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vaguely-concerned · 2 months

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A Stitch In Time First Read Reactions & Thoughts Monster Post Part 3

Stumbling over the finish line if not in style then with enthusiasm!

Part 1, Part 2

- Odo looked as if he could use a spell in his bucket; I had rarely seen him looking so run-down.

<3 I love one goo man

“I’d better get this information to Captain Sisko,” Odo decided.

“Would you rather I tell him?” I offered. Odo looked positively drained; he needed to return to his liquid state.

Every time Odo is changeling-sleep deprived Garak starts to hear kill bill sirens and flash back to ‘the die is cast’. It is kind of sweet that he seems to be worried for his friend and not trying to gain an advantage or sneak around here tho.

The ironies of the situation both amused and irritated me. Here I was, the invaluable decoder of Cardassian encryptions containing life-and-death information for the Federation—and they won’t trust me with the code to wake up Captain Sisko. Ah well, it was never easy being a Cardassian on this suspended chunk of desolation. And then I laughed out loud. But what about Odo? The last time I looked he was a changeling, a member of the race of Founders that was determined to destroy the Alpha Quadrant. Not only did he have the captain’s wake-up code, he also slept with the station’s second-in-command.

LMAO you know what fair fucking point garak. Tbf I’m sure there are some people who’ve been assuming you’ve been fucking the chief medical officer too

But if Damar had thrown his support to the rebels … if it wasn’t a ploy… I wanted my revenge on him, yes, but not at the expense of liberating Cardassia. And it wasn’t just liberating the planet from the control of a foreign power. It was closer… more personal. I wanted something that was even more difficult to attain—redemption.

The doors opened, and once again I was alert as I stepped into the deserted corridor and moved past the sleeping quarters to my own. It was time, I kept repeating in my head. It was time to take our place among the planets and peoples of the Alpha Quadrant as a civilized and open society. It was time to repair the damage. “A stitch in time saves….” What? What was that expression?

*pats him very gently and lovingly on the head* This man can unironically fit so much character development in him

“You’re Khon-Ma, aren’t you?” She didn’t respond. “Being the only Cardassian on this station, I expected you a long time ago. What kept you?”

She should shoot you actually just for this

I stopped. What’s the point, I thought. All the stories were beginning to run together and they all had the same ending.

Smoking gun of ‘hm I think there might be some unreliable narration still lingering here’ lol. In a way all but openly admitting that like this is probably more like telling the truth for garak than telling the actual truth would be. From how we see him interact with Toran in the show I buy that the emotional truth about this is basically as he tells it tho — I think he’s angry and disgusted with himself more for having been unable to stop something from happening and taking that as being as responsible for it as the asshole who caused it, rather than actively making it happen himself. That’s the kind of pattern he has in so many other places in his life too, trying to navigate in the very limited space and with the very limited agency being submissive to personalities like Tain and Toran leaves you.

“And they were all killed,” she said even more softly.

“End of story, Remara.” I considered telling her how I had exacted my own revenge upon Toran, and that my only regret was that his death hadn’t come sooner… but what was the point? Another treacherous opportunist dies after tearing another hole in the fabric. What’s gained except the potential for more damage? I rose. The station’s gravity felt like it had increased threefold.

“If you’re going to kill me, get it over with. One way or the other I’d like to go to sleep.”

“Who gave the order?” she asked.

“What difference does it make? I did, if you like.”

Remara just looked at me. She lowered the phaser. Part of me was deeply disappointed.

The ‘has he been thinking with his horny brain this whole time or is he passive-actively suicidal’ conundrum. I suppose there’s nothing saying it can’t be both but I also think it’s more on the second side than he’d like anyone to know. I guess there’s no easy way to tell the guy who saved your life that you don’t really care that much for said life most days, and if you were offered some plausible deniability…

“You’re going to have to leave this station. They’ll keep coming after you until someone succeeds. Goodbye, Elim.” She put her hand against the side of my face, and I felt the heat coming through. Perhaps her passion was a curse as a terrorist, but she was a whole person … and she had found redemption.

Chewing on the idea of being a whole person vs. ‘unfinished man’ and ‘mosaic person’

- Gul Toran is someone Tain has warned me to monitor periodically.

Ah so Four Lubak is the future Gul Toran (the asshole in the Natima Lang ep if I remember correctly)! I see. That also means his snarking about Toran being made Gul is entirely performative he’s known about it for years lmao that was literally just to be a bitch yes wonderful

- The fact that Tain has an evil Romulan twin/soulmate and they hate each other fdskjfhdsa

- So interesting that it does take until middle-age and Palandine’s extended presence in his life before Garak’s sense of humor really emerges fully. It seems such an integral part of him in the show, it sure is Something that it basically had to be carefully tended to and supported like a lil flower by careful gardener’s hands (thank you Palandine I’m sorry your life is a nightmare)

- But I must confess that the toast proposed by proconsul Merrok left me feeling much better about the whole affair.

. . .

“At first I couldn’t think why you hated him,” I confessed.

“I don’t hate anyone, Elim,” he carefully explained. “I have a job to do—and sometimes it’s necessary to eliminate those enemies who can’t otherwise be dissuaded. And he was determined to block our interests at every juncture.”

“I don’t hate anyone” says man composed of about 98% hate per volume

“Oh yes, my boy—yes, you did excellent work. A job well done.” He had never complimented me with such unconditional enthusiasm. It was almost a demonstration of paternal pride.

“You see, I had this planned for a long time, Elim. But Tolan wouldn’t agree. He wouldn’t take on the assignment, and he wouldn’t pass on the information. But thankfully he trusted you, Elim.” Tain patted me on the shoulder, which meant I was dismissed.

Weaponizing Tolan’s memory against him. Fucked Up.

- Fear and isolation, Doctor. You can’t have one without the other. Fear isolates and isolation is fear’s natural home. Just as my orchids need carefully prepared soil to protect them against disease and pests, fear needs the isolated circumstances to deepen and grow without connective or relational interference. When fear is allowed to flourish in its dark and lonely medium, then any evil that can be conceived by the fearful imagination will emerge.<

This whole chapter is so fucking good, and it starts slapping right from the beginning. The way this works not only as a description of the larger crimes of Cardassia, but also the shape of his own life.

‘My orchids’ is very sweet, and a phrasing that occurs several times.

My feelings are spent, my moral rationalizations are empty, and I can’t say it’s not my problem when I’m pulling and lifting and throwing bodies of people who once only wanted to go about the business of their lives.

His life has been a series of violent deconstruction followed by reassembly of the broken pieces, and this should have been the most shattering of all but it comes across as almost peaceful. He finally gets to have his soul to himself enough to make something meaningful with it and put it together in his own time and in the shape of his own truth, even in the middle of such a painful realization.

Colonel Kira once told me how many Bajorans died during the Cardassian Occupation, and my mind rejected the figure like a piece of garbage. We’d been in the service of the state, I had told myself, and the state had determined what was necessary. But now I understand why she hated me. More important, I now understand that constant burning, almost insane look in her eyes.

. . .

Most of us who are left, Doctor, are insane. We have to be in order to survive and emerge from our isolation. It’s the only way we can live with the pain of what we did. Or didn’t. Each of us accepts the amount of responsibility we are capable of bearing. Some accept nothing, and these people are quickly swallowed by their isolation, their insanity transformed into a rationalized evil. A smaller group accepts total responsibility, and their insanity is an unbearable burden that cripples and eventually grinds them down. The rest of us carry what we can and leave the rest. For myself, Doctor, when a corpse is too heavy to bury I try to remember to ask someone to help me.

