn’t wait to be invited twice. He stepped in, Bashir still in the doorway, close enough to brush together. Once he was in, the door slid shut, and they were alone.
The room wasn’t large. A mattress sat in a corner, not quite wide enough for two, but Garak wasn’t complaining. The rest of the sparse quarters were filled with cases piled on cases.
“My medical supplies. I’ll need to unpack them in the morning, before we encounter the enemy.”
“I’ll help.”
Bashir was smiling again, his eyes sharp. He had that look that said he thought he knew things Garak wasn’t saying. He had that look that made Garak almost want to tell him everything. Almost.
“Tain once told me something about you.”
It was like a blast of icy wind. Garak didn’t shudder, but he could have. In a weaker moment he would have. “I’m sure he told you many things during your month together. I wouldn’t believe too much of it.”
Bashir shook his head. “No, I don’t mean in the internment camp. I mean the first time I met him. When… you know. The implant.”
“Ah.” Garak didn’t dare let his feelings show; his heart was pounding like a hammer. He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to be here.
“He told me that he never had to order you to do anything. He said that was what made you special.”
Garak felt like he was burning, burning up, like a light had been touched to him and he had gone up in flame. What did that mean? Of course Tain never ordered him– he never needed to–
Never had to. It was true, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? Wouldn’t he do anything, anything at all for a semblance of acceptance? For a pale shade of approval, a feeble pat on the shoulder? Anything, anything for love, for the love of Cardassia, the love of a mentor, the love of–
Bashir’s hand was on his arm, sliding upward toward his shoulder. He was leaning in, and wouldn’t Garak do anything, anything in the universe for a touch like this?
“I think he was right,” Bashir said softly. “That is what makes you special. Everyone else on this ship, we’re here because we have to be. We were ordered. But you have no orders, no requirement, no expectation from anyone to put yourself at risk. Sisko can’t do anything to you, not now that you’ve officially been granted asylum in Federation space. You could go anywhere, walk away and be free. But you’re here, risking everything.”
“Risking nothing,” Garak said, and didn’t know how to say more. How could he say more? He was risking nothing; he had nothing, nothing but his very bones, his body, and this man before him. Nothing to lose at all, but his life – which was nothing – and this man – who was here, on this mission regardless.
“And it was the same on Empok Nor,” Bashir said softly. “I know it all went wrong, but you didn’t go because Sisko bribed you. I know you better than that. You just want to be useful. You want to help. I know that.” He tilted his face in, close as a breath. “That’s what makes you special.”
And as they kissed, Garak thought, wildly, how different it felt to hear Bashir say, “You’re special,” than it had ever been to hear Tain say it.
***
The arm around his chest was like a rib of iron on a barrel, hard and implacable. Possessive.
Garak scanned his memory. He tried to remember a time when anyone had claimed him this way, when anyone had clung to him as if he were a raft in the abyss, when anyone had cleaved to him. Tain had, at times, smiled indulgently and called Garak, “my monster.” It was the closest he could come to a claim, to an assertion of possession. He had been on the outside all his life, he realized, teetering on the brink from the beginning, never a single foot on steady ground. His worth lay entirely in his usefulness, and when the inconvenience of him outweighed the value, he had come to expect rejection.
But this arm, this band of iron, it didn’t care at all what he had done. This arm had reached for him relentlessly, through every lie, every betrayal, every crime. This person had smiled at him through the field of a holding cell, laughed with him in the darkest moments, cradled him in his panic attacks, held him when he was still freshly splashed with the blood of the innocent Amaro. There was nothing he could do. He was trapped.
“I love you,” he said, whispered, but the whisper filled the little room like a canon blast. He thought the walls should fly apart and the vacuum fling them out into nothingness. He thought the air should be sucked from his lungs. He thought this might be it; he thought the man behind him would recoil at last.
But the arm remained, encircling hard. The face behind his head pressed forward, a long nose and narrow lips pressed into his neck, kissed him there. The arm tightened its grip even more, crushing him against the lanky body that lay stretched out behind him. And a whisper, soft as his but even more devastating, breathed, “I love you, too.”
And the mattress beneath Garak’s head was wet, soaking with tears, he realized – when had he begun to weep? – and Bashir was pulling him, turning him onto his back, his face all concern, all presence, all care. Garak reached up and put a hand on Bashir’s face, his thumb just crowning one sharp cheekbone and – Bashir’s face was wet as well. Acting on instinct now, he pulled the Doctor’s face to his, pressed their foreheads together – he had never done this before, only seen it done, only longed for the intimacy of it – and Bashir laid his length across him, hip to hip, feet wound around each other. His arms wrapped across the human’s back, and Bashir kissed him. In Cardassian space, on board a Dominion ship, in the middle of a war, he a murderer, the Doctor a monster of his own– it didn’t matter. They kissed, and Bashir said, “I love you, Garak,” and on the wall beside them their separate shadows blended into one.