InsaneJournal

Bet y'all thought I was never gonna post it huh.

Title: Black Bottle
Chapter: 9: Aftercare (is this a cliche chapter title? I don't know, I don't actually read stuff that's anything like what I write.)

Takes place during Tears of the Prophets and beyond.

Rating: Adult (but only just barely, sorry)

a/n: Holy hell. I went digging through some of my old LiveJournal stuff and I came to the realization that I have been writing this series for two years now. I posted the first part in March of 2006! On the one hand I think to myself, "What the hell are you wasting so much time on something like this?" and on the other I think,"Wow, this is possibly the longest I've stayed with anything except my husband," and on yet another hand still, because I'm actually Zaphod Beeblebrox and thusly, three-handed, I think, "There is no way I'm giving up on it now, but I really really gotta finish it soon before it consumes another two years." So. That's my mission now. Finish this bad boy. After this chapter, and I realize that my chapter predictions have been horrible and I never stick to them, but after this one I think I have three or four more to do that occur within the boundaries of the DS9 series, one "final" chapter after that, but then the potential for say, three or four more after that if I decide I want to continue the story beyond the end of the series. So, since every new post is farther from the last post than the last one to the one before it, I should be writing this for the rest of my life, easy.

a/n2: I fear I may have unintentionally plagiarised a tidbit in this chapter. Possibly from an episode of DS9 or another source altogether, but I can't nail down what it's from. If you read it and go "hey, I heard that before" let me know. If nobody spots it I'll assume it came creatively out of my own head! ;)

Warnings: AAAAAANNNGGGST. I promise after this chap it'll get more fun, and for those of you who like the angst, there will be more a bit later. There is some stuff in this chap. that sort of starts to begin to think about maybe bordering on violence and non-con. Just a heads up. I think it still falls under the normal bdsm umbrella though.


<lj-cut>



And then she was gone.




The dead of night is just like any other time on the station; dark, isolated, insulated by space against the passage of time. No dawn penetrates the rings and pylons, no sunset tells you when to lay down your tools and end the day. That could be what makes it so unbelievable. If time doesn't pass how can anything end? Could be what makes it so unbearable. Nothing ends.

He will bear it.


Julian went home leaving Dr. Girani in charge of the infirmary, tonight. She probably didn't want it either but he doesn't care. The corridors were silent as he headed home, he thinks, though it might have been his mind that was stuffed with cotton and closed off. Even now as he lays atop the covers in his own bed as if it belonged to someone else, not to be disturbed, the silence is complete and infinite as the blackness of space. The rest of the station, the population, though most of them have little or no connection to the Starfleet crew aboard, the whole station just knew, as one knows when walking into a room with two angry people, that the silence is a safety, the space loaded and compressed. You don't have to understand the argument, just sense that it hangs in the air as a combustible gas, and any carelessness on your part would be deadly or unseemly at least. Everyone knows though no one talked about it. He was afraid he'd have to hear them talking as he walked the halls feeling crooked and bent, avoiding eyes, avoiding lips, but his ears spared him that, still numb from so many hours ago. They could not pick up the muttered secrets.


His mind skitters away. He didn't say anything to anyone; he guessed he really wouldn't have to. Just tossed his scrubs on a table and left. Julian thinks about the symbiont in it's little jar of fluid. He feels his face contort for an instant, as if he was about to sneeze but stopped abruptly. He imagines going to the infirmary now that it's late and all the silent people are abed or sitting awake in front of mirrors or over cups of cold, undrunk tea, tumblers full of pain killers. He thinks about going in, locking himself in an exam room and injecting himself with a local, cutting himself open. He's a good doctor. He could find a way of joining permanently. He starts to gag as he lays there and has to swallow several times, breathe deeply, and shake it out of his head. Not realistic, but he doesn't have to be right now. He doesn't have to be anything. He thinks he just wants to know where she is. If he could talk to the symbiont, maybe.


Funny how it feels like it still balances on a knife's edge, as if it isn't done, as if there was still something to be done. Perhaps for some people it isn't over yet. Perhaps not everyone knows or believes yet. Perhaps someone still has hope. The station is a living thing in that way. Just as anger can pass through air, desperation seems to infuse metal and soft light. Julian just hopes that those people resign soon, so he can find sleep.