This man can hold so much fucking character development 2 electric boogaloo and HOW!! Imagine early seasons Garak saying anything like this! Even while I’ll also buy that early seasons Garak does have the capacity to get to this point in the end after enough work. AND the way it goes with his dream of Cardassia as a mass grave earlier/later on in the book — which also sort of indicates that the person he’s asked to ‘bury these bodies with’, as it were, before, was specifically Bashir. ‘You taught me to ask for help’. I’m so fucking soft for all the ways Garak is showing him that he touched his life in the very best and most beautiful way anyone could, no matter where they go from here.

- “I don’t know. I suppose I’m just trying to reconcile statistical analysis with Romulan gardens.” We lapsed into a long, stony silence. Usually she knew better than to expect a real answer when she did ask about my working life. We both tried not to venture into certain personal spaces; often the attempt functioned as a barrier. I’m sure she knew that I was more than a data analyst at the Hall of Records. She also understood that the less she knew about what I did the more chance our relationship had to survive. For the same reason I never asked about Lokar. The less information, the less damage if either one of us was betrayed.

Garak that’s kind of sloppy, of course she knows something’s up if you’re making it that easy to figure out lol

Another interesting detail: Palandine seemingly never learns that Tain is Garak’s biological father, then. Very emblematic of the way all those secrets were still getting between them despite their best efforts. And lending even more meaning to the fact that many years later he lets Julian find out in uh perhaps the most direct way possible haha.

“I’m of two minds. I know, that’s just another way of saying that I’m confused.”

Huh. I wonder if the way this is phrased suggests that that’s not a common expression in Cardassian and he’s translating it directly from Standard or something, or that his uh. Mental confusion/dissociation/fragmentation pops up enough that she’s familiar with it already here?

“Yes. What if they’re right? What if they could help us reclaim something noble in ourselves? Where does that leave us?” We stood looking at each other. The night wind gusted through the foliage and I wondered where I’d be if I didn’t have this woman’s friendship.

What a soft way to describe it. Really drives home the like. Wholeness of what she meant to him.

“It was a while ago, Palandine. I don’t know if they’re in the same place … or if they even meet tonight.” Her enthusiasm rendered me as helpless as it did when I first met her.

Julian/Palandine parallels time yet again

I looked at Palandine, and she now radiated with such light that I turned away, inexplicably embarrassed as if I had seen something I shouldn’t.

So sad somehow that they kind of drift apart in this scene, where Palandine finds something that helps her and he mostly seems to come away lost and confused, if cleansed. (and he still can’t cry with someone else in the room)

After Palandine had left, I had spent the rest of the night sitting in the Grounds near the children’s area.

How is this so goddamn sad fhkjshfa. They’re still just children, and no one is going to come pick them up from the playground, no one is going to protect them

- “Yes, of course,” I replied. I took a deep breath, and my disparate parts began to snap back.

Adrift from himseeelf. This is kind of what I meant about Palandine maybe picking up on some of his — this stuff. Which structurally pops back up in The Wire too, with how he tells the stories.

“You look like you’re not eating anything,” Prang observed. If Tain was the father of the Obsidian Order, Prang was its mother.

LMAO. And he’s constantly worried about his saddest son I guess. Tain/Prang most cursed DS9 rarepair idea???

- His other hand was now probing my skull behind the right ear. The man’s ambidexterity was impressive.

Lol diversity win: the mad doctor about to implant you with experimental tech is ambidextrous!

Oh. Oh no it’s the wire time. The fact that he’s one of the first agents fitted with it b/c his hindbrain distress tolerance is too worryingly low for their comfort…

When I tell you that this wire will give you no trouble, as long as you don’t meddle with it, you can believe me. You know that, don’t you, Elim?”

“Yes, I do, Mindur.” The man had never given me anything but superb technology and sound advice. “Please continue,” I submitted.

“Good boy.” Timor thumped my shoulder again.

HORROR SHOW CULTURE ONCE MORE and also. Praise kink revisited and made more interestingly fucked up. Also submission theme thread.

Do you think he’d meddle with the wire eventually even if he hadn’t been exiled. I feel like there’s a non-zero chance of that.

- I remembered the Hebitian frieze and its lush background. Of course we were different people: it was a different world. The more the forests receded, it seems, the more we covered ourselves. Their world didn’t need an agent of the Obsidian Order to investigate a group of prominent Cardassians who “happened” to be spending their vacation together. It didn’t have Enabran Tain targeting one of his bitterest enemies, Procal Dukat, a powerful member of the Central Command. And I’m certain it didn’t have fathers who refused to acknowledge their sons. If we lived on the next spiral of the cycle of life, how did we know it wasn’t going downward?

a) ‘what if the glass is not only half-empty but also leaking’ yes very cheery Garak and b) one of the rare times he lets not just his bitterness with Tain but also his longing to be acknowledged by him fully shine through. To me it seems like that’s the one thing that’s still too raw for him to dwell on in this narrative. He mostly doesn’t get into or sit with the pretty obvious fact that he loved Tain, and desperately wanted Tain to love him too. You can see the traces through the whole thing of just how angry he is with him now that he’s dead (GOOD! HE SHOULD BE! HE SHOULD BE ANGRIER; IF ANYTHING!), but that particular element of it seems too vulnerable to keep in sight most times

- PYTHAS IS BACK BA-BEY!

His grace was even more refined as he moved to the small house that was our assigned base of operations. If anything could have taken my mind off downward spirals it was the appearance of Pythas.

And the mutual crush endures (also with me I love a sneaky little twink)

“What was good for you, Elim, was usually agreeable to me as well,” he wryly observed.

The way Pythas is like Garak’s shadow — except in Garak’s eyes he does everything ‘right’, he doesn’t seem to have that same aching need for connection, he follows his orders easily, he’s perfect and he reaps the rewards Garak never gets. Garak never even resents or begrudges him any of it. And yet they end up in basically the same place when all’s said and done, in the ruins of Cardassia, and Garak might even win out b/c his trials with the mortifying ordeal of being known mean he has some people in his life he’s starting to truly trust, the way Pythas seems to with Nal as well. Thinking. A lot of things.

Over the years, his modest demeanor and quiet ways had turned him into more of a solitary person than I ever was. I had learned to withdraw my presence as a tool, but I was always aware of my need for contact, and that my value as an operative lay in my ability to engage others in a nonthreatening manner that drew them out. Pythas had learned to withdraw his presence as a way of life—and he moved through the world like a shadow. I was not surprised that Tain had recruited him for the “invisibles.” It took a special person to be able to operate in such unrelentingly anonymous circumstances—no family, no fixed base or identity—and there was no doubt in my mind that he was one of the most brilliant agents in the Order. Our relationship picked right up where it had left off at Bamarren. Other than Prang, I have never met anyone where so much was communicated with so few words. His eyes had a depth and eloquence that told me everything I wanted to know. How ironic that my lust for conversation was satisfied by someone who rarely spoke.

Ah, so if Palandine is the proto-Julian, as it were (and Parmak is the silver fox Ersatz Julian), Pythas is definitely the anti-Julian as well as Garak’s shadow hahaha.

