Garak was forced to lean heavily on Pythas' arm at first, particularly as they descended the stairs of the hospital. His every joint ached, the whole of his body feeling hollow and raw, and forcing himself to perambulate wasn't easy on his already overwrought pain receptors, but once he felt the Cardassian sun on his skin—
Oh, but the sun.
This sun, his sun.
Years he'd spent in the frigid, dry cold of Terok Nor, and as much as there'd been relief in Bashir's quarters and his own, and as much as he'd even privately indulged himself by occasionally sliding his hand under the sun lamps that Bashir had designed for the regnars, here was true and all-encompassing bliss, the kiss of Mother Cardassia upon his brow.
Leaning into Pythas' shoulder, he closed his eyes and simply stood still for a moment, feeling the way the slightly dim, orange-tinted rays fell down against his scales, felt something in him ease.
The pain didn't recede, but overtop of it was a film of quiet pleasure and satisfaction, and were he a weaker man than he already was, he might have begun to weep.
"A taste of what you've missed," whispered Pythas, and in the moment, Garak was fully and wholly aware that Pythas was still a member of the Obsidian Order, that there was an impossible, impassable trench between the two of them, no matter the strength of their friendship now or ever.
"What will I pay for this taste, I wonder?" asked Garak.
"It's not about what you pay now, is it, Elim?" asked Pythas quietly. "It's about what you'll pay later, remembering this moment, and aching to return to it."
"How long will I be here?"
"That isn't up to me," said Pythas.
Garak smiled. "You bear leadership very well, Pythas," he said mildly. "Even as you pretend not to bear it. It's a deception that comes so naturally to you, isn't it? Just as you take years under your belt but don't show them in your face."
Pythas' expression, for a moment, was his typical frozen mask, but then he smiled back, and inclined his head, as though Garak had beaten him in a round of kotra.
"Very well," he said. "It is up to me, but it isn't about you, Garak. You're not my priority, or any of ours. When Bashir and Kira have fulfilled their respective purposes, I will see to your safe return."
The word he used for your was in the singular, and Garak asked, "And as for their return?"
"Feel the sun on your scales, Garak," advised Pythas in his delicate way. "Let us enjoy these moments together while we have them."
"Want a moment alone together?" asked Garak, arching his eye ridges, and when we leaned closer, so that his chest was on Pythas' as much as his shoulder, he watched the slight dilation of Pythas' pupils, the almost infinitesimal part of his lips, the slight tip of his chin. Garak laughed: it was cruel of him, and he remembered how cruel he'd once been able to be, with Pythas, with anyone, and he ached with the force of the memory, then drew away. "But that would put out your little streetwalker, wouldn't it?"
He was now approaching, and didn't hear what Garak had said.
"Brava," said Pythas, showing a ghost not of embarrassment or anger, but of hurt, and it made Garak want to vomit out his every organ, it was so inexplicably excruciating, "hello."
"Pythas," said Brava, a modifier attached to the word for intimate affection, but also for deference – Pythas was not only his lover, but his sponsor. It was a different dynamic indeed to a teacher and student, but the differential in power was not dissimilar, except that it wasn't so easily bridged with education. "And— And Mr Garak."
The deference was well-intended, but its earnestness stung, knowing that as an exile, he had no claim to it.
"You must be Brava," said Garak pleasantly, sweetening his voice with syrup. "Pythas shows such affection for you, I assumed he must be overcompensating for something – what a delightful surprise to see you are as handsome a young man as he implied."
Brava's eyelashes fluttered and he glanced down at the floor, the smile shy on his face. It was the uncertain smile of a man who was well-used to environments where he was ever on the back foot, unable to hold his own – the smile of a man who knew he wasn't keeping pace with his lover's friends, and knew precisely how inferior he was.
Garak almost wanted to laugh at the familiarity of it all, and spared a thought for Bashir, stranded on this planet with Tain looking over his shoulder.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Garak," said Brava. "Pythas speaks so fondly of your childhood together."
That was a surprise, but not one Garak allowed to show on his face as he smiled. "I shouldn't put too much stock by Pythas' fond remembrances, my dear. He has a proclivity for embellishment, and never tells the truth when a lie will do."
Brava laughed, surprised, glanced at Pythas, who was smiling slightly, and said, "Might I help you, Mr Garak? I'm stronger than Pythas is."
