Chapter Text
There are things that have to be taken care of, now that the rift is stabilized. Bureaucratic things.
Names to be taken down. Promotions to be handed out. Starbases to relocate and repair orders to be expedited.
And then there is the Anaximander and her crew. Boimler’s orders were only to investigate the cause of the rifts, not to acquire a crew of multiversal castaways. And definitely not to parade their existence in front of all of Starfleet before Certain Bureaucratic Hands have done the work of controlling the narrative.
But alea iacta est. Now it’s time for damage control.
“Calm down, my dear.”
“I won’t,” Julian declares, pacing the length of their holding cell once more. “This is an outrage. We’re both Federation citizens!”
It’s only a pity that he can’t wear himself out like this, Garak thinks. At least in the usual sense.
“Please, Julian, think of your emitter’s battery,” he sighs, watching the fretting hologram from the hard cell bunk. “The captain’s no doubt correcting this misunderstanding as we speak.”
But this detainment strikes Garak as different from an ordinary Federation procedure. He isn’t sure why, until the door to the brig opens and a tall, slender figure slips in.
“Hello, Garak.”
Julian Bashir, in the flesh.
He looks older than his hologram counterpart by a decade or more, with a shadow of stubble along his jaw and dark bags under his eyes. At his side, he carries a slim attache case.
On his chest, he wears a black combadge identical to William Boimler’s.
“Ah,” Garak says. “I did wonder when we would finally meet.”
Beside him, the hologram Julian has stopped pacing and taken to staring.
“And how may we help you today, doctor?” Garak says. “It is ‘doctor,’ isn’t it? Although I doubt you’ve practiced much medicine in, oh, what is it, the last ten years?”
“Seven.” Not even a batted eye. “I understand you’re a doctor too, in your reality.”
“A surgeon, to be precise.”
“Yes, you’re all about precision, aren’t you, Garak?”
“Doctor, I’m sure you don’t need me to explain that you and I have never met before today.” Garak places a hand performatively over his chest. “Whatever my counterpart in this reality is responsible for, I assure you–”
“Why have you brought us here?” Julian erupts beside him. “We’re not your enemies!”
Garak touches the hologram by the wrist to calm him. He can’t even imagine what Julian must be going through, confronted with the basis for his whole creation like this – but it hardly ranks among the strangest the multiverse has thrown at them.
“You’re here for your protection, believe it or not,” says the human Bashir. The clasps of the attache case snap open and he produces a matte black PADD. “Your captain broke protocol, exposing you to the inhabitants of Starbase 80. Our organization is inclined to look past it, in light of services performed for the Federation, but we can’t have your crew interacting with their counterparts in this reality. Call it the Quantum Prime Directive.”
“But aren’t you already violating it by being here?” says Julian.
Bashir regards him with cool disinterest. “You and I are not counterparts.”
“I think,” Garak says, raising his voice as he tightens his grip around his beloved’s wrist, “it’s splendid, doctor, that you haven’t lost your ability to follow the letter of the law while violating its spirit. Now. If you insist on this inefficient form of interrogation, I ask that you please get to the point.”
“I know what the point is,” Julian says, vibrating. “Since he walked in here, his pupils have been dilated, his skin is flushed, and I’m detecting an elevated heart rate.”
Garak scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Yes, I was trying to be tactful. Obviously he’s having an arousal response. You don’t have to embarrass him.”
“You were planning to say something clever yourself!”
“Clever? It would have destroyed him.”
Bashir clears his throat. “If you’re quite done–”
“I forbid you to sleep with him,” says the hologram.
“Darling, I barely know him,” says Garak. “Do give me a little credit.”
“Oh no you don’t, Elim Garak! I can detect your heart rate too. You’re actually considering it, aren’t you!”
Garak gives the human Bashir a pained look. “Could you excuse us for a minute?”
“No,” says Bashir. “And I suggest you devote yourselves to answering my questio–”
“You can’t have him, you fraud!”
Bashir sighs.
If he’d known what going to work for Section 31 was like – really like – he would’ve stayed on Deep Space Nine. Yes, even after falling out of love with the place, even after falling out of love with Ezri. At least treating automatic door injuries on the Promenade came with less bloody paperwork.
He allows the Anaximander and her crew to go free with a clean bill of “health,” on the advisement they head straight to their next assignment through the rift and do not attempt to contact their Prime universe selves. Anything else is too much to sit and explain to a PADD.
Once they’ve left the station on a bearing toward the rift, Bashir rests easier.
