It was late. Actually, Garak hadn't planned to work so long today and instead looked forward to a glass or two of Kanar and good reading. Doctor Bashir had recommended a crime novel by a conscience Arthur Conan Doyle to him. But the hem of this unruly dress took much longer than expected and his mood darkened minute by minute.
And this din! Not much had come to him from Jessica Gunnarsson's business in the past few weeks. He had rarely met her either at the morning shop opening or in the evening when both happened to lock their doors simultaneously. She greeted him warmly each time, but never gave Garak the opportunity to start a conversation. He very much regretted this. He was interested in the subject and history of body modification, and he had been able to get a lot of very revealing information about the cultural background of these practices from the computer.
However, Jessica made it clear that she was not interested in a conversation and Garak respected it. Under no circumstances he wanted to impose himself.
But for two hours now, a cacophony of electronic screeching had filled his business, and dull basses made the glass shelves on his racks tremble.
"That's enough." Garak tried to put the expensive dress down carefully, then left his shop and knocked on his neighbor's door. The 'closed' sign was already hanging on the window.
He kept knocking, and he did it very hard to drown out the music. Finally, he grabbed the handle and opened the door.
"Jessica, Jessica! Is it possible that you turn down the ... music? Jessica?" Garak entered the shop. There was no one to be seen. The noise was indescribable. How could something like that be called music? He walked through the shop slowly, not wanting to frighten the woman because her dislike for him was obvious.
The source of the noise was behind the small counter. For his ears, the man decided to turn the volume down on his initiative, quickly reached for the device and wiped over the touchscreen. The silence that followed was a relief.
The Cardassian carefully circled the room divider and shrank back from the picture that presented itself behind there to him. Jessica was sitting on a stool with wheels and collapsed over the couch. In her right hand she held the handle of a medical scalpel, her left arm was bleeding profusely and her face laid in the puddle that was forming.
Garak leapt forward, grabbed a handkerchief from a small table next to the bed and wrapped it around her arm. He took the scalpel and raised the woman. He patted her pale, blood smeared face, carefully at first, then more firmly. Finally, her eyelids fluttered.
"Jessica, wake up. I'm calling the doctor." The Cardassian had to let go of the woman to reach the com, but then, he feared, she would slip off her stool. He didn't want to put her back in her blood, so he carefully lifted her, kicked the stool aside vigorous, and put Jessica on the floor.
"Wait a minute, help is coming." Garak turn to the com, but she grabbed his wrist.
"No doctor." she said in a thin voice. Garak decided to ignore that, but unlike her voice, the injured's grip was forceful.
"I don't want a doctor." she repeated her wish.
"There's a skin regenerator in the bottom drawer, please give it to me." She let go of his wrist and pointed to the chest of drawers on the back wall of the room.
The Cardassian snorted involuntarily, then looked for the medical device in the dresser. He switched it on, gripped the wrist of the injured arm and slowly moved the regenerator over the still bleeding cuts. Jessica tried to wriggle out her wrist and reached for the device, but this time Garak prevailed.
"Now keep it still." His voice sounded irritable.
"I know you can't stand Cardassians, or me in particular, but I'm helping you right now. And if you don't want me to inform Doctor Bashir after all, let me help you."
She let herself sink back against the wall.
"Fuck!" she spat, and the curse was carried to him by a cloud of alcohol.
The cuts closed quickly. Garak grabbed a clean cloth and wiped away the rest of the blood. He didn't miss the many fine, silvery scars on her entire forearm. Jessica saw his gaze and pulled her arm away from him.
"Thank you for your help, you can go now, I'll be fine." She said without looking at him.
"And I would be very attached to you if you kept this incident to yourself." Garak nodded, more to himself.
"Of course, you can count on that." he promised. He turned to go, then paused and added:
"But now that I know if you want to talk …" The woman spun around and yelled at him with furious eyes:
"Get out of here, go away, Cardassian. Go away!". She slumped in exhaustion. Garak looked down at her for a moment, wondering if he shouldn't inform the doctor, but then decided to respect her request.
"You should wash your face if you don't want to attract attention", he advised her, then left the shop and walked slowly to his quarter. It stayed with Kanar today, he couldn't concentrate on the book. His thoughts wandered again and again to Jessica and the many old scars.
Dr. Bashir hadn't really matched Garak's taste with the crime novel when it came to good literature, the whole story was very predictable and without a surprising twist, but the Cardassian had to admit that the book was somewhat entertaining.
Additional he indulged in a glass of the good Kanar and ate dates wrapped in bacon, a treat that was also recommended to him by the doctor. A successful mixture of sweet fruit and salty meat that tickled the palate.
Garak shivered a little. He went to the environmental control next to the door and chose a slightly higher temperature. He tried to adapt to the new conditions on the station and had therefore set the degree of heat for his quarters significantly lower than Cardassians loved. But today he needed more warmth.
He was still watching the display change to a higher measurement when the electrical signal from the door announced a guest. He operated the door opener manually and, to his surprise, faced Jessica. She probably hadn't expected to stand in front of him and the smaller woman shrank back two steps.
