When he stepped into the room that had been set aside for the Cardassians to work from, Odo could see they were beginning to wind up for the rest of the day. He had always appreciated working with Cardassians on Terok Nor – Cardassians were cruel, sharp-edged, backstabbed and would argue consistently and constantly with one another, but they worked hard.
Cardassians worked very long hours, and when they focused on a task they were industrious about it, didn't tend to flag or turn away from their work or lose focus. Cardassians didn't flag with mental fatigue in quite the same way many other species did, and even when doing harder or more physical labour, they didn't tend to flag there, either – Cardassians simply weren't built that way, and unlike Vulcans, they tended to lack (or refuse to admit to) a practical understanding that it was a difference of physical capacity rather than an active choice for other species not to match them for work ethic.
They took their play very seriously too, of course, drank and indulged in women and food, and Odo had had to learn early on that interrupting the strictly scheduled, slow Cardassian mealtimes or bringing them back into their work after their long shift was over was a bad idea. Cardassian obsessive focus well-tended itself to hard working hours and long days, but most of them didn't do well with multi-tasking or swapping between leisure and work, or very different tasks.
Cardassians weren't a monolith, of course, as Garak was a consummate multitasker – and Dukat had never focused entirely on work no matter how short his hours were – but these Cardassians, Odo could see, were more of the usual bent.
The room was large, with one central table and then several desks to each side of the room – Bashir had intervened when the ensigns had gone to furnish the room and had them replicate these instead of the standard-issue ones.
The only desk with a seat was that of one of their older accountants who had difficulties with fatigue, and tended to sit down for most of the day.
"… the Bajoran Ministry will never accept it."
"That's not our problem, that's for the Councillor to decide, and this data is for the Detapa Council. Bajor won't accept anything we do, anyway – the paperwork is properly in order, but that doesn't mean anything to Bajorans, they scarcely know to read except to fuss over their holy texts."
The two Cardassians, members of Pa'Dar's contingent, were speaking over a set of scrolling tables as they collated data on replicator credits, food intake, and other needs that had to be provided for where the Bajoran-Cardassian hybrids and the other Cardassian orphans were concerned. An economic argument had to be made, of course.
Stepping further inside, Odo let his gaze flit over Prang, who was standing silently at work, pouring over swathes of scrolling text with a corrective stylus in hand, and then to the rest of his contingent.
The Vulcan Cardassians were strange – all of them were full-blooded Cardassians, at least that Odo could tell, but their body language was sometimes a little odd, somewhere between the square simplicity of Vulcan grace and the blunt but sinewy movements that Odo had come to understand were rarely seen within the Cardassian military, but rarely unseen anywhere else. They spoke more directly than the average Cardassian, but that wasn't to say they didn't still argue or provoke each other in the way Cardassians did – it was simply that their wit was often flatter toned and more in line with the Vulcan humour.
It was strange not because the two cultures didn't mix, but because they mixed so well that one could barely tell where one ended and the other began, despite the fact that one never thought they should meld together, viewing them in separation.
"This one, Prad," said Provor, a young man that Odo didn't care for, one that he'd watched Prang and other elder Cardassians discipline more than once for being overly distracted by dabo girls or passing Bajoran women, "whose father is hers?"
"We need DNA samples," said a clerk across from him, passing the PADD over. "It could well be she is the daughter of Raskel, just as the other is, but for them to be on different sides of the continent—"
"They were likely separated on purpose," remarked another clerk. "Bajorans have no understanding of family's importance – a separation means little to them."
Odo cleared his throat, and Prang's eyes flitted up from his screen, but no surprise showed on his face, no outward expression at all. He had known Odo was there as soon as he entered the room, of course.
"Legate Prang," said Odo. "If you will accompany me to Ops?"
Prang raised his chin, and then glanced down to the PADD.
"Finish your work," he said crisply. "You may depart."
There were a chorus of "Yes, Legate"s and "Sir"s from around the room, and Odo watched the Cardassians move.
"Where's Varda?"
Prang tilted his head. "Varda is an unwell man, Chief," he said in his cool, quiet voice. Odo had never had much cause to work with men from the continent – country men didn't tend to join the rank and file of the Cardassian military, and almost none of them were likely to be assigned to ore processing when they typically had expertise that would make them more valuable commanding farmland on the planet below.
"Computer, locate Varda, from Pa'Dar's contingent."