He finds his eyes scanning through his subspace registry, looking for an old, familiar name, and isn’t totally surprised to find he deleted it long ago. Garak – his Garak – and what a strange thing to use a possessive in that sense, but nothing else works as well – made clear that their relationship is beyond salvaging.
He should honor a friend’s wishes, if nothing else.
Thoughts turn back to the EMH. Childlike, filled with the worst tendencies of his creator’s programming, and at least four centimeters too short.
That’s what Garak likes, clearly. Someone young, pliant, eager to please – just like Bashir once was. A hologram doesn’t age, it doesn’t sleep or get back pain; it’s just a simplified, doll-like construction of a person. Like marrying a flashlight with hot-swappable sex organs.
Good riddance.
…is what he should think. But Bashir is older now, wiser, and fully aware he’s the type of individual who can’t leave well enough alone.
Maybe it’s time to make a clandestine call to the Cardassian embassy on Earth.
“I’m sorry I got carried away, my love,” Julian says back on the ship, when they’re underway toward the rift and have the time to tuck themselves away in their quarters. “You do know I trust you implicitly.”
“Of course. It was a well-played gambit.” Garak encloses the hologram in his arms. “I daresay he couldn’t get rid of us fast enough.”
Not without a few choice parting words, of course. But they’ve raised the issue with the captain and that’s the end of it.
Julian shifts out of his simulated uniform into simulated bare skin. So youthful and unmarked it should be sinful, and he’s all Garak’s.
“I adore you,” the Cardassian sighs, kissing along his beautiful throat.
Julian laughs softly. “I know you’ve had a long day when you don’t even try to disguise your compliments.”
He hooks his hands beneath the fabric of Garak’s uniform and hikes the fabric up along his ribs, stroking his scales as he goes.
“You know,” he says, “I have my new fluidics installed.”
“I’d say ‘to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, doctor,’ but I’m not certain it is. You’ve called at a most inopportune time–”
“I’m sure your garden can wait for ten minutes, Garak.”
He looks wretched. Tanned and healthy, yes; the tropical climate clearly agrees with Cardassian physiology. But he’s underslept and worrying about something, and Bashir highly doubts it’s his heliconia.
Garak keeps glancing offscreen. “Perhaps, yes, but if I could at least persuade you not to use that name…”
“Yes, all right, ‘Tain.’ Once again hiding in plain sight.”
“I think you’ll find it was you who faked his death first, doctor. I merely creatively rearranged the facts to make myself more employable to the Cardassian government. Judging by the level of encryption you seem to be working with, I suspect I move in the light far more often than you do these days.”
Almost certainly true, much as Bashir doesn’t want to admit it. It’s been some time since he’s even seen natural sunlight.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Garak continues. “When you and I met all those lifetimes ago, our positions were nearly reversed. Although you seem to have sent yourself into exile, rather than wait for someone else to do it for you. I do respect the initiative, but, doctor–”
“I thought you said you didn’t have time to talk.”
“I’m expecting a bit of company. A delegation, to be precise. In fact, I expect it’s related to what you’ve called to talk about.”
Bashir doesn’t bat an eye. “Your delegation will be pleased to hear the rift is stabilized. No one goes in or out without Starfleet oversight.” Command has not forgotten the Changeling infiltration in a hurry, nor Cardassia, it seems. “We did intercept one duplicate headed towards Earth space, but they’ve been contained.”
“And that is the official Starfleet word on the matter?”
Bashir hesitates. He lives in a world of such misinformation, it’s difficult at times to sort official truths from unofficial ones. But on this topic, he’s certain he’s seen the press release. He ghost-wrote half of it.
“Perhaps keep the last part to yourself,” he says. Then, because he knows Garak won’t, he adds, “The duplicate was yours.”
Garak makes a show of surprise, which just confirms Bashir’s suspicion that he already knew.
“And you reached out to personally assure me that you had the situation well in hand,” the Cardassian says. “In spite of our rather dramatic falling out.”
A breath catches in Bashir’s throat. But no time like the present–
“I wondered if,” he says cautiously, “we could try again. This duplicate, he…”
…fell in love with a hologram, and I don’t want that for you, but Bashir can’t bring himself to say it like that.
“He just reminded me of the good times you and I used to have.”
“Were they good times, doctor?”
No, they were trying, bewildering, frustrating times, if Bashir’s honest with himself. Conversing with Garak is like walking over shifting sand, always unsure of one’s footing.
But he loved it for all that. Every invigorating argument, every shared meal, every pregnant look charged with tension he had no name for at the time, but now he understands it perfectly. He wants it back, even a morsel of it, even just to keep talking with him now.