- Garak is undeniably a city boy at the end of the day haha. Pythas help him out there in the jungle he doesn’t belong here I understand why you’re so worried

- In a way it was touching: the old man reverting to the mind control exercises he had learned as a child.

Garak. The warning bells. Should they perhaps be ringing merrily in your mind at this combination of words and letters. Oh well.

- “Yes, it’s me.” I squatted so that I was at eye level. I tried to soften myself, round off all the sharp edges.

Yes yes yes this is such a good description of that Thing he does. His ‘just a lil guy/tailor/gardener/funny spy man’ move

‘Carriers of disease’ and spreading poison motifs are back. Dukat Sr. uses it here to describe cowardice/Federation ideals/hashtag the SJWs/the forces that threaten to disrupt the status quo of the fascist state.

- I left the containment field in place and stepped outside to clear my head. No matter how objective I tried to remain, I could never remain totally unaffected by another man’s horror. Fear was a contagious disease.

This seems right to me — I don’t think anyone who could truly shrug off other people’s suffering would have to make up such webs of justification and alienation as Garak does to do what he does. Maybe that empathy is why he’s so good at it and also why it messes him up so bad over time

His *Working 9-5 slowed down & with reverb plays softly in the background* vibe about it is undeniably kind of funny tho

Contagious disease thread cont too, and not the first time fear is spoken of that way

“Who are you?” he asked for the second time, fighting against the toxin’s effect. This was one tough old warrior.

“Your worst nightmare,” I replied.

“Ah,” he croaked. “Then Tain sent you.”

- YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE fhdkjshasjh good for you Pythas isn’t there to hear it that is so embarrassing Garak (affectionate)

- Garak dreaming of being buried with the still-whispering mass grave of Old Cardassia… what the fuck I don’t think I’d sleep ever again after that haha

Of all of the people he dreams of, most of them are dead (or potentially soon about to be dead? Not entirely sure how that works out for Mila in particular. And I guess we technically don’t know if Calyx is dead, but after so long it seems very likely), except as we find out later Pythas. And Palandine isn’t there.

NO. NO YOU CANNOT TELL ME THE FIRST THING HE DOES IS CALL JULIAN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING NIGHT W H A T

“It’s not a medical emergency. Please, I realize this is an imposition.” There was a silence and I heard another voice in the background. Ezri Dax. A muffled conversation. The Doctor cleared his throat again.

“I’ll be right over,” he said.

This is so melancholy I want to disappear into a puddle of quiet yearning and never come back to solid form just put me in a bucket like the Odo.

This is also the first time in this book Garak has asked Julian for help rather than Julian trying to approach him to give him help (and being rebuffed). He’s called for and he comes :’)

He gave me his puzzled look, which wrinkled his brow. I was always amazed at how deep the furrows were for one so young.

Soft little detail time yet again. Garak has been sitting across Julian for years just looking at this face and picking out new details.

“ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’” he quoted.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Shakespeare,” the Doctor replied.

“Hmmh.” I nodded in agreement, surprised that for once the author of the politically misguided Julius Caesar made sense.

Fhdskhfskjdfhsdjak you say that as if you didn’t quote the politically misguided Julius Caesar to your father’s face on a burning spaceship as you for the first time truly saw that he was as fallible as anyone else and invoking Bashir’s name in the process Garak

“Of who we are, Doctor. Our being. Human being. Cardassian being. But we have become these beings—are becoming, always in the process of becoming—on these other dimensional levels that are not limited by the measures of time and space. And the great determining factor of our becoming is relationship. Unrelated, I become unrelated. Alienated. Opposed, I become an antagonist. Unified, I become integrated. A functioning member of the whole.” The Doctor was thoughtful; his previous agitation had dissolved.

“You’re a scientist, Doctor. You have a deep understanding of this level. I don’t mean just the mechanics. You understand about relationship, the laws that attract and repel, the combinations that nurture and poison. Health and disease. Integrity and breakdown.”

“In your dream,” he said, “I presided over the burial of yourself and the people you were most intimately related to. Why?”

“You said, ‘for the good of the quadrant…. they must never be allowed to return.’ Why would you say that?” I asked.

“I can only think that….” He stopped and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Garak. This is not easy for me. I still can’t help thinking this was your dream. Even if I was invited … you were the playwright.”

“Yes, but put yourself in that part. Why would you bury these people and cover up the pit?” The Doctor looked at me in frustration. “Please. Indulge me. It’s vital that I have your answer.”

“If you and the others were carriers of some disease,” he shrugged. “In our fourteenth century on Earth there was a terrible plague, the Black Plague, which wiped out half of Europe’s population. People believed that the dead bodies had to be destroyed, burned … buried … because it was the only way to prevent the spread of the disease….”

. . .

The Doctor was studying me with an interest in his face I hadn’t seen in years.

“Well? Is it the Black Plague, Doctor? Or just the ramblings of an old spy on the eve of battle?”

“You’re an amazing man, Garak.”

“And my gratitude to you can never be adequately expressed. But I shall try,” I promised.

“Please. What have I done?” he asked genuinely.

“That time you extended yourself so generously and found a way to remove the wire from my brain without killing me …”

“I would have done that for anyone,” the Doctor interrupted.

“I’m sure that’s true, but that’s not what I mean. All during the time the device was deteriorating, I was convinced I was going to die.”

“You were even resigned to it,” he reminded me.

“I was also convinced that it was all a dream, and I kept asking myself what you were doing there.”

The Doctor was puzzled. “But what you just told me, that our dreams are just another way we relate … ?”

“I had forgotten. That point of my life was perhaps the lowest. I had forgotten many things. When I ‘woke up’ and realized that because of you I was going to live—at that moment, I began to recollect some valuable information.”

“About dreams?” he asked.

“Yes. But specifically about relationships, and how they set the course of our lives. You not only ’saved’ my life, you also made it possible for me to live it.” The Doctor’s face darkened.

“What is it, Doctor?”

“The time I wounded you in that holosuite program ….”

“Yes,” I prompted expectantly.

“I never apologized for my action.”

“And you must never apologize!” I urged.

“Please, Garak. This is not the time to give me a lesson on how to behave like a hardened spy….”

“No, no, no. On the contrary, when you shot me, my dear friend, that was the next step in my process of remembering. I was going to sacrifice the others, the people you considered your friends, because that was the only way I could be sure to save myself. You opposed me. Indeed, you would have killed me if necessary.”

“I’m sure it would never have gotten to that point,” the Doctor muttered.

“You would have killed me,” I repeated. “For the greater good.” The cliche suddenly had another meaning for both of us. “This is my last trip to Cardassia. I’m not returning. You were in the dream for a very specific reason. Once again, you helped me remember. Thank you, Julian.” I put my hand on his shoulder.

“You’re welcome,” he smiled warmly. “And by the way. It wasn’t the dead bodies that carried the disease. It was later determined that it was the rats feeding on the bodies who were the transmitters.”

“Then I guess we’ll go to Cardassia and look for the rats,” I said.

“Be careful, Garak. And look after my hot-headed friend, will you?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll look after each other,” I answered him. He moved to the door. “Did you really have a dream about Hippocrates?” I asked.

“Yes. Actually I did.”

“Why am I not surprised?” I replied.

