52.
How long? How many more hours, minutes, seconds until they found their way out? Would they ever find their way out? And who decided if they were ready? Garak had forgotten.
Encouraged by medication, isolation, detoxification and - hopefully - trust, Ziyal talked and talked: about her poor miserable childhood and that maniac Dukat; about the camp and all the men who had abused her body there, and how she had made them go away, because what else could she do; he saw her standing there, on the dune, under the dark soft sky, so full of stars - just like he had seen her in his dreams, not so long ago, sweating and shivering in his hole. He saw her pushing the tangled body of that pig Lamar Torel down the stairs of his pretty beige house. He saw confusion and then a glimmer of realisation in her eyes: a part of her knew it was him who had buried the affair. But she didn't want to listen to that part. She was tired of knowing. She didn't want to care anymore.
Garak understood, he understood only too well. He was tired too, so tired. But she pushed on: she wanted him to tell her, she demanded to know. Who had killed? When? How? How many? She wanted to feel a connection, any kind of connection. With her father, it had been faith; with Damar, it had been drink and sex; with him, it was death. If they had both killed people, and enjoyed it, that meant they were the same, and if they were the same, they would never be alone. It was an attractive thought, but a flawed one. Julian had warned him about going down that road.
She won't be going willingly, it won't be a miracle cure, he had said. She will want to build an illusion, and naturally she will want to build it around you. She'll want to tie you to her with sex, or with shared memories, or with plans of a shared future. And you will have to decide how far you go to give her the support you need.
He had been so nervous about that. What if she offered herself to him? Would he be able to resist? Should he? And if he did, would she ever forgive him?
And now here they were, she was naked, it was dark, they were alone, and all she wanted was for him to say: you and I, we are the same, Ziyal. That was all she needed to go on just a little bit longer - long enough to get away. Away from Deep Space 9, away from Kira, from Damar. Away from her father.
So it would be, then. His first (and most probably only) mission as a Starfleet officer, and he would fail. The life and sanity of the love of his life, lost. Every hope he ever had for a future he never believed in, gone. All because after a lifetime of manipulation, blood and torture, this was the moment that Elim Garak, the most feared agent of the Obsidian Order, chose to stop. This was when he decided that he could not do it any longer. He could not speak of death, he could not think of it. He was done.
"Tell me. I want to know."
"Maybe some other time."
He felt his heart beat fast and hard against his chest. It was getting difficult to breathe, his hands were sweaty. What if Ziyal noticed? It was a very delicate moment for her, she was still on the brink: death didn't have her, but neither did life. It was imperative that she should trust him, and instead of showing her that she could do exactly that by being calm, deliberate and decisive, he was going to pieces in front of her.
Wonderful, Garak, just marvellous.
It wasn't his father's bitter voice that he heard. It was Dax's, it was Bashir's, it was his own, even Riker's.
Is this what you are? Is this all that you're capable of? You've spent your whole life killing and destroying, with precision, with ruthless success - and this one time that there's a life to save, the most important life, the only life that matters, this is when you choose to fail?
"But I'm going to tell you about my father's cupboard."
"His - cupboard?"
She didn't seem disappointed, or irritated. Just curious. She pulled the blanket close around her and leaned back on the biobed. Garak couldn't help but smile. Ziyal had always loved to be told stories, and she listened to his so hungrily that it made him want to write books for her.
"Well, it was more of a closet, really. Just an ordinary closet. A rather small one. The house was full of them, small and big, upstairs, downstairs, in the cellar, locked or not, and I had looked into all of them, especially into the ones that were locked and strictly forbidden, of course."
She giggled. "Of course."
He loved her schoolgirl giggle. If she could giggle like that, maybe not all was lost? He concentrated on his breath and went on with his story. This story was all he had right now.
"In some of them there were old clothes and shoes, broken furniture. In others there were weapons, some I recognised, some not. In others there were strange instruments that sometimes started humming and blinking. They looked dangerous, like they might explode any second, but I wasn't afraid. I thought it was exciting."
"I wish I'd had a big house with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. We were always moving, and the houses were always crummy."
"Oh, it wasn't my house, of course, that was made very clear to me. And Tain wasn't my father, even though I knew he was, and I wasn't wanted there, not even tolerated. I was more like a plague of cockroaches that you can't quite get rid of. But I was alone a lot, and yes, it was a great house to grow up in. I was quite happy there, really. Most of the time."
He *had* been happy. How extraordinary that he should realise that precisely now.
"There was one closet, though, that I had not looked into. One was even afraid to come close to."
"Why?"
"Because I heard things inside. Moving."
He paused. It wasn't his mind or even his ears that remembered those sounds, it was his skin. Ziyal shuddered, as if she could feel it too. Maybe she could.
"I don't like this story. You're making this up to scare me. Why do you want to scare me?"
Moments before she had been talking of murder and violence, asking him for more deaths, more blood to share. And now she was just a girl, a very young girl, afraid of the ghosts he was conjuring for her. How could it be it that imagined ghosts where more frightening to her than real corpses?
She's afraid because you're afraid.
"I don't want to scare you. If you don't want to hear about it, I'll stop."
"No, I do. I do want to hear it. I'm sorry, I won't interrupt you anymore."
Why had he chosen to tell her about his father's closet, why was it so important? Was it even true, or was it something he'd dreamt, something someone else told him, a story that Mara scared him with? Garak couldn't remember. He went on.