"Mr Varda is not on the station," said the computer.
Prang's expression revealed nothing.
"With me," growled Odo.
Up in Operations, Dax and O'Brien bent over one of the computer consoles, and they looked back with hope on their faces when they saw Odo and Prang step from the turbolift, as though they thought he might have Bashir and Kira in tow, and he seriously shook his head as he moved past them.
In Sisko's office, Pa'Dar was seated, and he looked drawn and tired, even as he accepted a glass of water from Ensign Loxley.
"Councillor," said Odo, "what can you tell me about Varda?"
"Varda?" repeated Pa'Dar, staring at him. "Well, he's an accountant. You don't think he's got something to do with this?"
"He isn't on the station either," said Odo. "I don't believe the Chief has located their transporter signatures yet, as they were well-obscured, but I doubt his absence is a coincidence."
Pa'Dar looked meaningfully at Prang, who did not react, and stepped further into the room. "Who isn't on the station?" he asked softly.
Commander Sisko turned from where he'd been looking out of one of the windows, his baseball turning in his hand. "Legate Prang," he said coolly, "Our Chief Medical Officer, my First Officer, and Garak are all missing from the station. You don't have any idea why that would be?"
"You're making an accusation, Commander?"
"You and Garak were fighting this morning over something," growled Odo, and Prang turned to look at him, his eyes focused, severe. Odo had seen many of his juniors flinch or shiver when that look was aimed at them – unfortunately for him, Odo didn't take a humanoid form to shiver. "Now, Garak and his partner go missing."
"And assuming I thought to kidnap an exile and his Human partner, you believe I would capture a random Bajoran in the process?"
The doors to Ops opened, and Dukat stepped inside, making Sisko close his eyes and exhale, and Odo scowled.
"I just heard about the Major's disappearance," said Dukat. "I thought I'd come up and… help."
"Of course you did," growled Odo, and turned back to the Commander.
It was cold, wearing Cardassian clothes in the cell that had been made up an average Human room temperature, and it was a relief when Julian stepped out into the corridor and began to move.
No one came to escort him or stop him on his way – in fact, as crewmembers passed him by, all of them in Cardassian civilian clothes, not uniforms, he was greeted politely, with curt nods of the head. They weren't even all Cardassians – there were one or two scattered Vulcans, two Ferengi, a Bolian.
One of them, a Cardassian woman, said, "Do you need directions to the bridge?"
No modifiers: plain, simple Kardasi.
"Yes," said Bashir. "Please."
She gave them, and he walked on. His skin itched under his new clothes as he moved up a narrow spiral staircase, making his way up to the central walkways. The ship was neatly appointed, but there was something dated about it – it was at least fifty or a hundred years old, he guessed, and judging by the clothes everyone was wearing and the care actually put into the décor, it wasn't just a merchant vessel, but one actually intended for passengers.
When we came onto the bridge, a tall, handsome Cardassian turned around to look at him. He was a powerful-looking man, exceedingly broad shouldered but with a narrow waist, and he looked down at Julian with heavily-lidded eyes so grey they almost turned to lilac.
"Tain, I presume?" asked Bashir, and the handsome Cardassian laughed.
"No, sir," he said, using a modifier for seniority that Bashir didn't expect as well as the title, and he gestured to a bench to the side of the room.
Two older men were sitting together: one of them, Bashir recognised, corrective lenses clipped to the ridges over his eyes, and his heart sank.
"Varda," he snarled.
"I am sorry, Doctor," said Varda pleasantly, "but needs must. I hope your quarters are comfortable for you."
"They aren't, in fact," said Bashir. "Are you really an accountant?"
"Of course," said Varda. "Very good at my work I am, too."
"You've really got an immune condition?"
"Mmm."
"You're really enjoined to a man?"
"Why, Doctor," said Varda, arching his eyebrows. "Do you think everything I've told you has been a lie?"
In response to Varda's smile, Julian smiled savagely back. "How am I supposed to know?"
"I suppose you're not," said Varda pleasantly, and Julian irritably turned on his feet, looking back to the handsome captain.
"You don't need to waste power on keeping my room so cold and dry – I'm perfectly fine at the standard Cardassian environmental control."
Varda chuckled, as did the other man beside him.
It was the other older man – Tain – who said to the younger man, "And after your engineers went to such work, Captain."