"Jessica!" Garak tried not to hide his astonishment.
"I have to confess, I didn't count on you." She shifted from foot to foot and was clearly struggling for words.
"Mr. Garak, I came to apologize." It was obvious difficult for her to ask for an apology, but she looked him straight in the eye.
"Garak, just Garak, my dear." he said.
"Would you like to come in?" he stepped aside and made an inviting gesture with his left. Jessica hesitated, then nodded and accepted the invitation. The door closed with a hiss and the tailor noticed the slight twitch and tension in her shoulders.
"Please sit down. May I offer you a drink from the replicator. Or a glass of Kanar, I have an excellent vintage here."
"Kanar please." said Jessica softly.
"Paradoxically, I like that stuff." Garak bowed his head slightly and waited for an explanation for the comment, but she said nothing, and he got another glass and poured the woman Kanar, plenty of Kanar.
She grabbed the glass, gave him an uncertain smile, and took a long sip of the syrupy alcohol. The Cardassian waited patiently. She had come to him, at some point she would explain herself.
She took another sip, put the glass down, and looked at her hands, which she folded on her knees.
"As I said, I want to apologize. You have been very helpful and respected my wish not to call the doctor. I would like to thank you for that, it is essential to me." Now she looked at him from the side, her eyes slid away again and again uncertainty.
"I want to make sure that this story stays with us forever. Can I rely on your discretion, Garak?"
Garak noticed that her eyes looked so much older than her face. He had thought she was a woman about 30 years old, but those eyes told him otherwise.
"Of course you can, my dear. Tell me what happened? I mean, I don't want to get too close to you and I don't want to judge, I really care. I couldn't miss the older scars and I wonder what makes a young and attractive woman like you do this to herself."
Jessica stiffened again, her hands clenched and her jaw tightened. She shook her head and got up.
"I'm sorry, I can't." She walked past Garak towards the door. He rose to lead the woman to the door, but she turned away from him in alarm, raised her hands to protect her head, and gave a horrified "No!" by herself.
The Cardassian raised his hands soothingly and stepped away from her. "Excuse me, dear, did I do something wrong?" He was confused and dismayed. Despite his story, he had never triggered this reaction in any woman, and neither did he want to.
She stood there, arms raised, trembling. She whispered something, but Garak only heard a faint hiss. He walked cautiously closer.
"It is over. It is over." She kept repeating these three words.
"Jessica, do you want to sit down again? I can see that they are not doing well. Can I help you in any way?"
With a jerk, she took her arms down, pressed them to her side, as if to prevent your arms from going up again. She shook her head.
"You can't help it, I can't help it. I shouldn't have come here." Garak wasn't sure what to do. Finally, he decided to confront her.
"I want you to sit down again." He said quietly, took her shoulders and carefully pushed her back to the sofa. He filled up her glass and pressed it into the woman's hand.
"Drink. And then tell me. If someone is afraid of me, I like to know how I achieved it."
With trembling hands, Jessica brought the glass to her lips. She took a sip, then another. Again and again she shook her head briefly, as if fighting out an inner dialogue. Garak did not push her, but his tension increased steadily.
"I came here to apologize for my behavior when you helped me. And now I'm worsening it." she said resignedly.
"You can't help it, but you're a Cardassian, and every time I look at you, it triggers memories. Memories I don't want." She emptied her glass.
Garak refilled and considered his next question.
"So you've had an unpleasant experience with Cardassians? I can assure you that not all of my people are the same. As with humans, there are good and bad individuals, and ...
"It was not an unpleasant experience." Her voice was polished steel and her eyes harder than diamond. Suddenly Garak felt uncomfortable.
"It was not an unpleasant experience," she repeated sharply,
"It was hell. Do you see my face? Look closely. That has been only one of the unpleasant experiences with Cardassians." The last sentence was a whisper. She slid off the sofa onto the floor and buried her face in her hands.
Garak was speechless. Of course there were a thousand things he could have said now, but all of it would have been wrong. He let himself slip onto the floor next to her, a little way apart, released one of her hands from her face, held them tightly and rubbed his thumb over the back of her hands.
"I would like to apologize for everything that members of my people have done to you, Jessica, but I cannot. I can't apologize for anything I didn't participate in. But I can sit here and listen if you tell me. I can let the hatred you feel, go through me. Maybe you are ashamed of what has been done to you, and therefore you do not want to talk to any of your people about it. If you tell me instead, the pain will return to the people that hurt you."
Garak waited for a response, an answer. He just sat there, holding her hand and waiting. He didn't look over at her, trying to give her as much privacy as possible to clear her mind.
A felt eternity later he sensed a pressure on his hand, and he looked at Jessica, her eyes were red-rimmed.
"Can we just sit here?" The Cardassian nodded.
"Yes sure."
"Garak, please do me a favor. Don't interrupt me. If you interrupt me, I may not be able to continue talking. But maybe I have to finally tell it for myself"