First name use…

Disease contagion imagery, and this time it’s very clearly symbolizing y’know the fascism of it all. Weirdly moving that Julian takes a moment to gently imply that the disease isn’t inherent in the people Garak loves and has loved (or in him, for that matter), but in the conditions that created them.

There’s so much going on here idk if I could start to pick it apart yet, I may need to let this percolate in my skull for a while before I know what to say haha. I think part of it is Garak telling Julian to never apologize for showing him the full truth of himself (not least because that also lets Garak see the full truth of himself in turn), and Julian finally relaxing about. Something. He’s been ashamed about something he can finally let go of.

‘I thought it was a dream, and kept asking myself what you were doing there’.......I will never emotionally recover from this I want to write fic specifically about this lord have mercy on me

- *Tain Voice* with your hippie bullshit and your women!

*tiny garak voice* woman…

Over the years we rarely met outside his office; only an emergency or drastic change of plan would alter the routine. Now as we walked through the late morning sun and pedestrians at a leisurely pace I experienced a connection to the surrounding bustle and energy in a way that felt almost normal. A father and his son taking a stroll. Tain was heavier, and I could hear his breathing labor with the effort. He’s an old man, I thought. He’s mortal. I’d never thought about Tain in this way, and I became protective as we approached an aggressive knot of pedestrians at the edge of the Coranum Sector. One man was about to run Tain down when I intercepted his path and bumped him to the side. I ignored his challenge as we continued. “Yes, Elim. I’m getting old.” It wasn’t the first time he picked up my thoughts; this was how our conversations usually went.

HE BECAME PROTECTIVE

You know the way he keeps touching Tain’s arm and shoulder in The Die is Cast, like he’s steadying him or about to step in front of him to protect him or something? Yeah… he burns his hands on this stove over and over and over but he can’t stop trying to touch it :(

This was so typical of his manipulation. Just moments ago I was feeling protective of this benign old man, my father. And now… the irony filled my mouth with a bitter taste.

This is always & forever first and foremost an Enabran Tain hate zone

He moved to the covered seating area, where the sun filtered through the old vegetation. I had never been here with anyone but Palandine. With a long sigh he settled into a patch of sunlight on the low bench.

He’s like a fucking strangle vine he just winds himself into every single part of garak’s existence and chokes the life out of it

“Yes,” I answered. The benign mask was slipping, and I began to see the depth of his anger.

. . .

“You don’t know!” he repeated with a disgust I hadn’t heard since I was a boy and failed to record all the details of one of our walks.

Oof. Ow. Ack.

“And all this while, instead of giving up your life to the work, hardening yourself into a leader who could inspire others and expand the vision, you’re playing out Hebitian fantasies with another man’s wife!”

“Yes. Just like Tolan!” I exploded. “Perhaps he was my real father after all.”

Tain rose like a man many years younger and grabbed my shoulder in a powerful grip. His anger was now a murderous fury and it was all I could do to hold my stance against the pain of his grip. His cold eyes told me I had betrayed him. Worse, I had failed him. He let go of my shoulder and turned away from me. My entire body trembled. When he turned back he had regained his composure.

The biggest sin Garak could commit in Tain’s eyes is to dare to separate himself from him in any way; to be anything but his mirror, to act as if he has any claim to his own soul. I feel like more than what happens with Barkan right after this, this is what Tain considers the real betrayal.

Tain has never needed to hit him or become physically violent with him to keep him under control ever since he was a very small child, he’s relied on the terrorizing force of emotional violence. And as is so often the case with emotional violence, it’s been insidious and hidden enough, kept to private spaces and in the shadows, that Tain can pretend at plausible deniability b/c like. Who’s Garak even going to tell about it, for the longest time, if a miracle happened and he even found he could? Mila, who has joined the war on emotional violence on the side of emotional violence since probably before Garak was even born? (For understandable psychological reasons, but in unforgivable ways in the role of a parent.) I wonder if ‘making him’ lose control and expose himself and his violence for what it is like this (in public, even!) is also part of what he can’t forgive Garak for. This ah ‘slip-up’ is the first big crack we see in Tain’s image of perfect implacable control (which is very much still the impression you’re left with in Garak’s stories in The Wire too), in the same way that Improbable Cause/The Die Is Cast completely breaks that image down. He is getting old. He stayed in the game too long in the end and his iron grip is starting to slip and everything he’s forced to stay in place starts to slip out of that order with it.

Characterizing what Tolan was doing as ‘living with another man’s wife’ is SUCH a subtle burn tho lol like yeah maybe after the strictures of our society you SHOULD have married the mother of your child instead of outsourcing all your decency to the said mother’s BROTHER, Tain

Aside from anything else going on here (and there is a lot going on)... does Tain even know who Garak is at all, just on a personal level? Why, after knowing him for like 40+ years at this point, presumably, would you expect him to have aspirations or the natural inclination towards leadership, have you ever met him??? He’s one of nature’s perfect right hand men (well. Maybe not entirely nature’s, Tain did this to him very deliberately on top of some basic natural tendencies lol), he’ll get you whatever you ask of him and I think organizing a team under him for you could be part of that when need be, but never has he shown the least inclination towards leadership. (In fact, despite longing for the recognition coming out on top would get him from daddy I mean his peers, he seems vaguely relieved each time Pythas gets to sit in the big important chair instead of him.) He isn’t Tain’s mirror, for all he dutifully tries to move in the ways that make it seem like he is. And Tain should be smart enough to know that, if the narcissism didn’t completely blot out his sight in this situation, and/or it’s just the ‘setting him up to fail and then acting outraged when he does’ pure maliciousness reaching its apex.

(In a kinder time and a kinder world I think Garak could have a real nice time being one of nature’s extremely devoted Partners rather than simply right hand man. And I would like to see it please)

“From now on you will report to Corbin Entek.”

Oh, that’s the Entek of Second Skin, probably. Wish you a very ‘get vaporized for not knowing when to quit’ in the future entek

As I watched him leave, I felt completely empty and wondered how I could feel such emptiness. This sudden, wrenching reversal of fortune … everything changed beyond recognition…. And yet … there was no anger, no self-pity … no fear. Only release. Release from the secrets. Release from the limbo where, ever since I was a boy, I had been trapped between imposed obligations and feelings of mysterious longing mixed with shame. I felt empty … and free.

Listen to that voice maybe garak (not that I think there IS any way out at this point or that there ever has been in truth, that’s kind of the tragedy of the whole thing, tain would never ever have let go of him)

- Mila goodbye time:

“I’m afraid we’re not leaving you much,” she said. “The furnishings have already been taken away.”

“I wasn’t expecting anything.” I tried to keep all irony out of my tone.

“It’s your choice, Elim.” Her voice was just as neutral. “The house is yours to live in.”

Mother and son having a Carefully Extremely Civil conversation lol

“Do you know the circumstances … Mila?”

She looked at me. It was the first real contact we’d had in many years. She nodded slowly.

“Before I make my ‘choice,’ I need your help,” I said, surprised that the request emerged so simply. I wasn’t as angry with her as I wanted to be. Mila saw this and softened perceptibly.

This running thread that almost despite himself he understands and empathizes with her and her situation too much to be as angry with her as he probably should be. He understands her better than she understands him (than she could allow herself to understand him, even if she had the ability to).

I think that these apparently contradictory elements of his personality are part of what makes him feel so real in some ways, too — interpersonally he can be incredibly petty and jealous and judgemental AND almost absurdly forgiving and generous, sometimes seemingly simultaneously, somehow. The classic containing multitudes meme but like forreals tho haha. That is what real people are like too.