"Ungrateful," tutted the civilian captain, and Julian, no matter that it felt utterly insane, moved almost like he was on strings, bowing his head slightly to the captain.
"I meant no offence," he said. "And I appreciate your efforts to accommodate me, but I'm—" He turned his head further from Varda and Tain, who were looking at him with curiosity in their features, "I'm more used to Cardassian standards than most Humans."
"Are you?" asked the captain. He was smiling, and it really did look quite genuine – his pronouns were polite, as though they were two professionals, but they still did contain a deference that Julian didn't know what to make of. "It's no imposition, Doctor. We'll reset your quarters."
"Forgive me, Tain," said Julian, and he used the modifiers for age and seniority that Tain had insisted on before, watching the way they made the old man's plummy cheeks shift, his lips shifting into a smirk, "but isn't it polite to introduce me?"
"Isn't it polite to introduce yourself, Doctor?"
"To my kidnappers?" Julian asked coldly, and Tain chuckled, patting Varda on the shoulder as he stood to his feet.
"Do forgive the good doctor, Brava. He's of poor mood."
"Oh, I forgave him already," said Brava good-naturedly, with a flirtatious smile that set Julian ill at ease. He didn't hold himself like a Cardassian, and didn't flirt like one either, but more like a Human, or at least, strangely loose-limbed and open – it was uncomfortable, and Julian wondered if this was how Cardassians felt seeing him. "Doctor Bashir, my name is Captain Brava, and you're on my ship, the Ilonar."
"Named for Ilok's daughter in The Never-Ending Sacrifice?" asked Bashir, and Brava's eyes seemed blank for a second before they lit up.
"Tain, wherever did you find this man?" he asked, delighted. "Yes, Doctor, quite right. I'm ferrying you back to Cardassia as a favour. I'm an old friend of Tain's."
"Where's Garak?" Julian demanded, and Brava sighed, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Here you are, friendly with a few real Cardassians," said Brava, "and you want your pale imitation back?"
"At least Garak doesn't slouch," said Julian coolly, "let alone drop his shoulder on one side like a whore on the beaches of Lakarian City."
Brava's smile dropped off his face like Julian had slapped him, and his left shoulder shot up to be in line with the other one, his back straightening. It was a coquettish or flirtatious affectation, Garak had taught him, dropping one shoulder and keeping the other raised, but it was considered gauche, a sign of poor breeding and little bodily control, to do it publicly. And anyway, dropping your shoulder was an invitation, an implication that you'd let the other person win whatever fight passed between you.
Brava was looking at Tain for help, who was just grinning and watching Bashir, and behind them, Varda was openly laughing.
"You're not the captain of anything," said Julian. "If you're not a sex worker, you're an actor," it was a pun, not one of his own but one he'd learned from some stupid Kardasi play full of them, and judging by the way Brava's jaw dropped open further, not one that he was familiar with, "and judging by that gormless look and the fact you've never even read Never-Ending Sacrifice, you're not the second one. Which one of these rhodruns do you belong to, Brava?"
"He doesn't belong to either of them," said a quiet voice right next to him, so close that Julian's arm shot out reflexively, and the Cardassian caught his hand by the wrist. "Brava's mine."
This Cardassian was—
Different.
He was short, shorter than Julian by quite a bit, slender: his eyes were very dark, but his eyelashes were long enough that they made his eyes seem larger, and his lips were plump. There were lines on his face, but they were thin ones, and until you looked at him up close like Julian was doing now, you could probably be forgiven for thinking he was still a young man, when really he must have been about Garak's age.
"My name is Lok," said the real captain. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to hit me again, Doctor."
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that Cardassian disappearing trick on me again," retorted Julian. "I'll take it from Garak or one of the regnars – I'm not going to take it from you."
"Duly noted," said Lok, and released his wrist.
"My apologies, Brava," said Julian, making a gesture of mea culpa that Brava didn't look as though he knew what to do with. "You understand, I hope, that my anger is not really with you."
"Yes, sir," said Brava, biting the inside of his lip, but he looked so embarrassed and so very small that Julian almost felt sorry for him as he went out into the corridor, his hand brushing Lok's in a small and subtle movement as they moved past one another.
"Your Kardasi is very good," said Lok. "You must study quite hard."
"Yes, yes, I'm a consummate student," said Julian impatiently. "I don't— I don't remember, what the Hell am I doing here?"