"Who could deny an offer of aid from such a handsome young man?" asked Garak, and watched the way Brava came to life at the praise, on such comfortable ground for him, and he was indeed much stronger than Pythas – leaning on his arm, Garak felt entirely supported, and Brava ran warmer than Pythas did, was better practised at offering support like this.
Garak privately assumed this was as a result of having so many elderly Cardassians amongst his previous clientele, but he wasn't only good at being a crutch: Brava was a charming and brightly chatty man, and a shining example of what one liked to believe typified the lower classes. He was confident, sanguine, tremendously effusive, and when met with what he didn't know or understand, he asked politely for explanation, and listened raptly to the explanation as it came.
For all he retained his place on Cardassia, Pythas spent much of his time underground if not off-planet, and Garak supposed that it followed that, as Garak had, he had sought out a private source of sunshine, which Brava most certainly was.
"Do you ride, Mr Garak?" asked Brava as they came into the market. Garak was beginning to tire, his breathing somewhat more laboured, and Brava had slowed his pace accordingly, adjusting his hold on Garak's arm so that he supported him without letting him lean forward and reduce the capacity of his lungs.
"Not for a long time," said Garak. "Despite what your vivid imagination might like to fabricate, my dear, Starfleet officers don't tend to bridle riding hounds on their space stations."
"Oh, but I do imagine it, Mr Garak," said Brava. "How could a man imagine anything else once that image is put into his mind?"
"You're smiling, Elim," said Pythas. "Is it the sun or the good company?"
"Merely the absent expression of an addled mind, Pythas," said Garak.
"Why don't we eat?" asked Pythas, leaning forward and meeting Brava's gaze.
"Through the market first, perhaps," said Garak, feeling the ache in his legs, his chest, his shoulders.
Pythas inclined his head, and Brava cheerily chattered on about some of the good root crops this year, about recipes he'd been trying to please Pythas, even off-world recipes. Garak would ordinarily have engaged him back, teased and played back and forth in the art of conversation, but he was fatigued and couldn't manage it – and yet, it was plain to him, Brava was well-used to relatively one-sided conversation, was not deterred by Garak's limited replies.
Pythas was a quiet man by nature, and perhaps Brava assumed that the two of them had this in common.
Brava was anticipant of nothing, but Pythas had a plan in mind, Garak knew, wouldn't have brought him out here were it not because he had some intention beyond allowing Garak the pleasure of the sun's touch on his body. Garak wondered, rather idly, how many plans of Pythas' Brava was accustomed to being a part of without knowing what outcome Pythas expected, without even knowing he had a plan at all—
And once more, Garak thought of Bashir, and ached.
People stared at Julian on the tram, and they stared at him once they were in the central sector, too. Julian kept stopping to look at things, distracted by displays of art and poetry in murals or up on pinned noticeboards, poetry or excerpts from literature that he'd never heard of before.
There were excerpts, yes, from classics like The Never-Ending Sacrifice, but much of it was by poets or authors that Garak often dismissed as dull or of little interest, or had never mentioned at all, and Julian committed every word, every image, every little painted name, to memory to look up later.
"Young man," growled Mila for the umpteenth time that morning, and Julian tore himself away from a poem about the development of the Juraka Bridge and fell into step beside her again, looking around as they came into the market.
"What are we buying?"
"Rokassa fruit, gvhar and lovin tubers, ithki berries, kara root – Doctor," Julian came back to her side from where he'd been meandering toward a toy-maker's stall, "honey, and eggs."
He stayed by Mila's side as she bartered with the various grocers and traders around the market square, and although none of them said anything, many of them kept looking at Julian, peering at him with undisguised interest at his ridgeless face, his smooth skin, his body. There were other non-Cardassians in the city, of course – he saw Vulcans and Romulans, Kelpians, Andorians, a variety of other species.
He'd seen one Bajoran woman on the arm of a Cardassian man, and he'd found himself staring at her smile, which looked at a glance to be frozen, wooden, fixed on her face, but he'd only seen her for a second.
"Whose boy is this, Mila?" asked the man selling taspar eggs.
"Does he look like he's mine?"