“I love her, Mila.”

“You’re a grown man, Elim.” I couldn’t decide whether she thought I didn’t know this or was seeing it for the first time herself.

“And Palandine’s a grown woman,” I replied.

“I don’t care about her. It’s you! You have to learn…” She broke off and passed me a cup which exuded the herbal aroma I’ve always associated with her and Tolan. Bitterbark and sweet groundroot. Moist rich soil.

“To control myself?” Mila blew on her tea. I shrugged at the obvious irony; I didn’t want to get into a fight.

. . .

Mila sat on a bin and sipped her tea. She avoided my look. As I positioned another bin across from her, I experienced a deep pain in my shoulder. It was still throbbing.

“Tain’s angry … with me. He wants me never to see her again and … to kill Barkan.” Still she avoided looking at me. “But you know this, don’t you? And you know what’s possible. Because you have your own … thoughts about this. Don’t you Mila?” I persisted.

Again she jerked away from me. Tea from her cup slopped onto the floor. “There’s no time, Elim.” She put the cup down, wiped her hands on the protective smock she wore, and looked for something to clean the floor with. “There’s no time for this.”

The mother/child relationship here is… y’know I talk a lot about Garak’s daddy issues for obvious reasons, but the fact that his mother recoils in fear when he tries to engage some sliver of real emotional intimacy with her prrrrrobably did some similar amounts of shaping him huh haha. (and he does this too in many ways — that’s partially where his trouble with Julian comes from in this book, whenever Julian tries to get too close Garak flinches away or counterattacks, for all that he clearly longs for it as well.)

The roundabout way you can tell her love for him even so tho. ‘I don’t care about her’. Palandine is not her baby, Elim, you are. Mila hasn’t been left with the luxury of love to spare for someone she doesn’t even know when you’re setting yourself up for destruction right in front of her eyes….

“I mean it, Mila. I would. But I think about her, feel her, all the time. Especially when I’m alone.”

Palandine/Bashir parallels once more and I really mean it!! There used to be a little Palandine in his head the way there’s a little Julian in there now. (and sadly she doesn’t seem to be there anymore, or maybe he’s just integrated what he got from her and let the rest go for both of their sakes, the same way he let Mila the regnar go when it was time.)

“Sacrifices?” In frustration Mila took off her smock to wipe the tea from the floor. “Elim, you amaze me.” Shaking her head, she got down on her knees and began scrubbing vigorously, as if the spilled drops of tea were hostile agents capable of spreading disease and destruction.

“Really? Well, I’m pleased I still have the ability—”

“Sacrifices,” she hissed, her control escaping like steam from a narrow rift. “What was the name of that book you once gave me? When you first came back from Bamarren. The one you proclaimed as the greatest Cardassian novel ever written and insisted that we read it.” Mila was still on her knees, but now I was the offending spot she vigorously rubbed with her words and eyes. “Generations of one family, each faced with the same choice at a crucial moment. Do they serve their personal needs or do they serve future generations? Do they choose the comfort of their own lives over the life of the state and its mission? I read it, Elim. You told me to and I did.”

“The Never-Ending Sacrifice,” I answered.

“Yes. That’s the one.” She made a sighing sound as she stood up. Mila was heavier now, and moved with greater deliberation. She, too, had grown old. “I suggest you reread it.”

“Tain always came first, didn’t he? I suppose that was your never-ending sacrifice.” I no longer reined in the irony.

I’m CRYING this is SUCH a mom thing to do. Her teen son came home with a book he waxed poetic about and she read it to try to understand him and never told him until now.

Also: disease contagion theme thread! To Mila, it seems to be tied in with the sentiment reading of it — the way her child’s suffering stains all her safe stable justifications and rationalizations that she needs to stay alive in this system. The remaining humanity that can’t be completely stamped out, even by Tain and a lifetime of fuckery. The ‘imperfections’ of life that can’t be subsumed completely into order.

Garak I think it’s better if you don’t recommend that book to people it clearly leads to disappointing interpersonal outcomes every time haha

“Tolan understood and accepted his obligations,” Mila said coldly. “But he was sentimental. Like you. That was the one thing Enabran worried about.”

I smiled in sad recognition. Sentimental. Yes, Tain and Mila had definitely shared their confidences and judgments with each other.

“But I don’t blame Tolan. He was a good man.” Mila watched me as I rose.

“Yes. So you keep saying.” I wanted to leave.

“She’s nothing but trouble for you, Elim. End it now. Do what Enabran says and reclaim your rightful place.”

“My place,” I repeated.

“Now, Elim. Otherwise you’re in real danger,” she warned with a certainty that reminded me of the time she’d brought me to Tain after I’d left Bamarren. Mila always knew what was at the heart of the never-ending sacrifice.

“Thank you for your help,” I said, too weary for irony.

“What did you expect from me?”

“To be honest, I can’t remember,” I answered. “Have a pleasant trip.” I smiled and bowed.

“What did you expect from me?”/“To be honest, I can’t remember,” is THE realest description I’ve seen of a mother/child relationship. This might say more about me than I should be comfortable with probably but still.

“Let Limor know if you’ll be living here.” I nodded. Yes, I thought, that would be my answer. My choice. She shook out her smock to determine whether or not to put it back on.

“Mila.” She looked at me and took a deep breath, as if preparing herself for my question.

“Who was Tolan?”

“My brother.” She decided to wear the smock, and I left.

I am SO FUCKING SAD. She puts the smock back on. That’s the closest thing to keeping either of them she gets to have, just the second hand reminder that they were there, small and innocuous enough that no one will know and no one can blame her. In the end Tain takes everything else, and she lets him because it’s the only way to survive him. GET OUT OF THERE ELIM PLEASE

- On an impulse, instead of leaving immediately, I went down the corridor to Tain’s old office. The door was open, and I stopped at the threshold just as Pythas looked up from a now much cleaner desk. He smiled shyly and stood up.

“Please come in, Elim,” he offered. What surprised me was how pleased I was to see him. Just as I had felt he was the only other person who deserved to be One Lubak, I now believed he was the only other person who deserved to occupy this office.

He smiled shyly did he fhskja. Also Garak’s enduring lack of bitterness towards Pythas is amazing. ‘Yeah I would be mad but he really is that good if it had to be anyone it should be him’

- She stopped just short of my covering shrub, and the sight of her face shocked me. It was swollen and bruised. One eye was completely closed, and the other contained enough pain for ten. It took every bit of my willpower not to reach out and hold her. Her one eye held mine, I knew she wanted to tell me something so important that she was willing to wait all night if necessary.

I’m so fucking glad Barkan is about to eat it for good. I only wish it could have gone slower and more painfully for him.

I wanted to laugh, and it took a concerted effort to gather my disparate parts in order to integrate my will.

‘Disparate parts’ motif (dare we say mosaic motif?) detected

“At least the smile’s gone,” the first voice said. I was fully awake now.

Barkan’s life is just being haunted by fifty shades of Garak’s shit eating grin apparently

“Flaunting your ‘relationship’ in public like infatuated schoolchildren.”

“Yes, I suppose it would have been wiser to behave like experienced adulterers,” I replied with a sigh.

“You’re the lowest form of scavenger, Elim. You have no attachments of your own, and so you feed on the emotional vulnerabilities of others.