What did he remember? He remembered being in the bath with Garak, and they'd talked for at least an hour or so, mostly about where Garak had grown up in in Cardassia City, how he'd grown up playing in memorial gardens and helping his father – not his real father, but Tolan Garak – with his work gardening and tending monuments, how he'd had a pet lemur, how…
And after that, they'd gone to meet Lora and Rugal… Everything after that was a blank.
"You must be hungry," said Tain, standing to his feet. "Come, Doctor, I'll explain as we eat. Can you manage Cardassian food?"
"You're obviously spies," said Julian irritably. "Stop fucking pretending – you know I can handle the Cardassian temperature, you know I like Cardassian food, you know I can tell a man isn't a captain when he calls me sir. I'm not interested in playing your bollocks intelligence games, not with any of you."
"Bollocks?" repeated Varda, looking to Lok askance.
"Testicles," Lok supplied. "It's not a Federation Standard word – it's one of his Terran English words."
"Ah," said Varda, and Julian lunged at him, but Lok was faster, hauling him up with his arms twisted behind his back.
Julian could overpower him, he was fairly certain – Lok had a graceful athleticism to him, but he was smaller than Garak, built more like Julian – but he couldn't reveal just how strong he was, not on a ship full to the brim of Cardassians, especially not smart ones, not spies, and oh, fuck, he was fucked.
"Temper temper, Doctor," chided Tain softly – modifiers for youth, for student status, for affection.
Julian wanted to spit.
When Tain led the way toward the corridor, he offered his arm, and Julian glared down at him, but Tain was undeterred, his lips smiling.
"Ah, Doctor," said Tain pleasantly, "you'll learn soon enough that that sort of hostility will get you nowhere."
"Where is he?" asked Julian.
"Quite safe," said Tain, "quite safe. My name, as I told you, is Enabran Tain. Have you heard that name before?"
"No."
"I was formerly the head of the Obsidian Order," said Tain casually, as though the two of them had just met for a conference or something, as though any of this were remotely normal. "Retired now from that position – my health, you know."
"You're a spy," said Julian.
Tain sighed. "The Obsidian Order is more than a mere spying organisation, Doctor. I thought you'd have more of an appreciation for the subtlety of meaning in these situations, what with those Fleming novels you so enjoy."
"Garak was one of your operatives, I take it," said Julian bluntly, staring forward. "What did you think of his affair?"
"Which one?"
That was a provocation Julian wasn't interested in taking on. "The one with Palandine."
"I disapproved, naturally," said Tain, and Julian listened very carefully for any sign of falter or uncertainty in his voice, but he couldn't make any out. "A married woman – and at that, a married woman of such a higher class."
"Oh, you're right, I suppose," said Julian sarcastically. "Garak should have known his place and had an affair with her housekeeper or something."
Tain faltered, suddenly giving him a very severe look, and Julian wanted to be delighted that he'd actually landed a blow, only he had no idea how he'd managed it. The severity was turning to something different, and Julian didn't like the nasty smile on Tain's face. "You're very like him," he said.
"Like Garak?" asked Julian.
"Oh, yes," said Tain. "No wonder he likes you – no wonder he's taken your education under his remit. Garak always did like to imagine righting the wrongs of his past, no matter the impossibility of it – I expect you serve as quite a pleasant fantasy exercise."
"I'm no psychologist, Tain, but one might argue you're projecting there. If the only way you can imagine Garak forming a relationship with someone out of self-centeredness, that points to a flaw in your imagination, not his character."
"Perhaps you don't know Garak like I do, Doctor."
"Perhaps," said Julian. "Maybe you don't know him at all – how long's he been in exile, four years, five? He's shed his scales a few times since last you saw him – perhaps he's cast old parts of himself aside." "Such an erudite young man," murmured Tain softly. "So well-read, it seems. Is that what your relationship with him amounts to, homework and literary criticism?"
"Where is he?" asked Julian.
"Safe," answered Tain again.
"And me?" asked Julian.
"You?"
"Am I safe?"
"With me?" asked Tain, and then chuckled. "Why, my dear doctor. With me, I'm sure you've never been safer."
They stepped into what was not a mess hall, but was unmistakably a dining room, cloths on the tables, people sitting down to dine together. Most of them were Cardassians, too, Cardassians in fine clothes, wearing jewellery, eating good food – fresh food, judging by the pleasant smells wafting from one door whenever it opened and closed.