“…Please, Garak. Can I see you?”
“I…”
Fitting that it should be this that leaves the old spy at a loss for words.
Garak glances offscreen again and sets his expression into a hard line. “I’m afraid my guests have arrived. Excuse me–”
Before he can make a noise of protest, the call goes dead and Bashir is left alone again, in his cold and sterile office.
The mission through the rift goes well. T’Pol is able to transfer Dax’s katra to a related symbiont on his dimension’s Trill, and the Anaximander saves yet another Harry Kim from certain death, bringing the total Kim count to a baker’s dozen.
“At this rate, we’ll have a fully crewed ship,” says Mariner, elbows-deep in some critical command console or other. “Too bad we can’t just pop through a rift and find a new tactical officer.”
William watches his engineer with interest, or possibly concern. “Is it… a good idea to do that while we’re docked?”
“Probably?” Mariner says, pulling out something that looks like a spark plug mated with a vacuum hose.
A chime issues from the comms panel, signaling an incoming subspace transmission. William is about to put it onscreen when he notices the address line.
“…Huh.” He taps an icon on his armrest console. “Uh, Doctor Bashir? You got an incoming call.”
“If you’re planning to harass us again,” the hologram says haughtily, “I hope you have a warrant signed by a Federation judge. Because you’ll not hear a word out of me otherwise.”
Did I really use to sound like that? Bashir wonders. Do I still?
“I’m not calling on behalf of the organization,” he says. “This is more of a…” Personal? Private? “…social call.”
The EMH appears to weigh this. Appears to, because for as lifelike as his body language is, he’s just simulating the act of thinking. A machine’s cognition is nothing like a human’s, even an artificially advanced one.
“I can’t imagine you and I have anything to discuss,” he says when the simulation has completed. He folds his arms. “After all, we’re not counterparts.”
“No, but–” Bashir sighs. “We do share… characteristics. Zimmerman presumably at least tried to reconstruct my personality, even if he fell short.”
The hologram bristles, and oh dear, that is the exact way Bashir scrunches his nose when something offends him, he’s seen it.
“This is about Garak, isn’t it. Your Garak.”
There’s that possessive again. Bashir is hyperconscious of the blood rising in his own cheeks and wonders how much information a medical hologram can pick up through a subspace signal.
“Yes,” he says, his throat suddenly dry. “It is.
“How did you make it work?” he blurts out, because if he doesn’t ask it now he’s not going to.
“Oh, I won’t say a bit of luck didn’t play into it,” the EMH says, breaking into a radiant smile. “We’re an extreme statistical improbability. You probably shouldn’t be holding yourself to our standard in the first place.”
How can someone with his own face be so annoying? “Just tell me.”
Tell me I’m too late, tell me I’m wasting my time.
“Well… Have you tried having sex?”
Bashir opens his mouth and it hangs there for a moment. He closes it. Then he tries again.
“You can’t be serious,” he says.
The hologram gives him the most insipid no-nonsense look, like he’s educating a child. “It’s an accepted part of many romantic relationships. Not in all of them, of course, or in the same amounts, and naturally if that’s something you’re uncomfortable with–”
“I didn’t say that.” How did they even get here? “But to suggest it as the solution to relationship problems, even if Garak’s particularly, erm, needy in that regard–”
“Oh no, not in my experience,” the hologram says brightly. “I’m usually the one who initiates.”
A flashlight with sex organs. Why is Bashir surprised this one has a sex drive as well? He’s played racy holonovels with “proactive” characters before. Clearly this one’s just been patching his code from unauthorized sources.
Bashir sighs deeply. “Thank you for your… insight. I suppose I can take it under advisement.”
“It would help to know just where you are in your relationship. Has he offered you kanar?”
On several occasions, but– “We’ve hardly spoken in the last decade.”
“Ah. That’s. Hm.” The hologram worries his lip, precisely as Bashir does when he’s losing himself in thought. “Have you thought about getting stranded together on a barely hospitable planet and working together to survive?”
“I’ll consider that as a backup.”
There are holoemitters intermittent throughout the ship, but not enough for contiguous coverage. As a result, Julian’s fallen into the habit of popping in and out where needed. It adds to his pixie-like charm, in Garak’s opinion, but it can still be somewhat offputting.
For instance, while snuggling. When the call came in, Garak found himself suddenly sagging into his mattress, filling the empty space so recently occupied by his dear husband.
Julian reappears perhaps twenty minutes later, fully dressed without a holographic hair out of place, and his eyes are shining with gossip.