. . .

“But you’re a failure, Elim. You even failed in your attempt to assassinate me.”

“I didn’t fail with Palandine,” I said quietly.

LMAO gottem

The chemical makeup of Garak’s brain during Barkan’s beating should probably have been studied by science it must be the strangest rave in there

The others were there—my fellow travelers, their voices murmuring tonelessly, producing a steady sound that permeated the medium and intensified our connection. Their voices speaking to me. Their faces, serene and loving, illuminating the darkness as they floated by. Everyone I have ever known. Family. Faces from childhood. Bamarren. People I had known briefly. People I have known forever. Loved. Hated. We were all just together now, sharing the same nurturing medium as we traveled along our currents until we gradually separated.

This… near-death hallucination or spiritual experience or whatever it is vs. his mass grave dream later… very birth vs. death themed

Faces formed and reformed. Each one superimposed on the next in a long line emerging from blackness. Maladek. Merrok…. The molecular structure of one giving way to the next…. Procal Dukat. Tolan. Floating into focus, receding back into the darkness. I shook my head, trying to stop the flow. The Hebitian mask. My face. I grabbed my “face” and screamed into it. The flow stopped. The molecules rushed together and instantly formed Barkan Lokar’s death mask.

I think maybe something came a tiny little bit completely untethered in his head in a way it’s been threatening to for a long time in this moment. It may just be my imagination tho who’s to say

- “Elim Garak. How the mighty have fallen. Welcome to Terok Nor.”

“Oh, I try to visit even our humblest outposts, Dukat.”

“This is going to be more than a visit, trust me. You’ll soon wish that the execution had not been commuted.”

a) ah garak/dukat sniping my old friend b) It seems Tain never spoke to him in that whole process, so that time in the park was probably the last time before ‘Improbable Cause’?. I’m only surprised he didn’t give Dukat the neutral face of displeasure to convey to Garak second hand honestly

- “I’m sure you gave him a more ennobling position,” I said.

“He was executed,” the toady replied.

“A promotion of sorts,” I muttered. “Certainly in this place.”

The passionate enduring Garak/Terok Nor hateship off to an immediate and roaring start

- Real ‘he gave them the heebie jeebies. He had nothing else left to give’ vibes on garak in this part of his life

- He arched his brows in a manner that told me he’d worked long and hard in front of a mirror.

There’s always time to appreciate some good Dukat dunking

“Your life means nothing to me. Just as my father’s meant nothing to you.”

“I beg your pardon? Do I know your father?” Dukat made a move to grab me and immediately stopped himself. I was impressed by his self-control; I knew how much energy fueled his hatred.

“No offense,” I went on, further testing his control. “Of course, Procal Dukat was a famous military figure. We all mourned his passing. But I never had the pleasure personally….”

At his most miserable, but also his funniest. It IS really interesting that his humor only really reaches its current state here, when he’s lost Palandine and everything else in his life. It’s almost like the only remaining way to be close to her.

No, I decided that I was not going to sacrifice myself to Dukat’s desire for revenge. I would do this work; I would do it so well as to become indispensable to the station… and I would survive. I refused to be buried alive in this humiliation.

‘Sort of suicidal: yes; willing to go down in history as one of Dukat’s Ws… fuck no’

- I pick up their garments and mend them flawlessly. When they complain that the price is steep (because I’m treated like a slave doesn’t mean I’m going to start undervaluing my work), I just give them the smile—the smile she taught me.

Fdsahfasj hilarious. You go Garak you know your worth

- (About Pythas and Palandine) At this moment I am almost afraid to discover that they’d survived. A part of me has wanted to bury that part of my life. The defenses I set up to survive my exile are obviously still intact.

I am often joined on my walks by Dr. Parmak. He’s a charming conversationalist, with a first-rate mind. His perspectives are always provocative. He does, however, have a tendency to proselytize for Alon Ghemor and the “Reunion Project” (the name they’ve given their group to remind people of the principles that formed the original Union). Whenever we encounter other pedestrians along our route, Parmak engages them and attempts to win them over to the Reunion side. This often makes for spirited exchanges, and although I am subjected to the opinions of people who should be given a new brain, I rather enjoy this peripatetic politicking. It’s something I would never have done on my own. In some respects he is so much like you, Doctor. If I’ve found someone’s opinion insufferably boring, he’ll kindly but sternly lecture me on the value of tolerance.

The wistful longing of ‘in some respects he’s so much like you’. ‘Although i am subjected to the opinions of people who should be given a new brain’. ‘Charming conversationalist’, is he. Garak you are a nonsense person and I adore you

One day I asked him how he had been brought to Enabran Tain’s attention. He never struck me as being a dangerous radical. It turns out that he was Tain’s personal physician, and that the great man had him interrogated because, the Doctor assumed, “he was concerned that I was in an ideal position to assassinate him.”

“I think he was more threatened by the fact that you were intimate with his weaknesses,” I pointed out.

“Well, certainly his physical infirmities,” he admitted.

“Which are also a man’s weaknesses,” I reminded him.

“The paranoia, the secrets, the power he held….” The doctor shook his head. “He must have been a difficult man to work for.” I smiled at his understated tact.

“He once tried to have me killed,” I said.

“Really? What did you do, Elim?”

“I survived.” The Doctor gave me a confused look.

“Survived … what?” he asked.

“Working for my father,” I replied. The Doctor stopped and just looked at me. His former fear of my eyes was long gone.

“A father who would murder his own son?” The idea horrified him. We were in the Barvonok Sector, where the tall structures of business and finance once dominated. “Oh, my dear Elim,” he said, this time with an empathy that stripped me of any illusions I had about Enabran Tain as a father. Surrounded by the piles of debris, oppressed by the low leaden sky, I finally began to surrender to the loneliness and loss that has preyed upon my dreams ever since I can remember. Even nothing is better than the ideas that have brought us here.

Go on without me I’ll be over here crying my eyes out

- I wonder if Limor Prang was one of the people killed in Tain’s Obsidian Order purge in Improbable Cause. If he was still alive that seems pretty likely huh. Well. RIP terrifying team mom I guess.

- Garak got his business up and running for real through a deal with Quark! Puts some of their interactions into perspective haha

I don’t do well with the kind of emotional exchanges humans seem to engage in regularly, and I have little sympathy for those who confuse the responsibilities of family with their duty to the state; but I confess that I am deeply moved by this woman’s plight.

Well it’s good the guy you have a thing for was raised British then he’ll probably feel pretty much the same way you’re perfect for each other

At one point she looked at me and asked me to hold her. I did. As I tentatively put my arms around her, I was so afraid of her need that I tried to keep her body at a distance. She would have none of it. She collapsed against me, and the sobs that convulsed and rolled through her body found correspondence in mine. I bit my tongue until I could taste blood in the effort not to surrender. Gratefully, the door to the Promenade was closed.

He keeps claiming he doesn’t care for the human tendency towards displays of emotionality even as we see it draw him in like a stupid horny sentimental moth to the flame repeatedly. The lizard doth protest too much methinks

- Unless I have business I rarely go to Quark’s; I have little tolerance for noise and stupidity. So when he saw me he assumed that I had another proposition, and I observed him shift into his engage mode.