He'd never given much thought to Cardassian aristocrats or the upper classes beyond the ones who served in the military. The Cardassian Empire occupied a few dozen planets across fifteen or so star systems, and there was a strict class stratification, but he supposed it made sense he'd never see the aristos at leisure on Bajor.
Why would they want to bother about a planet under such a short occupation, only forty years – less than a quarter of a lifetime – that was too cold and too undeveloped even before they cast the Cardassians off?
Here Julian was, about to dine comfortably with his kidnapper, and where was Garak? He didn't even know.
"You don't belong here," said Julian. "Neither of us do."
"Perhaps one of us does," said Tain. "Your father is an ambassador, no?"
"My father is a con artist, and not a very good one," muttered Julian, not particularly liking that line of questioning. "My parents like the imagined idea that value is something you're born with instead of something you make. I thought you an intelligent man, Tain – aren't you better than that?"
Tain laughed. "Is that what you think class is, child? Value that you're born with? How curiously simple your mind is."
"Everything's simple if you break it down to its constituent parts," said Julian.
"By no means, Doctor. The more you break things down, the more complicated they become."
"God, you're worse than he is," muttered Julian, and Tain chuckled, coming to a table. He waited, expectantly, and Julian pressed his lips tightly together, but did as etiquette dictated, and pulled out his chair.
Tain smiled, and Julian wondered in a distant, frantic way if Garak's education was going to make things better for him, or worse.
"They were targeted through the glass in the contemplation gardens," said Dax, and Sisko leaned back in his seat, glancing from the data on the PADD before he looked up to her face. "It was a long-range transport – they used homing transponders to lock onto their targets, and used the mirrors to further disguise the signal. It looks like it was a passing luxury transport that was edging through the demilitarised zone, the Ilonar."
Sisko looked from Dukat's raised eyeridges to Pa'Dar's stonily disapproving expression to Prang's face, which had no expression at all.
"The Ilonar," said Dukat thoughtfully, walking around Pa'Dar, looking him up and down. "Well, well. Some friends of yours, Councillor?"
"The Ilonar is a Cardassian vessel – they trade a little, but it's primarily luxury transport, especially for ambassadors, aristocrats, high-ranking traders. I've never travelled on it." Pa'Dar looked as though he wanted to climb into the bowels of the station's floors and stay there.
"Who do you know who does?" asked Odo, and Pa'Dar stood helplessly for a moment, searching the air in front of him as if he could expect names to show up there.
"Different ambassadors, different… No one I can name or that I can think of who would have any interest in a tailor or your doctor, let alone Major Kira."
"I don't see what shared motivation there could be to take those three," said Dax. "Julian if they needed a doctor, Garak if they wanted to, to punish him for something on Cardassia – Kira if they wanted to punish her for what she did in the Resistance. But all three of them together? Why?"
"Where did Varda work before he took to your office?" asked Odo.
"He was a clerk with State Intelligence," said Pa'Dar. "He was constantly meeting with people who were moving around the other continents, all around the planet, not to mention people who'd been off-world. In my office, it was a more controlled space, more static. He had to get half a dozen medical dispensations to join us for this assignment, but he's aging, and he thought it would be his only chance to ever move off-world."
Prang's expression had changed, his lips pressed together, his eyes slightly wide.
"That means something to you?" asked Sisko, and Prang looked at his face. "That Varda was with State Intelligence?"
"I have contacts," said Prang, "within State Intelligence. I can make inquiries. As can you, Pa'Dar, with the Detapa Council, and with the High Command."
"And is there a reason we should trust those inquiries?" asked Odo.
"Do you have another choice?" asked Prang.
Sisko didn't like it, but Prang was right.
"Look at me," said a voice, and it wasn't Bashir's, wasn't Girani's, wasn't Polkiss' – it didn't belong, he didn't think, to any of the doctors of Deep Space Nine, but it was unmistakably a doctor's voice.
This doctor's voice was smooth and even, and Garak obeyed, looked at them. They had pale eyes, blue eyes, paler than the blue of Garak's, but he was sure they used to be darker.
They had a square mouth, quite a familiar one, and square features, too – they had white hair, which was really most uncommon in a man so young, and around one eye and scattered down the side of one jaw, their neck, were strange patches of white scale.
They… He. They, he, she. Did it matter?