There is someone in his room, he realizes, though he doesn't know how long they have been there. All he feels is a shift in the air or perhaps hears a muffle in the midnight sounds that isn't usually there. That is all the information he gets about the body standing near his bed. He knows that it is Worf, and he will bear this too. As Julian stood in his office a few hours ago with the door locked, this was one of the scenarios his mind predicted, because he can't not postulate. Even with his heart stopped his mind will keep working. Julian prepares himself for what is to come. He will not do it right now, he won't kill him in cold blood, but will instead insist that Julian be alive and alert, he will make him face it and will let him know it is coming. He will not be merciful and allow him to die a coward's death lying quietly in his bed. There will be no swift strike to his head or neck to end this. It will be painful, it will be soon, but soon over.


It will be nice to just be quiet, without thought. He understands the warriors honor, he understands the need for death, right now, he really does. When Worf asks him to face his death tonight, when he does finally speak, Julian will thank him. He will repent to him for all his mistakes. He should have found something, he should have been able to. What good was all this, everything he had gone through to selfishly hide what he was for so long if in the end it didn't make a difference in the lives of the people he loves? All in vain. All vanity and self-preservation. There was no greater purpose in either his rebirth or his secret and no amount of making up for it will ever be payment enough.


"Julian." Garak's voice sounds alien in his quarters, but his weight is familiar as it bends the mattress in one spot behind Julian's back. He doesn't answer him though he knows he should. He didn't really think it was Worf in his room - but some very desperate part of him was wishing. He is left with desolation knowing it was Garak instead. Garak can't help him. "Julian...I...I wish I knew what to say."


Garak heard the news while on the bridge. That place became a tomb after that, the only sound the screaming engines burning up the light years to Bajoran Space. The captain didn't appear until they docked and he and Worf, Kira, everyone disembarked with fear in their eyes. The victory hollowed, the battle forgotten.


Julian speaks suddenly and hoarsely. "No matter how hard I work at it, no matter how far I come to accepting the idea that everything dies, that eventually, I will be separated from the people I love..." The pause stretches out.


"When it actually happens, you're never ready," Garak finishes.


It's true but that wasn't what Julian was going to say. He nods anyway. The real thought had less to do with actuality and more to do with forfeiture. He should be able to stop this mindlessness before it destroys everything.


"I've never done this before," Elim says, but Julian isn't quite sure what he's talking about. Maybe he means all of the available possibilities. Wouldn't be the first time. "I've never consoled the grieving before," he explains. "Not really a requirement in either of my most recent professions."


Julian says nothing, and Garak watches the slow movement of Julian's blinking eye, only the corner he can see with his slender back turned to him. If Garak searches hard in the reflection of his bedroom window, he can see Julian's wooden face looking out to the stars. He doesn't know what to do. Everything he can think to say sounds like rhetoric and platitude in his head. Any touch he wants to bring to Julian's body seems like an intrusion. Certainly, Garak himself has been in this place before, but for the life of him, he cannot recall a single thing that ever helped, or that he ever wished for while swallowed by that pain.


~*~


“What are you doing?”


Julian looks up from his screen with automatic eyes at Marcia but doesn't understand what she means by the question. Her face is sallow and low, her eyes fixed on him. He knows he should know what she means. There are a host of possible meanings for everything anyone could say to you, and picking out the right one from the context is something one learns to do as a child, but Julian cannot today, or will not. “Working,” he answers, because to ask a question in response is rude and would allow her the opportunity to rebut and rebuke at the same time, and to give any other answer would be to assume a meaning when he cannot guess it.


Marcia still just stares at him for a moment. “Are you going to talk to me about yesterday?”


He feels suddenly ill and feverish, but keeps his voice steady. “What about yesterday, specifically?” he asks, though he sounds abnormally slow to his own ears.


Marcia turns and shuts his office door. “What happened?”


He swallows and most of his body numbs against the hot anger radiating off of her. “There was nothing I could do to save her, Marcia.”