"I'm visiting from the station that was Terok Nor," said Julian, and the man's jaw dropped as he realised that Julian could understand him. Most people weren't allotted universal translators on Cardassia Prime by default – part of your visa application if you wanted to travel off-planet was paying for your UT to be installed, and while there were cheaper options that only covered the most common languages in the Cardassian Empire, they were still incredibly expensive for the average citizen, and pretty much unheard of for random people.
"Your Kardasi is very good," said the trader cautiously, glancing between him and Mila. "You're from… Ronara?"
"Oh, I'm not Maquis, sir," said Julian, and he didn't even think about it, using the word that one of the contemporary novels had used for them instead of the Maquis word itself – on DS9 it would have probably got him a furious rant, if not a slap, but the Cardassian relaxed slightly, and smiled.
"Of course not," he said. "You're a labourer for Mr Tain's garden?"
Julian smiled, and looked to Mila, who was also smiling, her hands on her hips, her eyebrows raised, as she looked at him. "Go on," she said. "Tell him what you are."
"I'm a tennis player," said Julian pleasantly, ignoring Mila's short, punctuated huff of noise. "It's a sport on Earth – it's rather like racquetball."
"Really?" asked the trader, and he leaned in closer. "You know, I supply the Romulan ambassador his grotak eggs, and he's been wanting a non-Cardassian singles partner."
Julian inwardly panicked, but forced himself to smile, ignoring Mila's wry look. "Would he be free this week, do you think? I'm not sure how long I'll be on Cardassia Prime."
"I'll advise he contact Tain," said the trader, and Julian didn't say anything but smiled and nodded his head, giving a neat bow of his head. Mila handed over the paper currency in exchange for the eggs – Julian had already spent about twenty minutes poring over the different Cardassian bills and square coins in Mila's purse, and Mila had laughed at him until he said he'd never used physical currency in all his life except for the slips of latinum on DS9.
They fell into step again and kept walking together, and Mila said, "A tennis player?"
"If I'd told the truth and said I was a doctor," said Julian, "would the Romulan ambassador have turned out to be ill instead?"
"You're a very suspicious young man," said Mila, although the way she said it made it sound like praise.
There was a sculpture in the centre square, the sort of thing that might have been a fountain or a water feature on another planet, but here it had a series of hourglasses that spun and tipped sand from container to container, sending it spinning around the dial.
And then Julian saw Garak between Brava and Captain Lok, and he took in a sharp breath, putting his hand on Mila's lower arm. She didn't look remotely surprised, and judging by the way Lok put up his hand and gave him a cheerful wave, gesturing him over, this had been organised to some extent.
"Good morning," said Julian as they came closer, and put his hands on Garak's face, pushing his head back so that he could examine the dilation of his pupils. "You look awful."
"I've been worried about you too," said Garak in a hoarse, exhausted voice, and Julian pushed open his mouth, examining his gums. They looked as pale as the rest of him, and when Julian pressed his thumb under one of his teeth, waiting to see how long it look for blood to flow back to the skin, Garak grunted, leaning back. "Do I resemble a Terran horse to you, Doctor?"
"I'd do a pinch test on your wrist, but your scales make it difficult," said Julian. "You need to drink something, you're dehydrated – and you need to eat something, too. They tortured you?"
"My dear, who would torture me?" asked Garak lowly, his voice wry and easy although it had a papery fragility to it. "Here we are on Cardassia, birthplace of hospitality."
"Let him go," Julian ordered Brava, and while he was crisply polite, he used the modifiers he was entitled to, as Brava's superior. Brava didn't even flinch, just nodded his head and swapped places with Julian, but Julian saw the slight catch in Mila's face, and the way that Mila and Pythas made eye contact for a moment.
When they were settled in a café, the five of them at one table, Pythas handed Julian a med kit, and although Garak grunted when he was given a hypospray to aid his water retention and an analgesic, he made no complaint about Julian's medical care of him.
"Your reactions are slow," said Julian. "What did they do to you?"
"I will explain," promised Garak, meeting Julian's gaze with an intensity that made Julian feel slightly ill. "In the meantime, my dear, do you know where Major Kira is?"
"Kira?" repeated Julian. "What do you mean?"
"The drug that Varda gave you must have clouded your memory," murmured Garak, letting out a pained sound as he sat back in his seat, and Julian resisted the urge to hold his hand in his own – that sort of skin-to-skin contact was a bit much in a public place like this – and instead curled his hand around the fabric of Garak's wrist.