"This particular closet was in a corridor on the third floor, right in front of my father's office. One day, my father called me into the office to punish me for something I'd done, and when I came by the closet I heard something. Something moving. Something small. Like a bird. I kept thinking about the bird all the time while I was getting my belt lashes, and when I came out of the office, I went straight to the closet and wanted to open it - but I didn't. Because what I heard didn't sound like a bird anymore. It sounded like someone laughing."
"Someone…?"
"Someone small."
"Like… a dwarf?"
"No. A child. It sounded like a child laughing."
He didn't realise he had stopped talking until he heard Ziyal's voice, very gentle, trying not to startle him.
"What did you do?"
"I ran away. From that day on, I tried even harder to avoid displeasing Tain, not because of the beatings, but because I didn't want to pass in front of that closet. But of course, it was impossible not to displease Tain, because there weren't any rules. He didn't want to educate me, he wanted to break me. I was just too little to understand it."
Ziyal's hand was in his, and, without thinking about it, he lifted it to his mouth and kissed it.
"I was called to Tain's office often, and every time I came out and passed the closet, I heard that laugh. Sometimes I heard thumps too, like - like someone dancing."
"Dancing?"
"I don't know… That's what I imagined. Or what I tried not to imagine. I started to have nightmares, I woke up screaming. And my father didn't like that, of course. He didn't like that at all. I tried to tell him I was having nightmares about big bears, about murderers, ghosts, vampires, anything that would seem more - normal. But he didn't believe me. My father, he was a professional, you know. A professional of lies. I didn't have a chance. And he had a way of looking at you, just looking. If he did it long enough, you told him everything he wanted to know. So of course I ended up telling him about the closet, even though I had fought it so hard, because I knew what would happen."
"Did he… did he punish you?"
"Oh, he didn't beat me. Not this time. Now, he just threw me in the closet, and locked the door. He left me there for a day."
Suddenly, he wasn't sure if he wanted to go on. He wasn't sure he should. It was one thing to remember, to carry the memory around, cradled in his brain. It was another thing to put it in words. What would he conjure if he spoke those words?
"Of course, I wet my pants immediately, and I had to spend the night in the cold and the stink. When my father found out the next day he was so angry that he beat me anyway. He broke three ribs."
"Oh, Elim…"
He smiled. As if three broken ribs was the worst that had ever happened to him. To either of them.
"It wasn't so bad. Children heal quickly."
"How old were you?"
"I don't really know… Four, five?"
"But at least you did't fear the closet anymore, right? No more nightmares."
It would have been easy to say yes. Yes, my lovely, that's right, no more nightmares. Once you face your fears, they disappear, and sometimes a night full of piss and shit is what you need to grow up. To take the next step. Wouldn't that have been a good, neat, solid lesson.
But he couldn't. He wouldn't. He needed her to know the truth. He needed her to believe. He needed the connection as much as she did.
"I wasn't alone in there, Ziyal. I was not alone in that closet."
She gripped his hand tighter. There was no sound, not even their breaths. As if time itself had been suspended, and they were being sustained by something other than air.
"I… I can't describe what it was. It had no form, it wasn't… a thing, not something I could put my hands around, nothing I could feel, or hit. It was… a darkness. An evil. A… a shadow."
Sweat was trickling down Garak's face and back, his heart was beating hard again, but her small hand was still in his, and he knew where he was. He was not in the closet, and the shadows were not coming. Not today.
"That night, in that closet, I saw them for the first time. The shadows. And then, after that…"
"You saw them everywhere."
"Yes."
"I know them. I see them too."
A beat, another, another. Time started to pass again. He heard himself breathe out, he heard her breathe in. As if he had given her his breath and she had taken it, and now they could both go on.
She was the first to stand up. Walking to the metal spind her steps were firm and swift, the blanket remained on the biobed. The dress she put on hung awkwardly from her thin body, and she laughed softly.
"I'm going to need new clothes."
"Well, I happen to know an excellent tailor."
"I'm a lucky girl, then."
She came back to where he was standing, took his hand again and walked with him to the cargo bay door. They stood there for a moment, holding hands, like obedient schoolchildren waiting for their teacher to give them permission to cross the street.
"What's going to happen?"
She didn't sound afraid. It didn't even sound like much of a question, as if she was only asking because she knew it would give him pleasure to answer. He looked at his ill-fitting grey jumpsuit. Suddenly he realised he would have felt better wearing a Starfleet uniform, his communicator on his chest, his Lieutenant pips on his collar. Wasn't that - something.
"I don't know. Sisko is going to retake the station, most likely."
"And then he's going to win the war."
"I believe so. Not today, and not by himself, but yes, he's going to win."
"And we are going away."
"Yes. We are getting a transport-"
"Stealing a transport."
"… Borrowing a transport, and going to a safe zone, where Julian will be waiting. He's looking forward to see you."
"He's looking forward to treat me."
"He's looking forward to help you. Because he's your friend."
"What about Riker? And Kira?"
"They… will help you too. Everyone will help."
For some reason he didn't feel strong enough to question, they were still not looking at each other, but Garak could feel her repressing a burst of laughter.
"That's fine, that's… great. Really great. It's a… it's a good plan. And I want you to know that I'm thankful. To all of you. It's just that…"
"What?"
"I can't do that, of course."
"Can't do what?"
"Steal a transport- sorry, borrow a transport. Go see Julian. Get help. All that."
"Ziyal…"
"There's something I have to do first."
He knew what she was going to say. He had known it since they had come into the room. But he let her say it because he knew it would give her pleasure to say it.
"I have to see my father."