Fun to see how this changes over the years, then! By the ca. Season 7 part of the book he has a few regular tables and everything. Also isn’t it so sweet that his kind of snotty attitude about this has not changed at all since Bamarren haha <3

- “The dead are dead. Those of us left—who believe in the ideals that have guided our race for millennia—are faced with the threat of utter annihilation by the very disease that has brought us to this sad place. Federation ideas will finish the work the Dominion began.”

Disease/contagion imagery (This is Legate Parn speaking, and he’s basically espousing the same view as Dukat Sr. As far as he’s concerned the call is not and never has been coming from inside the house thank you ever so much lol)

On the other side of Madred was Nal Dejar, a sharp-faced, saturnine woman who had been a member of my last cell at the Order. She once came to Deep Space 9 on an assignment with two scientists, and refused to make any contact with me. Judging from her averted look, she was still refusing. Next to her was a man with a severely disfigured face that was still recovering from what appeared to be burns. One eye was completely covered, and I was careful not to be rude in my inspection.

OH so it’s the lady who came along with Gilora and Ulani! The one who does not care for foreign food

Gul Ocett was persuasive in her quiet and reasoned strength. Indeed, the irony, Doctor, is that she was espousing the very argument I had made to you any number of times. Even now there was a part of me that accepted the logic of her argument, especially when coming from someone who was neither a fool nor an opportunist.

While you were stealth mentoring Julian in having enough spysmarts not go and get his beautiful twink ass killed at the first opportunity he was stealth mentoring you in the political and ideological underpinnings of democracy and the possibility of being loved BITCH!!!!

I simply smiled at him, genuinely amused by his amateur attempts to discredit me. I was surprised by my responses. I was here to play the role of double agent, and I found that as the meeting went on I didn’t have the energy for the requisite guile and misdirection.

Fdkjfhdsa ‘Aw. That’s cute’. He just doesn’t have it in him to work up the energy for cloak and dagger bullshit and it’s so good and so funny

And then a strange sensation went through me, Doctor. I looked at the faces of these people. Here we are, I thought, sitting in the basement of a ruined civilization and conducting business as if nothing significant had changed. The enemies were still the same, somewhere “out there,” plotting how to “destroy our character” and colonize us with their political system. And we were down in the basement with our own plots and shifting alliances, tenaciously holding on to the very ideas that had brought us here. But what ideas, Doctor? There’s nothing left. Only fantasies of power. These faces with their masks. With the ironic exception of the disfigured face, the masks hadn’t changed. They reflected the usual range of hidden agendas, each competing for dominance and ascendancy with an energy commensurate to the amount of fear and self-loathing that fueled and motivated that person. I started to laugh.

Amazing showstopping revolutionary good for you Garak

It was him, Doctor. It was Pythas.

EIGHT MY BELOVED WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE

“Thank you, Gul Madred, but I can find my way out.” I bowed to the company, and turned my back on them.

I continue to be so proud of him I have no words. And also this is why I don’t like Castellan Garak as a concept AT ALL. Leave him alone to his orchids and sewing and doctor fucking he’s been through enough he doesn’t need that in his life anymore he can do other things to help. Parmak and Julian would stage an intervention.

- Oh my GOD the cardassians literally just left terok nor without him overnight like Sid’s family in Ice Age fhdskjafh

Garak has been combining the wire AND being a barely functional alcoholic all this time. So at any given time in the first two season the chances that he is not only high but also profoundly drunk are overwhelmingly likely. This explains a lot.

Rom had a sensitivity, almost a delicacy that was totally lacking in his brother. Was there such a thing as a typical Ferengi? Most people judged him to be simple, as if simplicity was somehow a substandard quality.

Aw. Also maybe some hints as to his reconciliation with Tolan’s memory.

“Well, Rom, the trousers and tunic fit quite well, don’t you think?” I pulled the tunic down at the back. “Don’t wear it so far up on the neck; it ruins the line. And I’d be grateful if you’d tell any interested parties that indeed I’m still here and very much open for business.”

“Oh, yes … yes! And I like….” Rom made a broad, awkward gesture toward his new ensemble. I thanked him, and we walked out onto the Promenade, as if it were just another business day. We said goodbye, and I watched him march proudly through the ragged celebrants. I had a fondness for him. It was an odd relief, especially at this moment, to converse with someone who literally meant everything he said.

T________________________T surprise most wholesome dynamic continues to wreck me.

He stood for a moment, studying me, trying to divine why I had not been allowed to join the withdrawal. Unlike the others who assumed that because I was a Cardassian I had a choice, Odo knew that I’d been abandoned.

“Was there any damage or theft?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. I knew little about Constable Odo, but I was confident that he would never ask me questions that went beyond his function as security chief. He kept his distance and carried himself like someone who understood exile.

Odo appreciation moment as this is his last appearance in the book. Here’s to the small part of the fascist hivemind that harnessed those impulses towards the aim of becoming the world’s best and beigest mall cop. Unproblematic? No. But sometimes you simply love a good problem.

The fact that the narrative of this section ends right before Garak meets Julian. Probably a matter of weeks, max. You big sentimental sap lmao

- Parmak, Ghemor, and I stood silently among the formations, inspecting the results of our work in the first light.“I mean no disrespect, Elim,” the Doctor said, “but the memorial looks even better.” I nodded in agreement.

“Please, Doctor,” I replied. “ ‘Restoration’ is fine for artifacts and museum pieces. When it comes to building a new community, I think what we did tonight is more to the point.”

“And we did it without murdering each other,” Ghemor added.

“How un-Cardassian of us,” I observed.

This all rules btw . Restoration is fine for artifacts and museum pieces it’s not for things that are alive. Gardener vs. architect/collector, Tolan vs. Tain.

Alon said: “I think we should get some rest before the competition begins. We’ve done what we can.” It was a wise suggestion, but each of us knew that we were taking a step into the unknown, and sleep at this point was not really a choice. We had done what we could, and probably it was best if each of us retired to the privacy of his own thoughts. We said our goodnights, and as I watched them leave I felt an enormous gratitude that I had been given the opportunity to work with these men. Once again in my life I felt that I had been resurrected from the dead.

Nodding and crying gif. Yeah. Yeah… you’ve done all you could and no one could ask anything more of you.

- “You know, Elim, I’m neither a soldier nor a politician. I’m a doctor.”

“I do know that. I also know that we’ve been betrayed by our previous leaders. Our only hope is that men like yourself can offer an alternative.”

“But you have the expertise that can….”

“Doctor, I have the expertise that comes from survival and compromise. There’s already plenty of that on the other side … and it’s not an alternative that will create a new and lasting union.”

“No, I suppose you’re right,” he conceded.

“You’re a doctor, yes, and that’s your strength. I’ve learned something about your profession over the past several years. Don’t think like a politician. Think of the planet as a patient barely hanging on to life. Think like a doctor. How would you save this planet?” He considered what I’d said in his careful manner.

Just as it is vital for a person like Garak to have a little Julian Bashir who lives in his head, it’s probably also good for the Bashirs and Parmaks of the world to develop a little Garak who lives in their heads to go ‘yeah that sounds real nice in theory but now imagine that there are in fact bad people in this world (I should know) who’ll interact with that theory and then act accordingly’ . Garak realizing where he belongs in this whole process tho…

“Ah, Doctor,” I stopped him. “You can’t go to your meeting like that.”

“Like what?” he asked with a puzzled look. Without explaining, I helped him out of his worn outer coat and showed him a ragged tear in the fabric. Despite his protests, I made him sit down and wait while I gathered my sewing kit and repaired the tear.