“<i>That's</i> not what I mean and you know it,” she hisses back. Julian's eyes flutter as if to close and take him away from here, but he knows he needs to stay, to finish his work, and to do his share. Marcia sighs with exasperation and puts her face in her hands. “Please, Julian. I need to know what happened. I can't function like this. I can't look at you--I can't follow you if I don't know where you're going.”


“I don't know what you mean,” he mutters. Again, he can't pull anything from the context because it's like he isn't really here.


“You once told me that I would find my own way of dealing with it. Is that what you meant? That we all find a way to run away from it, to become machines that just don't feel anything?”


Seconds tick by in his head like thunderclaps as Marcia waits in a cloud of frustration leaning over him.


<i>“Kira to the Infirmary.”</i>


Nothing happens for some time and Julian can't bring himself to answer either woman.


Marcia makes a sound, something Julian can't identify without looking at her, which he also can't do. He hears her breathe sharply and answer. “Jones here, Colonel. How can I help you?”


<i>“Good morning, Ensign. ...Is Doctor Bashir there?”</i>


Julian swallows. “Yes. I'm here.”


<i>“Doctor, if...if you're not too busy this morning, we could use some help in ops.”</i> Kira sounds like Julian feels. At least, he thinks, she understands better than Marcia would. Marcia hasn't been here long. She doesn't have front line experience. She isn't used to the very common event of loss that Kira knows, that Julian has seen so many times. He meets Marcia's eyes and clears his throat quietly. Marcia turns and leaves.


“I'll be right there.”


~*~


The door slides open and a few faces glance up at Julian. He enters but feels as if he is doing so with strange, out of place caution. Kira nods at him in thanks and turns back to her work. No one stands at Jadzia's station, and it's really no wonder. It appears to him a giant void, that glossy black console, but when he steps before it, it feels small and inadequate. Julian paws through Jadzia's work-flow for a few minutes, not really doing or understanding anything until Kira comes over a moment later. She speaks lowly to him as the whole station, and ops in particular is still and stagnant.


Kira pulls up a few things on the screen in front of Julian and he lets her lead the way. She is working with the speed of someone with a lot to do but the quiet of someone abused and self-restraining. “I don't know if you've ever had to run this station before. It's sort of an overflow from a few other stations during the morning. Jadzia had a system. She was on a first name basis with most of the captains that come through here regularly and she kept up to date on the clearance level of each one. Obviously you won't have that so you just need to check each one against the database and make sure their code checks out. Also, the sensors need calibrating once you catch up on the messages, and she usually runs a check on the long range once a day, if you can fit that in that would be great, but if not it can wait until tomorrow. We're not going to be able to do her job as efficiently as she did but we'll muddle through. It should quiet down here after lunch and after the traffic clears up.”


He nods and starts going through the messages and docking requests. Kira is right. There is a lot of work to be done. There are sub-space messages lined up like hungry beggars, ships requesting permission to dock and depart. So many were detained to allow the transport carrying the Dax symbiont and the ship carrying Jadzia's coffin unfettered and immediate clearance to leave as soon as both are ready this morning. The Symbiosis Commission representative was still stabilizing and checking the condition of the Dax symbiont when Julian left the infirmary. He didn't look happy, and Julian tries even now to simply forget that fact for as long as he can because thinking about it makes him balk.


He is at it a while. A few hours, he guesses, in crackling silence with lulling monotony guiding his absent mind. He doesn't keep track of how long exactly. Time just slips by as if in illness, the way fever distorts your care for the normal process of days and nights. In time, he realizes he can no longer see the display in front of him. His vision keeps getting trapped on the surface before it reaches the words and numbers and designations. The rows and columns of information are a blurry backdrop that he cannot command. He stops a moment and rubs his eyes. They feel like they are burning with tears but they're just warm with dryness and cold sterile air. He keeps looking, but all he sees is a reflection of Worf standing at his post above and behind him.


Part of Julian is afraid of the man now that the acuteness of yesterday's atmosphere is tamped by duty. It feels more like a prison sentence today, like he is waiting for an end that may come at any time around any corner, at the hand of an unseen assailant as soon as he is left alone. He should probably prepare himself for the possibility that Worf <i>will</i> try to kill him. Whether it is his fault or not, Worf may blame him, come for him. Julian lifts his gently curled fists to his chest experimentally. He probably wouldn't put up much of a fight right now.