“You won’t believe who I just spoke with,” he says. He inserts himself beside Garak on the bed and wiggles until he’s insinuated himself into roughly the same spot as before, half underneath the Cardassian so he can serve as a nice basking spot. “I think I finally understand why that awful Bashir had it so badly for you.”
“Hmm. Sexual repression?” Garak guesses.
“Like you wouldn’t believe. Organics get embarrassed by the strangest things. No offense.”
“Of course.” He adjusts his arm to wrap a little more perfectly around Julian’s side. “On consideration, maybe I should sleep with him. For his health.”
Julian’s eyes widen and it’s everything the sleepy Cardassian can do not to laugh. All right. Arguments another night.
“A poor attempt at humor, my darling,” he says, lowering his head to kiss the frown from his lips. “Forgive me.”
The hologram sighs, warm breath issuing from his mouth. A surprisingly tricky thing to pull off in holography, but Julian’s spent years improving himself beyond any holonovelist’s dream. Because he wants to. Because he likes having a body and feeling embodied.
“Always,” he says, returning the kiss.
He can get in trouble for making contact with someone from his old life. But he’s also part of a division built upon bending rules, and if he was ever uncomfortable with that fact, it hasn’t been lately.
If asked – no one ever asks – he’ll say it relates to the conservation of Section 31 assets. It’s not not true, even if his actions have taken a more personal turn.
The Cardassian embassy is in Paris, but Garak lives a short transporter trip away in Fiji. His terrestrial home is a surprisingly modest little mansion some ways inland, protected by high walls of shrubbery and trees with leaves so luxuriant Bashir can’t help thinking of them as “lavish.”
He avoids the obvious front entrance and makes his way to the rear of the property, where security is predictably just as high but the walk up is nicer. Garak may have taken to gardening initially as a cover, but he has a real green thumb: the gardens are filled to bursting with bright blooms of every variety, both native and exotic.
Bashir pauses to examine a chameleon rose bush. He touches a single orange petal and watches as it shifts to a brilliant magenta beneath his thumb. A pity he doesn’t speak the language of mood flowers, or he might be able to tell whether he’s under stress at the moment.
He zigzags around the pressure plates installed in the stone pathway and dodges a low-flying surveillance drone, coming up to the rear patio with its triple-locked door and handprint scanner. He bypasses the lot with an omnitool and steps gingerly inside, his boots touching plush carpeting so thick he sinks a good two or more centimeters right into it.
“Garak?” he calls into the dim.
From what he can see of the place, it’s well-appointed, with overstuffed furniture and even more flowers, filling vases and overflowing from pots and planters. His office must be elsewhere.
Taking two steps inside, however, Bashir immediately sees what’s wrong.
“Garak!”
He rushes to the crumpled body on the floor, already opening his medical bag. (Silly habit, he’s barely used it in seven years.) The medical tricorder picks up a faint pulse and depressed vitals.
Good; not dead. He groans when Bashir presses two fingers to the side of his neck.
“Doctor…?”
“Don’t try to speak yet.”
Bashir takes a hypospray from his bag and fits it with a stimulant he knows is compatible with Cardassian physiology. It helps: within seconds of administering it, Garak’s eyelids are fluttering open and his heartbeat is stronger. Bashir helps him to sit up with his back resting against the side of a couch, then he’s back to taking readings on the tricorder.
“Any numbness or dizziness? Can you understand what I’m saying?”
“Perfectly, doctor,” Garak says wearily. His voice is breathy and far away, but he seems lucid enough. “I was simply saying farewell to my guests and I suppose I found myself a bit tired.”
“‘A bit tired’ doesn’t explain collapsing on the floor. And Garak, that was days ago!”
“Hmm, was it? The work must be piling up. If you’ll excuse me–” He attempts to push himself up onto his feet, but succeeds only in crumpling into a more pathetic heap.
“Well, I don’t think you’ve had a stroke, but you’re very dehydrated,” Bashir concludes, snapping the tricorder shut. “Where’s your replicator? I’ll bring you some water.”
Garak offers little resistance to this. He even tolerates Bashir holding the glass for him while he sips, and once he’s gotten enough down that Bashir is satisfied, he accepts the glass without complaint.
“Forgive me if I’m not fully abreast of the policies and procedures of Starfleet black ops,” he says when he’s looking closer to his old self, “but are you not risking both our lives by being here?”
“It’s good to see you too, Garak.”
“Mm. Yes.” A small smile teases the corner of the Cardassian’s mouth. “I see you’re as troublesome as ever.”
It’s as close to a “welcome back” as Bashir dared to hope for, and he’ll take it.
TO BE CONTINUED