“Appearances are very important to these people. You can’t let them think you’re oblivious to details,” I said, as I reunited the torn and separated threads.

The Mila fussing-as-a-love language of it all…

- (About Pythas) The thought occurred to me that perhaps I should include him in a chant for the dead.

DAMN but also YEAH

- I moved to the constructed formation that stood in the space formerly occupied by Tain’s study and almost directly above where Mila’s body had been sadly abandoned in the basement. When I was a boy, I had unending dreams that centered around the memorials of Tarlak. As I lay on my pallet in the basement of Tain’s house, I would plan the scenario that would play out when Tolan took me with him to Tarlak. It would always involve me as the hero paying homage to a comrade fallen in a battle where we had both distinguished ourselves. I would tell the gathered assembly of notables every detail of the battle; people would weep, cheer, listen in stunned amazement as I explained how we had saved the Union from certain destruction. When I had finished, Mila and Tolan would escort me through the adoring crowd. What a terrible irony, Doctor, that those forbidding, impersonal memorials to the heroes of the Cardassian Union should ultimately become transformed into these ragged formations on the grounds of my childhood home … and that I would sit here, a middle-aged man, trying to mourn a fallen comrade who was still standing but barely recognizable. And yet, the irony of a Cardassia reborn with the help of a memorial built from the remains of Tain’s home didn’t escape me either.

Taking immense psychic damage with every word. When do you stop wanting your mom and dad to come pick you up and take you home, even when they’re both dead and kind of not your parents anymore in two different ways even before that? Never, probably

- “What changed your mind?”

“Your friends, Elim. Very impressive people … and persuasive.”

“What had you expected?” I asked.

“The usual amateurs who never understood what was at stake … the hard choices that had to be made,” [Pythas] explained. “To be honest, I had thought your attachment to this Reunion Project was….”

“Sentimental,” I finished. He smiled knowingly at the reference.

CACKLING. All but openly saying ‘yeah I thought it’s was because you’re fucking the doctor and I know exactly what a god-awful simp you are’ fhskdjafhaskjdh

“As I listened to him speak of the responsibility that we had as survivors to the life that remained, I also realized how bitter and hardened I had become.” He stopped and looked back to Nal Dejar, as if he were making sure she was still there. She met his eyes with a communication I couldn’t decipher, and he nodded. “Nal nursed me back to where I could function … part of me wished she hadn’t. Until your doctor spoke about healing … on every level. It’s what the body wants, he told us … unless we choose otherwise.” Pythas sat with his head bowed for a long moment. “I’d become very bitter, Elim.” I sat on a rock across from him and gently put my hand on his. What was it about this place, I wondered.

Hmngh. ‘I’d become very bitter, Elim’. No matter what choices they made along the way, where they fucked up or where they did everything right, they both ended up in basically the same place, embittered and broken, until someone touched their life with kindness. Nal is Pythas’ Julian Bashir. Coming back to life not as an act of will but because there’s someone waiting for you there saying ‘I’ll help you through it’.

“Do you know where Palandine is?” I asked. He just looked at me. “Is she still alive?”

In the darkness, it was difficult to read the expression in his one good eye. The silence that followed my question was broken only by his rasping breath. Behind her mask of disinterest Nal Dejar was studying me carefully. Even when she was a probe I was impressed by the strength of her focus. Pythas was fortunate to have her care and devotion.

I think Pythas and Nal Dejar’s whole deal could make for a really interesting story all on its own. Presumably they’ve known or at least known about each other for a long time now, since Garak has seen Nal around even though they’ve never worked together closely

- Just enough light for lovers; just enough light to begin he says, only to open the next chapter/epilogue with ‘My dear Doctor’ and explaining how he finally decided to send the letter. Healing on every level? Maybe? If we’re real lucky???

- My dear Doctor:

Again, forgive my further tardiness in sending this—I don’t even know what to call it. Memoirs of a Cardassian tailor? I suppose that’s as accurate a description as any. You see, Doctor, I seriously debated whether or not I should send this to you. As I went over it I wondered who this mawkish and self-serving person was. Grow up! I wanted to tell him. Get on with your life.

Well, I am; and sending this to you is going to further that cause. As I said, I’m an unfinished man reassembling the pieces of a broken world, and I have asked you to be a witness because you would never judge me as harshly as I judge myself. You would never deny me the opportunity of a second chance.

I feel like those last two sentences are the most important ones in this whole book — it’s what all the rest of it is built on, what made any of it possible. And also it will haunt me for the rest of my days but like in a good life-affirming way lol

His playful grousing about ugh your vaunted democracy *eyeroll* <3<3<3<3 come down to cardassia so you can have spirited debates turned makeout sessions/foreplay about it already julian please he’s setting you up for so many slam dunks here

I live with my orchids, which have unified and softened the increasingly popular grounds of my home. Their beguiling blooms, and the presence of children who come to play among the structures (as I did in Tarlak), help to dispel the somber mood that initially hung like those clouds of dust over our world. The sounds of their voices as they play function as a music that never fails to lighten my work. The children call it the “tailor’s grounds,” and the name has caught on. Yes, Doctor, I continue to work at my “new” profession. As you can imagine, there’s a good deal of mending to be done.

TAIN’S HOUSE TURNED INTO JUST ‘THE TAILOR’S GROUNDS’ BY THE VOICES OF PLAYING CHILDREN Y_____Y I hope enabran ‘let history be my judge’ tain gets forgotten for anything but his massive fuckup and that garak works some magic with what little fabric he has at his disposal to make the neighbourhood kids like. Stuffed toys he sews clothes for and he’s known as the person to go to when one is damaged so he can patch it back up good as new while teary little faces watch intently and then brighten. Julian seriously pretends to be his medical consultant as they perform teddy bear operations, what with his extensive expertise in the field and excellent bedside manner. No arm is too amputated to be reattached and we can always find a good button to replace Mr. Tinny’s missing eye in fact he’ll see even better now. I have such hopes for them I have such dreams

I have expanded my shed in the never-ending quest to find my place. I feel that I’m getting closer, Doctor, especially as I continue to refine the structures. One, which began as a memorial to Tolan, has a crude but effective representation of the winged creature from the Hebitian sun disc—turned toward the radiating sun, reaching, striving, while the sun-fed filaments stream down from the body and connect with the bodies of people standing on a globe and looking up to the creature for this divine connection…. I’ve attached the recitation mask he gave me to the creature’s face, and somehow it has become my personal totem. I hope that someday you’ll have the opportunity to see it. Nothing would please me more. You’re always welcome, Doctor.

You are always welcome, Doctor is one of those ‘you could slap that on my gravestone and I’d be happy about it’ lines. What a ride huh

Aside from anything else about this book (I think we can safely let this absolute monster of a three part reaction post be testament to my enjoyment and admiration right I hope I have made no secret of it lol) I want to congratulate Andrew Robinson for getting a novel-length character study written in first person (my beloved) published — as I understand it that’s normally a pretty hard sell in the publishing industry haha he was living the dream I one day fervently hope to as well and the results rule

#a stitch in time #asit #garashir #elim garak #star trek #star trek ds9 #ds9 #julian bashir #The great ASIT first read adventure #ds9 meta #and there we go! now to think about the little julian bashir that lives in garak's head forever probably

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