The Pale Crescent
A/N: Hi! I'm back from the dead with my very first story that isn't fluff! Please enjoy some mild ouch, centered around the good ol' childhood trauma these two are made of. This was originally intended to be a ficlet under 800 words but it got away from me.
When he saw the scar, he couldn't unsee it. The hour was late, and watery starlight was illuminating Julian in a cold wash. Elim was only watching, drinking in the sight of his lover when he saw it. The barest ray of light highlighting a pale raised line at the back of Julian's neck, tucked halfway underneath an errant curl.
The little crescent was too even to be from some childhood mishap, although it certainly looked old enough, stretched by growth, and still retaining some pink. Reaching out with a silent, careful hand, Garak's fingers confirmed what his eyes suspected. It was raised. Only a little, but there was a noticeable change in texture, from soft skin, to harder, smoother scar. So it had been deep, then. The tissue had been damaged, and knit back together poorly.
Odd. Garak knew that the Federation had excellent healing technology, and for them, scars were a thing of history books. Julian had once mentioned that old scars were more difficult, so integrated into the tissue that surgery might be necessary to repair them, but they were fixable. Why, then, did Julian have this scar? A neat, perfect slash where vertebrae met skull.
He was still not convinced that this wound was from natural causes. If Garak's finely honed powers of observation were accurate, he was looking at a carelessly healed surgical scar from childhood that had never been removed during all those years.
Why?
No, who.
Who did this to Julian when he was only a child, and didn't clean up their mess? With a cold, sinking sensation of dread, Garak realized he knew exactly who did this, and why.
That was his problem. He could never stop spying, burrowing in to find the secrets and taking them for himself. The Obsidian Order had made him too good.
Julian didn't want him to know this detail. He had betrayed a sleeping man's trust yet again. Throughout his grim past it had never caused him guilt before. Garak shrank back from Julian, feeling ill. Clearly he did not deserve to be so close.
Rolling over as smoothly as possible, Garak curled in tighter to himself and fell into an uneasy sleep, burdened with his snippet of knowledge.
When Garak awoke, he was back in Julian's arms, and his quarters were filled with the dim, yellow light of a simulated morning. For a brief moment he was aware of nothing but warmth, and the feeling of being held. His thoughts returned to him then. His transgression last night had gone unnoticed, of course, and Julian was still sweetly pressed against him, having made his way back as they slept. Shame pressed on Elim more heavily than Julian's arm.
"Good morning," Julian murmured into the back of his neck. The morning was not good. Garak sat up, sliding out of Julian's grasp. Already, Julian's face was crumpling in confusion. If he were a better man he would have done his best to forget the scar, and never mention what he suspected.
"I found a scar on the back of your neck. Where did it come from?" Elim asked. He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice, the hope that he was wrong. He was not a good man, never had been.
Now, Julian shrank back from him, face falling as his hand flew up to the base of his skull. "The people who altered me. They wanted to leave a mark in case they had to go back in again," Julian rasped, voice still husky from sleep.
Garak knew then with absolute certainty that his quest for absolution was selfish and cruel. The hollowness in Julian's voice, the way his body was already compacting in on itself. He had been sure that Julian deserved to know what he had done, but the knowledge was inconsequential. He had only brought back pain, old and deep.
His traitorous mouth then struck again.
"Go back?" He hissed. Garak had always known that the augmentations Julian endured tore him apart from the inside, that the 'improvements' haunted him and gnawed at him. This reminder of Julian's pain incensed him. Murder was too sweet a word for what he would do if Julian allowed it.
"In case I still wasn't good enough," Julian growled, fists now bunching the covers in fury.
Good enough, good enough! It took a special brand of cruelty to edit a person like that, cutting away pieces of them, molding them into some twisted idea of what the parent thought best, someone more valuable to the State. It was all well and good, for their own sake, to make them stronger, smarter, more useful. A perfect doctor… or spy.
"Why haven't you removed it?" Garak's own scars weren't as visible, but if he could wipe them away, he would.
"Too many questions and inquiries into falsified medical files. I would do it myself, but the scar tissue goes right down to the spine. Even I'm not good enough to do that operation at such an awkward angle." Bitterness laced Julian's clipped tones, and he still gripped the back of his neck. "Damn it, Garak, why couldn't you just leave it alone!" He snapped, hand coming down to thump the bed covers. "I had almost, almost forgotten it, learned to ignore it, not think about it!"
"I'm sorry," Elim sighed. Julian's words cut at him, as he deserved. He couldn't undo what was done. "I have never been able to shut down the part of me that finds answers, not even for you." Oh, how he wished he could.
Some of the tension went out of Julian's shoulders, and some of the anger left his eyes. "We are what they made us, aren't we," he said with a rueful sniff.
"I like to think that there is something of the original left."
"The good parts?"
"Hopefully."
Julian sighed, flopping back onto the bed and throwing an arm over his face.
"If I hadn't been augmented, would I still be who I am today?"
"No," Garak answered honestly. A comforting lie would have rung hollow. "Every part of your life has made you who you are. Change it and you would be different."
"Okay," Julian said. "Right now, if you told me I could go and undo it, I would hesitate. I hate what they did to me, but I don't know if I could erase the person I am now"
"I don't think I could do it either," Elim replied, lying down beside Julian.
"Most of the time I'm just living now, as myself, but when I touch that scar…" Julian trailed off.
"It hurts again."
"Yes."
Garak pressed his lips together. "I have connections in surgical institutions that don't ask as many questions as Federation clinics."
It was his attempt at atonement, and the best he could offer.
Nearly a month later, he and Julian were returning from a brief shore leave on Andoria. It had been a couple days since the surgery, but Garak still noticed how often Julian's hands drifted to the back of his neck. The skin there was now smooth and even, unremarkable in every way.
Moving on from your very self was impossible, but moving forward? That could be done one step at a time.