"Doctor."


Julian sifts through another sheaf of communiques coming into ops. There are dozens of irritable ship captains waiting for a response from the station. They pour in faster than Julian can respond to them, even with automatic replies and canned pleasantries. They want to know where their usual liaison is. Where is the lovely young woman who usually greets me when I come here? Is she on vacation? He doesn't respond to those inquiries. From Bajor, the docking ring, even light years away, people want to know when they will be able to resume normal traffic with the station. The answer is always the same, after the funeral procession has cleared the shipping lanes. Though no one is quite sure when that will be. No one has yet said when far enough is far enough, or how long is long enough to keep the air quiet, the space still. It seems an affront to even think of business as usual. How can they expect to just carry on, how is it they want to? Julian must, but them? The vulgar mercantile clamor of the ships and people seems to trample Julian as he stands there. It's perfectly quiet in ops, sheltered, and yet he can feel their press. Something like anger, defiance, holds him immobile there and in minutes he is not only not responding to the vessels with reliable information, but not responding to them at all.


"Doctor."


Julian closes the messaging interface and brings up instead the calibration logs and begins fine tuning the array to far beyond accuracy standards for Starfleet regulations for long-range scanners. He can get them to within a trillionth of a point margin of error if he works carefully.


“Doctor,” Sisko says more gently and approaches Julian's station. Eyes across ops are on him hesitantly and stealthily as if they expect him to explode. Julian looks at his captain and Sisko puts that large hand of his on Julian's shoulder with the fingers curling around his back deeply from collar to spine. He squeezes tight the way Julian has seen him do with Jake. Julian's eyes almost close involuntarily that pinch is so singularly focusing and relaxing. Sisko seems to size him up in a few second's observation within that vulnerable moment, his dark eyes piercing and his frown a leaden weight, and in that moment Julian's heart pangs for Elim. He feels irrationally angry in the next instant at Sisko for making him feel that way, for nearly toppling him in front of everyone, but it fades as quickly as it surfaced. “Doctor, it's been a rough couple of days," Sisko rumbles, "why don't you go back to your quarters and get some rest.”


Julian isn't going to argue, though being dismissed stings a little. He nods and Sisko squeezes once more, sending him gliding toward the lift.


~*~


Garak knows Julian went to work. He came by his quarters in the morning and they were vacant. He still will not presume to bother him in the infirmary though his gut gnaws at him that there is something wrong, deeper than the obvious. Around lunch time Garak peruses the promenade looking for him. He finds instead Miles and Keiko at a quiet table in Quark's. Keiko's eyes are glittering, and the two of them sit silently, hand in hand. He finds Kira hunched and rigid over a hot cup in Odo's office, the pattern of glass in Odo's door reveals that much, as well as Odo himself speaking slowly from his own seat behind the desk, little more. Jake leans over the railing above everything, staring down, but not following people with his impassioned eyes as he usually does. Nog approaches just then and leans in next to him without a word. Morn clutches his ale and Quark wipes down the same patch of bar that he has been for the last twenty minutes as Garak leans against the wall watching the activity around him. Sisko is absent. Worf is absent. Julian. He watches as Marcia crosses the promenade looking haunted, enters the infirmary, then leaves again only a moment later and goes back the way she came.


Garak rings the chime on Julian's door again some time after two that afternoon when he doesn't show for lunch nor slip back into ops or the infirmary. The 'come' from inside is somehow both worrying and relieving. Relieving now that he knows where he is, worrying because it sounds terse. His quarters are barely lit, and Julian sits sort of crumpled in his chair with the glow of his computer console lighting his face in yellow and red. He glances up at Garak and then back to his screen. Garak approaches a bit closer and observes him keenly; the uncomfortable posture, the half lidded eyes, and the draw of his mouth. His features fall in plumb lines down his face until those lines reach his body, which betrays more of him than he knows.


He says nothing, so Garak starts. “I haven't seen much of you today.”



“I know,” he says with a small sigh and gestures vaguely at his screen. “I've just had a lot to do.”


