Work Text:
He's gone years without touching soil. Years spent locked in a metal box, floating in a place without soil of any kind, where nothing grows, where nothing could grow… a place anathema to life.
And yet here he is.
Once the flowers had been his home. Once, after he'd done what needed doing, he'd come home to his garden. He'd rested among the flowers, had let their taste and scent drip into him, had let his eyes unfocus until the world was a sea of teeming green with himself its centre.
Here a flower is a mockery. A flower here is just as artificial as he is, just as falsely-supported. Isolated in a pot; in soil that must be nourished to attain even a fraction of the richness of his one-time garden; blooming wanly under wrong-spectrum light…
Needless to say, he hasn't gardened in some time.
He'd thought he didn't miss it. He'd forgotten how it felt. Without the constant replenishment of some tiny part of him that hungered for life, that little part had withered away, and he'd seemed to be fine without it: an empty shell, sustaining life…
Now he knows better. Oh, he knows, because now around the bed where the two of them lie, flowers are blooming; he watches, eyes unfocussed, as they spring to life, bursting open on thick stems of green and glory-gold, twining around each other in their eager need to grow. They're blooming everywhere. Life is bursting from the hard deckplates, the bulkheads, the portholes, the ceiling above him, devouring the dark metal, surrounding him and the one with him in rich, ebullient life, fresh and arrogant, telling him: Elim Garak, you have forgotten what is real. Remember.
He does. He does. Something inside him is bursting open, unfolding petals; something inside him is rich and warm and scented strong and pulsing with life. He gasps, smiling, as his heart takes root, living again.
"Hey, there…"
He looks back into the face of his lover. He sees the smile.
"You went somewhere. What were you seeing?"
His hands find their rest on soft skin; his thumbs stroke, framing eyes the colour of rich soil, ripe with spring greening.
"Green," he breathes, and kisses him again.