Which one was Garak?
"Oh, Doctor," said Garak, his body feeling strangely numb, his mouth not feeling connected to his body even as he managed to move it about, feeling more like a puppeteer of his body than he felt part of the body itself. "I hope I'm not responsible for this leucistic tint you've taken on in recent years."
"No, Garak," said Kelas Parmak quietly. "I didn't even experience the head injury responsible for this in the labour camp I went to directly after your interrogation, you'll be glad to know. This was just… Unfortunate happenstance."
"Am I dead, Doctor?"
"No," said Parmak, raising his eyeridges, one of them strangely white, the other its natural grey. "Do you feel as if you might be?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Garak. "No pain, no pleasure, barely any physicality. I don't feel anything at all – it's really quite disconcerting. Of course, last I remember, I was accompanying a friend to a meeting, and now it appears I'm strapped to your operating table."
"You're not strapped down, Garak," said Parmak. "Do you feel as though you are?"
"I can't… move."
"Mmm, that's right," said Parmak. "Do you recall when Mindur Timot installed your cranial implant?"
"Yes."
"Do you recall the warnings he gave you," asked Parmak, "not to tamper with it?"
"Distantly."
"It appears that your cranial implant has been functioning near constantly for some time."
"Yes."
"For what reason, dare I ask?"
"It… hurt," said Garak.
Parmak's face was hard to read. It was hard to think, actually – even his memories seemed quite clear, but distant from him, difficult to grasp hold of and meaningfully understand, let alone to analyse the small impressions of Parmak's face. Thinking about it, he didn't know that he could read any emotion in Parmak's face at all.
It occurred to Garak that this was likely a sign of not inconsiderable brain damage, and that perhaps he should be frightened, but although he considered fear, the sensation of it failed to manifest.
He felt as though he'd been hollowed out.
"It hurt?" repeated Parmak, in a quieter voice now. "Dukat? Your work?"
"The station. The… stares, the insults, the loneliness, the cold, the bright lights. All of it."
"Constant hurt, I see," said Parmak, "and then… Pleasure? Were you tortured for any significant periods, triggering the implant, or were you exercising significantly, engaging in sexual relations, taxing yourself emotionally, physically? You were experiencing heights of endorphin relief even without the additional tax on your system from the cranial implant?"
"You sound like you disapprove," said Garak, although he had no real idea what Parmak sounded like. Perhaps he was dead. The existence of an afterlife seemed more likely than whatever this numb abstraction was. "What would you have suggested I do? Take it out?"
"Best that you leave that to me, I think," said Parmak.
"Where's Julian?"
"Julian?" Parmak repeated, head tilting to the side.
"My student," said Garak, although he knew that he shouldn't – and yet his mouth was moving, his voice coming out. Perhaps he wasn't the puppeteer of his body after all – perhaps it was someone else doing so. "He was on my arm. He's the other half of my heart, you know."
"For his sake, then," said Parmak, "I'll try to keep you intact. Dare I ask as to his heart?"
"His heart?" repeated Garak. "What do you mean, Parmak?"
"Half of his heart is entwined with yours?"
"Yes."
"The space in yours made up for the half of your heart that belongs to Mother Cardassia?"
"Of course," said Garak.
"And what of the rest of Bashir's?" asked Parmak. "Half is yours – where is the rest?"
"In Cardassia's hands," said Garak, not understanding what Parmak was attempting to say or imply, wondering if there was perhaps some double meaning he had yet to comprehend or understand. "Where else would it be? Where else could it be?"
Parmak's lips moved. Up or down, curving one way or the other – that meant something. Didn't it? His mind was slowing down further, and there was darkness forming at the edge of his vision.
"Who put it there, I wonder?" asked Parmak. "You?"
"Oh no," said Garak. "No, he put it there himself, I think – I don't know that I had everything to do with it. I think he would have done it anyway, for the sake of all those orphans. He's such a sentimental young man. You know, Parmak, it's quite… it's quite funny… I used to think sentiment had no place on Cardassia, but increasingly… I think…"
He must have forgotten to keep talking, because Parmak prompted, "What do you think, Garak?"
"Mm," hummed Garak. "His sort of sentiment is exactly what we need. That's all."
Darkness completed its invasion of his vision, and all was black and numb and empty.
When he woke again, it was to more excruciating pain than he'd felt in decades.