“I understand.” Garak has left a thick cushion of space between them and is glad he did. That posture is reminiscent of a cornered animal despite the mildness of his words. Still, he wants to close that gap. Part of him thinks he should, that this distance can't be right after a tragedy like this. He is no human, nor even anything close, but the others on the station have all sought out comfortable companionship, most of them, human or not. Julian is no ordinary human, so perhaps he knows what he needs, but it still isn't sitting right with Garak. The problem with that perception though is that it is colored by his own wants, and his own guilt. “I thought perhaps we could have dinner tonight.”


Julian sighs again staring straight ahead. Garak swallows. Julian takes a stylus to his screen and touches a few times. “I...I just don't really have the time right now. I'm sorry.”


“Is there something I can help you with?”


Julian is already shaking his head.


“Julian.” Garak is feeling this tremendous petulance creeping in and he tries to bury it all for the sake of this interaction. His own emotions are not going to help this at all, he knows, and so they must be set aside until this makes more sense. “You've lost something important to you," he begins with caution, though he can see Julian's jaw tighten. What is it that can't wait a little while, until you've had some time to adjust?”


Julian sighs more heavily this time and looks dejected, frustrated, like he wants to be left alone, and it's probably true. “I'm just busy, Garak. I still have paperwork to complete for Starfleet concerning the casualties on board the Defiant. Marcia is leaving, so I have to find her replacement. I have a hundred applications to go through.” He gestures to a short stack of padds. “And Dax's job still needs doing as well. I've taken over her reports to-”


“Marcia is leaving?”


“Yes. She tendered her resignation this afternoon. Doctor Girani just sent it to me.”


“Why?”


Julian shrugs half-heartedly, as if it was just one more thing, a drop in an overflowing bucket.


“I'm sorry, Garak. I just have a lot I need to get done. I'll. I'll come by later. Tomorrow maybe. I promise.”

Garak searches his face for a moment, his eyes, but for now sees only fatigue. Perhaps that is really all it is. After he has done what he needs to do, perhaps then time will permit for more personal matters. A lot of people depend on Julian. He is wrong if he thinks he isn't an important part of this place. He sees his duty as important, important enough to forslow the satisfaction of his own needs, but Garak fears he does not see the whole picture, that he does not know that he is not a piece meant for sacrifice. Or maybe this is just how this particular human faces death, with his hands tight around the lines and face to the wind. Again, it is hard to know when he isn't certain how he feels himself.


Garak nods to him, makes sure that Julian can read understanding in his eyes, and leaves.


~*~

Tomorrow comes and goes. Garak leaves Julian a simple message to let him know he is there and available, that he is welcome and wanted. When he checks his computer hours later, it tells him the message has gone unread. Across the station there is a rush to get off of this forsaken rock in the Bajoran sky. The captain and his son left yesterday, and rumor says they won't be back. Many of the Bajorans are going home too. Both the prophets and the emissary have abandoned it, why should they stay? The flight of these people takes on a frantic feel as the day wears on, and as more people leave, more decide to do the same it seems. Even Garak feels the pull, the emergency of it though no conception of despairing gods is behind his feeling.


In the replimat, Marcia looks shaken and small. She seems to hide against the gray walls of the station as she moves about it silently, and Garak watches her tremble at her table for a few moments at lunch time before she abandons her tray and heads for the habitat ring. Julian never leaves his office, and so, one avenue a dead end, Garak makes a snap decision and changes course, follows the young woman to her quarters.

Her door is just closing as Garak swings around the corner after her, so he waits in the corridor for a few minutes and thinks to himself. Not that that does any good - why should it really, he's been asking himself these questions for days now and not been able to provide himself with any answers that make sense. Why has Julian shut down? Why is Marcia leaving? What happens that two friends no longer speak and don't' have a word of comfort for each other at a time like this? And why wouldn't Julian then want to turn to <i>him</i> if other friends fail?

When she answers the door, her face is clear but he can tell she has been crying. She looks mainly startled to see him, and glances around the hall with red rimmed blue eyes as if looking for rescue, someone to shout for.

"Can we talk?" he asks.

