Written 8/26/99. I believe this follows the DS9 ep. 'What You Leave Behind', but it's been a LONG time since I watched the series. Written from Garak's POV.

Lost Son

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I found him in the rubble of Mila's house. I was waiting there, waiting for the right moment to use the phaser I'd brought with me. A great tide of destruction had passed, and streets I knew by name were simply not there. There was nothing left, of the house, or of me. I was obsolete. All I knew, all I had orchestrated, all I could do, had not been enough, and Cardassia, my Cardassia, was burning.

It was not the loss of the structures that pained me, no, it was the fracturing of the system by which culture is passed down. A new generation would arise out of this stinking heap, and they would look the same as any of us always had, but they would be no better than any of the rest of the races that teemed the stars. That which made us real, that which made others seem clumsy by comparison, would be gone. Was it poise? Subtlety? An simple appreciation for complex geometry? I would not insult this quality by demanding it's definition, but I could not refuse to mourn it's loss.

I didn't see him at first, obsessed as I was with staring out over broken buildings, and the trails of smoke that drifted up out of them. Those trails were amber, and red, and pale yellow-gray. They shaded, and choked, and wreathed the empty sky. When you burn something that is beautiful, the smoke takes on that beauty, even as it ends it. I heard a noise in the rubble, a chunk of shifting permacrete, perhaps. Then I saw him, a wisp of gray in an ocean of dust. He didn't speak, didn't call out to me, merely observed, eyes wide and cautious. I did nothing about him. I expected that he too, like the smoke, would blow away in time. He did not, however.

I don't know how long we sat there, trying not to watch each other. He approached me at last, and put a small, grubby hand on my knee. I looked up at him, acknowledging his presence for the first time. His hair was shorter than mine, and his tunic was cut in a middle-class fashion, though it was now beyond all hope of recovery. The ridges of his neck were thin, in the way that young children's sometimes are. Dust from the rubble lined the grooves between his scales, and lightened his skin. I did not brush him away, and he sat beside me on the rubble of Mila's house, and we watched the fires together.

Julian came the next morning. I think I had been hoping he would, but I wasn't sure he would understand the meaning of our last conversation. I hadn't planned to see this sunrise, but the boy had fallen asleep in my lap, and contrary to what some would have you believe, I do have a conscience. Julian climbed up the mound of broken stone, and I stood, holding the boy still asleep against my shoulder. Julian's eyes flicked over us professionally before he had completely gained the top of the pile, ever the conscientious physician.

"Good morning, doctor," I said to him.

"Yes, it is," he agreed. I could tell from the look in his eyes, that he hadn't been sure he would find me alive, and that he was furious. The boy woke up, and tensed in my arms. I set him on his feet, and Julian knelt beside him, and asked him if he was all right. The boy was shy of him, and stayed close to me. He'd probably never seen a human up close before. I put a hand on the boy's shoulder, and told him,

"This is Dr. Bashir. You can trust him."

The boy answered Julian's questions, by nodding or shaking his head, and Julian gave us envelopes of water from the medical kit he carried over his shoulder. He was worried about dehydration, particularly in the boy.

"How did you find me?" I asked him. He looked from me to the boy, and back again. He sighed.

"Let's talk about that later, shall we?"

"Of course," I said. We climbed down the pile of rubble, and made our way out of the city, towards home.

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