Ezri lingered over her drink, swirling the last remnants of the once viciously fizzy blue liquid.
"Something on your mind?" Quark asked, noting the sullen air that clung to Dax like a little cloud.
Ezri shook her head, paused midmotion as if to reconsider, and then she sighed.
"Wanna talk about it?" Quark pressed as he systematically wiped down his glassware.
Ezri shook her head.
"I couldn't even begin to tell you what's on my mind," Ezri commented. "It's just...so much has happened, so much is up in the air, and there's nothing I can do about most of it."
Quark nodded.
"The business with the faeries," Quark mentioned.
Ezri nodded as she finished off her drink. Quark smoothly poured another of the Furilly Fizz and slid it in front if her.
"That's part of it," she said. On instinct, she reached for the fresh glass as Quark removed the spent one. "And the wedding. And this woman who knows Julian, knew him as a child--did you know she's older than me?"
Quark shrugged and held a hand up as though to say, "who can say?"
"You're what, twenty-six? Twenty-eight? Thirty, at the outlier?" Quark asked.
Ezri waved the comment away.
"That's not what I meant," she corrected herself. She took a fresh sip of electric blue froth. "Aisling? She's older than Dax, the symbiont."
Quark's eyes widened and he leaned closer.
"Wouldn't that make her, like, centuries old?" Quark asked.
Ezri paused and watched the color and foam swirl together in her glass. She hiccupped, jolting herself out of her reverie, and she blinked in mild surprise. Ezri turned her attention to Quark again.
"I think at this point, she might measure in millenia," Ezri quipped before she knocked back the entire contents of her glass. She hiccuped a few more times as she set the glass back down.
Quark, without missing a beat, slid another glass in front of her, this one holding a clear beverage.
"I didn't-" hic "-ask for a-" hic "-different-" hic "-drink?" Ezri managed to spit out between hiccups.
Quark waved the thought away with a short laugh.
"It's water, Dax. It's for your hiccups," Quark said. "You always get hiccups after your third Furilly Fizz."
Ezri glanced down at the glass as Quark was called away to another customer.
"He's so-" hic "-sweet," Ezri murmured to herself.
:Scene Break:
Garak thought furiously as he paced; the carpet in his quarters had begun to look a bit threadbare from his repetitive movements. If Ezri could see him now, she'd probably want to talk about his feelings, or some other such nonsense. With all the respect due to Ezri, the latest host of the Dax symbiont, there was hardly a person of which Garak could concieve that he would not rather speak with than Ezri. Garak huffed in aggravation.
Too many thoughts were running around in his head. For once in his life, Garak wished that it was his claustrophobia that was bothering him. At least that was a familiar enemy--not like this maelstrom inside of him now.
Since the day Enabran Tain had cast him out of Cardassia, a mixture of anger, wounded pride, and sorrow had stained everything that Garak was. During the years that followed, loss began to play a heavy part in the mix of buried emotions. But now, when his people needed him most, Garak found himself distracted by a feeling, a yearning, that he thought he had left in the past.
Garak stopped dead in his tracks, and he felt his stomach churn. Julian was getting married. With an oath, Garak whirled around and stormed out the door.
A few minutes later, Garak stalked briskly down the Promenade. He was greeted with nods and waves and even a few smiles, but Garak's attention was focused inward.
His thoughts were roiling as he passed the Bawdy Storeroom, and he almost didn't hear the shopkeep call his name.
"Mr. Garak!" the man called again, and louder. Garak halted and turned to regard him.
The tall and lanky man known as Gardaviir Blamish had moved his operations to DS9 a few months after the end of the war. While Garak couldn't say he'd ever met him in person, Blamish seemed to have an interest in speaking with him.
"How may I help you? Mr. Blamish, is it?" Garak asked. Gardaviir nodded with a broad smile.
"I was just wondering if you wanted your things, that's all," Blamish said jovially.
Garak tilted his head and raised his brow.
"What things?" he asked.
Blamish gestured for Garak to follow and took off into the back. Garak glanced around in mild disbelief before he walked after the shopkeep. Garak paused at the door to a miniscule storeroom, one of many doorways in the beehive of a hallway. Blamish was tossing things here and there, checking stacks of paperwork and faded labels barely clinging to the warren of identical black drawers.
"Well, the doctor, he said you'd left these here and that he'd let you know where he'd stored them. In case you wanted them back, you know?" Blamish reported as he triumphantly opened one of the drawers. He reached in and pulled out a dusty, black bag.
Garak took the bag gingerly and his eyes widened. A year ago, he'd left his sewing tools on Deep Space Nine deliberately; it wasn't a piece of his life that he wanted to take with him at that time.
"He paid up fifteen years of storage, so if you need to leave them, that's fine, too," Blamish told him.
"Fifteen years?" Garak asked, incredulous. His gaze flew to meet Blamish's eyes.
Blamish smiled sheepishly, and he replied, "That's the time that one slip of latinum buys. I don't have the best security, so I don't reccomend storing anything valuable here. But for your knick-knacks, extraneous wardrobe items, or just plain old junk, the Bawdy Storeroom is your stop!"
Garak looked down at the bag on the counter.
"I believe I will take this today," Garak said slowly.
"Alright, then, let me draw up a receipt slip real quick," Blamish said, and he stepped around Garak nimbly in the tight space and walked away.
Garak cracked open the bag and closed his eyes. Even the smell was the same.
"Here we are," Blamish said as he returned, clutching a padd in his hand.
The two sorted out the finer details of the transaction with a few signatures and waivers. A few short minutes later, Garak walked away from the Bawdy Storeroom with a piece of his past.
XXV END CHAPTER XXV
Author's Notes: Thank you, once again, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for reading, thank you for following and reviewing and all the wonderful things you guys do.
You're the best.