She glances about her again but then nods and moves away from her door. Inside, she backs herself up to her living room wall unconsciously and waits, watching Garak uneasily and trying to disguise the pain in her face.


"Please," he begins. "Tell me what is going on." Marcia looks away and will not meet his gaze again. "Why are you leaving?" Her eyes glitter and she puts her hands to her face. Still, Garak gets no answer from her and minutes go by in painful sloth as she resists and he persists. "Please. I need to know what happened." She is shaking her head behind her hands and starts to slip to the floor as she is slowly taken over and begins to cry again in earnest and with little inhibition. Garak moves closer and takes her hands from her face and goes to the floor with her. She pulls her hands back and paws at her face to brush the tears and the grimace from it. She takes a few stuttering breaths and glances up at Garak. <i>"Please,"</i> he whispers. "I don't know what else to do. Julian is an empty facade, and you are mourning like he is supposed to be. You are grieving for a woman you barely knew. Please tell me what happened. I will do everything I can to help, whatever it is."


"I can't tell you, Garak," she croaks. "I can't talk to you about my patients. You know that."

"She's gone. You don't have to guard it any more."

"<i>Dax</i> is still alive."

It is a horrible thought but he knows he isn't the first to think it about a Trill. It would have been easier on everyone if she had just died and taken the symbiont with her. "Who <i>can</i> you talk to?" If he can't get what he needs directly, indirectly is another option.

She begins to sob again. "I don't know. It would have killed the captain to know. And Worf. He would kill <i>Julian</i> if he knew. There is no one I can talk to."

"What <i>about</i> Julian?"

"Don't you think I tried? If he hasn't told you what makes you think he would talk to me about it?"

Garak sighs and shifts to sit against the wall next to her. This is getting more confusing. "Are you leaving because Jadzia died?"

"This isn't twenty questions, Garak," she grumbles bitterly.


Garak gruffs with irritation. "I <i>know</i> that. But you are making an enormous mistake by leaving." <i>And you are possibly the most stubborn woman I have ever met.</i>


She huffs a laugh through her tears. "I made a mistake by coming here. And is that why you're here? You're concerned about the future of my career?"


"I am here because Julian is in trouble. I can tell, but he won't talk to me. It seems that you aren't going to either, but I know without a doubt that whatever it is that is wrong with Julian it has something to do with <i>you</i>, and if you leave, I think the chances of resolving it will vanish. That leaves all of us at a disadvantage, my dear. You, because it means stunting your career, me, because Julian is unreachable and unreadable and I fear he is going to remain that way. And both Julian and I for the loss of your smile," he says with a gentle hand to her jaw. "He is acting like it doesn't matter, I know. I know that has to hurt but there must be a reason for it. I know Julian very very well and that is not him. I've seen a more convincing <i>shapeshifter</i> impersonate Julian...And he cares for you. Losing you too is not going to help any of us. Running away doesn't solve anything."


She laughs at that too but Garak doesn't understand why, exactly. She is quiet for a long time then with no explanation, apparently unmoved by his words, and Garak can read on her face as tears well slowly and fall, that she is reliving something behind her eyes as she has been constantly for the past two days.


Garak sighs again. "This place, Marcia," he begins before he knows where he is going, "has been my home for a long time. I'm the oldest resident as a matter of fact. Did you know that?" She shakes her head. "And while I have hated almost every moment of my stay here for one reason or another, I can tell you that this place is like no other place I've ever been. It tosses you around, it tries to drown you off of its back, but the rewards if you can hold on long enough, endure what it throws at you--Marcia, the rewards are endless. Julian is being tossed around just like you, just like me. We'll all have to leave here some day to make room for the people who will come after us, others who's lives will be touched by this place and whatever magic lives here, whatever piece of the prophets or wormhole aliens resides in these pylons, but you've only just arrived. Don't do as I did and spend every moment you're here trying to escape. You'll sit for six years wishing you were someone else when that possibility is right in front of you the whole time. You'll miss what is really going on." Then he shakes his own head at no one in particular. "Not that I have any idea what that might be at the moment."