It was the first time he'd ever seen Garak outside in a tunic that wasn't completely armoured, and part of him spun with a sort of dizzy amazement, for his palm to be so close to the surface of Garak's scales even through his clothes.
"Major Kira is here on Cardassia too," said Garak. "I hoped the two of you might be together."
Julian looked to Lok, who smiled, and delicately shrugged his shoulders.
"No gallant escape attempts, thus far?" asked Garak quietly, and Julian looked at him.
"You didn't tell me he was your father," he said in Urdu, his voice quiet enough that no one else could hear. Urdu was unlikely to be in the Cardassian translation matrix, and while Lok obviously had at least a limited command of English, Julian hoped he wouldn't have Urdu as well – at least, not enough to read his lips.
Garak's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't seem entirely surprised, and he replied, "I thought you must have said something to unsettle him. I hope you weren't so blunt."
"I didn't say it outright, if that's what you mean. I'm not completely stupid, Elim."
"You're not stupid at all, my dear," said Garak, and Julian reflected with a sort of painful affection that even if Lok's translation matrix was programmed with Urdu, it probably wouldn't be able to get through the fog of Garak's thick accent. When he spoke Standard, or when he spoke Vulcan or Romulan languages, you could normally hear the Kardasi inflection (although Julian didn't doubt for a moment that he could fake a native's accent as easy as anything), but it was subtle: there were too many shared sounds in Urdu for him to completely push away his own accent, and Garak's command of Urdu was still relatively rudimentary, more so than Julian's of Kardasi. Julian couldn't hear it, would probably have to listen to recordings of himself to find it, but he supposed it was natural to assume he did the same.
"That makes you a man alone, I'm afraid," said Garak.
"Why, what's made you so stupid recently?"
"Oh, the usual," said Garak. "Sentiment and poor judgement."
"If it makes you feel any better, I've just been manipulated into a date with a Romulan ambassador."
"I think that you know, my dear, that it doesn't," said Garak dryly. "Which one?"
"He buys grotak eggs from a market trader."
Garak furrowed his eyeridges, giving Julian a sceptical look. "A Romulan ambassador interacts directly with a lowly market hawker?"
"I did say it was a manipulation, Elim," said Julian. "I didn't say it wasn't a transparent one."
"No doubt," said Garak, raising his voice slightly and returning to Kardasi, "Tain arranged that rendezvous before he encountered you face-to-face. How was he to know what a deceptive and underhanded creature you are?"
There were no less than three modifiers for affection on the word creature, and judging by the embarrassed expression on the waiter's face, Garak had done it purely for the provocation of it. Julian felt his cheeks burn darker as Garak smiled, even as Mila cleared her throat and shot him an angry look, Pythas chuckled, and Brava stifled a laugh.
"Do forgive my aged partner," said Julian in his best and crispest Kardasi, and the waiter straightened right up, raising his head. "The old rhodrun's mind grows infirm with his age, and he speaks without any thought as to propriety."
"Yes, sir," said the waiter, apparently so flustered he didn't even make a verbal reference to Julian's status as an alien, and Julian almost didn't understand why until Brava ordered for him and Pythas, and he heard the similarity in their accents – both of them were lower service class, and Julian's accent was so much like Garak's and Lok's that he probably thought it was out of league to try.
Mila's voice was interesting – her accent resembled Brava's and the waiter's, but a lot of her locution, some of the declensions she used, were more at-home in the upper class accents.
It was the sort of thing O'Brien would call notions, and Julian wondered what Miles was doing now – Miles, Jadzia, Odo, Commander Sisko, Hell, even Prang—
"Order for me," said Julian when the waiter turned to Garak, and Garak did, although not without an expression of some irritation on his face, which he directed at Julian.
"Are you alright, Mr Garak?" asked Brava good-naturedly.
"Oh, I'm quite well, my dear, quite well," said Garak. "Merely that Doctor Bashir is a provocative soul by nature, as I'm sure you've gathered."
"It's only good etiquette that he should allow you to order for him, sir," said Brava, defending Julian for reasons Julian couldn't begin to fathom, and he did it so earnestly, with such a genuine smile on his face, that Julian stared at him for a second, almost compelled to study him.