Marcia rubs her face as she begins to calm again. "All I can tell you, Garak, is that Julian isn't who I thought he was. I can't work with him anymore. So. I'm leaving." Garak is failing to think of anything that Julian could have done that would cause an educated and effervescent woman like her to lose faith so suddenly. Garak has always had faith in Julian, oddly, considering how naturally faithless he is. "There is no magic here any more," she says harsh and low. "Someone killed it and it isn't coming back. There is no undoing this." That thought is far more disturbing to Garak than any other potential misdeed. She could be right. Whatever it is about this place that the stars and compasses all point here could be gone now that so much has left it in such a rush. This heavy gust of death and destruction could be enough to blow away that which Garak has been clinging to. That foul wind has a name but he will not use it here. If Julian is lost to him because of this, no wraiths nor prophets nor Jem Ha'dar battalions will be able to protect <i>him</i>.

Garak tries to brush off these thoughts for now because they are not constructive. Instead, he needs to concentrate on plan C since this has been only slightly informative and not the breakthrough he was hoping for. "When do you leave?" he asks her.

"End of the week. The Potemkin is making a stop here. I'm heading to Starbase 376 for reassignment." Marcia's face sinks lower in a mixture of sorrow and disgust. She speaks again barely above a whisper. "It feels like it is never going to end but at the same time, I'm dreading boarding that ship."



"Marcia, if I can get Julian to talk to you about it, will you consider staying?"



She thinks a moment, looking at the carpet and picking at a loose fiber. She shakes her head. "I would consider staying if there is a really good explanation for this." <i?For what?!?!</i> he wants to scream, but takes a shallow breath instead.



"Very well. I am going to try one last time to reach him, but if you change your mind and decide you want to tell me what this is about instead of making me drag it out of him, please do call on me." She makes no nod nor indication that she was even considering it, nor considering getting up off the floor. He takes her hand with a friendly pat and stands to leave. "And of course, if you do decide to share, there would be a very charming Bajoran camisole in it for you." A small smirk flashes across her face and she sniffles to cover it. Garak gives her a reassuring smile that she may not see and leaves quietly.

~*~

Julian turns in his chair at the sound of the door sliding closed behind him. "Garak." He sits at his desk still, as if he hadn't left it in the days that have passed since the last time they spoke. Garak takes in the room briefly, expecting to see cobwebs in the corners or on Julian's shoulder. His quarters are not sacked in darkness as they were previously, though. This evening they are lit as brightly as the infirmary usually is, so much so that the blackness out the window seems to suck the light out into space because it has no place else to go. The air smells dry and cold, and Elim spares a sympathetic glance to a plant in the corner that shivers in its pot of parched earth.


Elim finds his voice after a few seconds of muted hesitance and meets the human's gaze. "Forgive me for breaking and entering, but you didn't answer the door."


"Oh...I'm sorry," Julian says dazedly, "I didn't hear the chime."

"That's because I didn't ring it." Julian's face doesn't change, but Garak keeps his eyes locked there, vigilant and hopeful. Any other time and Julian would have chafed or smirked at that. Any other Julian would have done more than just return his destitute regard. Garak wants to do this the easy way. He does. He wants to give him all the chances he can give him, but at a certain point, offering those chances becomes a waste of time that should have been spent on doing it the harder way. Garak approaches closer than he's dared since he returned to the station, and standing over him, puts gentle fingers to his neck then down to his shoulder. Julian is radiating heat like an engine, but he's so still, so quiet. "I know it's a little late, but I thought perhaps we could spend some time together tonight. Dinner if you haven't eaten yet, as we had planned earlier. We could talk about a few things."

Julian can't look him in the eye, not when he is this close, not when he is touching him. He breaks the stare as those words in that comfortable voice fill his ears and the familiar touch tries to rend the slippery skin that has grown around his wound. His muscles flinch painfully beneath Garak's hand. "I don't think...I don't think I can do this right now." The room starts to feel like a powder keg again, and Julian is once again thinking about escape, about closing his eyes and dreaming himself away.


Garak lets his hand slip down and off his shoulder and turns away, idly, makes his way one stiff-legged step at a time towards Julian's window and leans against its frame. "That's it then, is it?" he says to his reflection.