"It is, it is," Garak agreed. "Of course, given that his hand was on my wrist the entire time, and given that the waiter just observed his chastisement of me, it far more resembled to him a carer allowing his charge an indulgence, rather than a genuine deference to his elder and superior."
"How could anyone ever forget you were my elder and my superior, Garak?" asked Julian, as sweet as sugar, giving him a dazzling smile, and with two fingers, carefully checked Garak's pulse point.
"How indeed," murmured Garak. His eyes were half-lidded, and it was difficult to really enjoy teasing him when he was in this state, when he looked so utterly ill – what the Hell had they done to him? "You were aware of this planned encounter with the Romulans, Mila?"
"What encounter?" asked Mila stoutly, not meeting Garak's eye.
"My tennis match," said Julian, and she met his gaze even though she wouldn't look at Garak.
"Tennis match?" repeated Garak.
"Redek asked what Bashir did, and Bashir informed him he was a professional tennis player," said Mila dryly. "He lied for no reason at all."
"Redek used to be stage actor until he was dispatched to an internment camp for some six years and lost the ability to remember his lines," Garak informed Julian pleasantly, and Julian's stomach dropped at the thought. "Fortuitous that you should lie to him and force him to improvise, my dear – I imagine he rather appreciated it."
"Jesus," muttered Julian, and Garak squeezed his wrist back.
"You're not safely ensconced in your… your green Federaji fields now, my dear," muttered Garak, his breathing a little heavy, and Julian poured him some tea, pushing him to drink it before he took his own from the tray. "You're out where the… the wolves are."
"Wolves should know better than anybody that sheep's clothing does not a sheep make," Julian said, and Garak's laugh was harder than he expected, but genuinely contagious, so much so that Julian couldn't help but laugh instead as Garak met his eyes.
Garak's gaze said, We're in a lot of danger here, Doctor.
Julian's gaze replied, You're stating the obvious again.
Garak's laugh trailed off, and he put up his palm. Julian crossed their palms in a Cardassian kiss with immediacy, pressing their fingers together.
"Will Garak come to stay with us?" he asked Captain Lok, who was pouring tea for Mila.
"He's not ready to be discharged," said Lok. "He's only here for the good health the sun and some fresh air will bring him."
"Cardassia Prime is short of doctors given the crisis on Laxus Three," said Julian, enjoying the way that Lok stiffened a little – he'd overheard some of Pa'Dar's men talking about it, and knew it wasn't for non-Cardassian ears, let alone Starfleet ones – "and what with that nasty flu up north, I imagine Cardassia City particularly is struggling for lack of doctors. I do have some targeted training in Cardassian physiology, you know, Lok – I've no doubt the hospital here would accept a willing volunteer."
"An admirable attempt, Doctor," said Lok pleasantly, "but you'll be returning home with Mila after our meal is concluded here."
"As a Federation citizen, I am entitled to—"
"As a Federation citizen, you are an alien being offered generous hospitality," Lok interrupted him, and smiled in a gentle way that communicated the promise of a not-so-gentle death. "Take care you show appropriate gratitude, Doctor."
"I need to contact my commanding officer," said Julian.
"Need and want are so often conflated within the Federation," said Lok. "You're on Cardassia now."
"I suppose you're right," said Julian as evenly as he could, through gritted teeth, and Garak tightened his grip on Julian's wrist for a moment, giving him a squeeze. "Where is Kira, Lok?"
Lok smiled. "She's safe," he said, and Julian set his jaw.
"Tell me it will all be alright," said Julian said in Urdu.
"Normally you… scold me for lying to you," said Garak.
"Does this seem normal to you?"
Garak brought Julian's hand up to his mouth, brushing the back of his knuckles with his lips, and Brava gasped, but he looked as charmed as he did scandalised, even as Mila let out a low, disgusted sound.
"Everything, my dear… is going to be alright," said Garak softly.
"No, it's not," said Julian, and Garak laughed, although this one sounded like it hurt.
"Ever the pessimist… Doctor," he murmured exhaustedly. "I'll make, make an optimist of you yet."
Julian squeezed his hand, and nodded. "I'll become anything you mould me into, Garak," said Julian quietly. "I think I've proved that by now."
"It's not only my hands… in the clay on Cardassia," said Garak quietly.
"As if I could forget," Julian replied, and broke the grip of their hands as the food arrived.