The human is silent and Garak can feel the tension radiating off of him. The battlefield inside that mind must be atrocious, flaming wreckage under a bitter, smoke-filled sky. Julian is retreating, trying to regroup perhaps, and he will, he'll take another shot at it later on if Garak and the rest of Julian's life could allow him that, but it's a waste. He'll lose everything in the mean time. You can try to destroy yourself or everything around you just to try to make something else hurt as badly as you do in your head, you can lie to yourself for a time too, but it all just makes you dangerous. Marcia is smart. She saw it in him before Garak did. Though she knows the cause and Garak does not exactly. She is right to leave because Julian has become tainted, infected with despair. Garak himself is almost there. He can sympathize because Julian is trying to put him in the same position. Julian is falling and he's taking Garak down with him and it's crippling right now. The thought of letting him go. If he can't do anything about this, if he can't fix him, he stands a chance of becoming just as battered and hopeless as Julian is. And he knows in that state he would do the same thing. He'd protect that injury. He'd isolate himself and turn snarling teeth to anyone who came near. Julian isn't the type to angrily thrash to keep unwanted people away, he doesn't need to. His cold shoulder is the most violent rebuke he knows, Garak thinks. For a man, a genius, who will approach new people with humility just to get to know them, a man who can treat enemies who have killed his comrades with empathy and dignity, to reject Garak now, when Julian must know he needs him as much as Julian needs it too, it is the same as any other man cradling a bleeding limb and threatening death to all who try to help. Garak leans heavily on the rounded case of the window, and since Julian isn't watching him, he leans his cheek next to his hand. The cold metal on his skin is grounding in a way. He needs it now because there is hot fear climbing up his neck.

<i>This cannot be happening. Jadzia is dead and she has taken everything with her to oblivion. It wasn't the prophets, it was her. Damn the prophets! And damn all the people who insist upon believing in them instead of the people they care about the most. If it weren't for such farcical beliefs maybe she would still be alive, and Julian would still be whole. I never made that mistake but I'm paying the price anyway. And Julian pays too. This cannot be happening.</i>

Garak shakes his head and wanders away in another random direction, just to get somewhere else, try to turn a corner in his mind. Julian is silent and still to his left as Garak blindly approaches a shadowbox on Julian's wall displaying delicate Earth artifacts; a framed picture, a ceramic bell, a figurine in spun glass of a boy knelt in prayer, odds and ends Garak pays no real attention to. He has seen and studied them all many times before. They collect dust up here. Julian has forgotten they exist, but at one time they brought him pride to possess. Garak faces the wall but his senses are scattered. He squeezes a fist at his side and tries to think clearly for even a moment. All he can think to do for now is ask him why. He knows the reason but he's starting to slip into a downward spiral now too, and his mind screams for there to be a better reason, an incontrovertible, necessary reason. "No one ever meant for this to happen, Julian," he says, barely voiced, and he knows it's meaning is as fragile and weak as it's sound.

"I know."

"Then why are you shouldering it?"

"It's not that simple."

"It <i>is</i> that simple." Something electric runs up the side of Garak's neck and he sees a hot flash of anger behind his eyes. "I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to cross this line now. I wanted to be here for you. I wanted to be the person you went to when you needed help."

"Garak I...I just don't think that this...you and me...is going to help right now. It's too compli-"

Garak sweeps his arm across the shadowbox knocking it from the wall and sending everything in it scattering across Julian's floor in shards and clattering pieces. Julian stands abruptly but does nothing more when Garak's head snaps to him. Julian's shoulders are up and tense, his hands open at his sides and his eyes wide. "You're lying," Garak says gravely. "You can't even look me in the eye when you tell me you want me gone." A long moment passes between them. The cold air becomes heated with adrenaline, and eventually, Garak approaches him, never losing his eyes. Julian is no longer prepared to defend himself after the accusation and backs up to the edge of the window with Garak breathing down his neck. Julian's chest is rising and falling fast and his hands come up limply between them. Garak disregards this and takes Julian roughly by his hair. Julian gasps and takes hold of Garak's clothes, wincing as Garak puts some twist into his grip on Julian's hair. "I'm not letting this happen." Garak growls near Julian's ear. "Do you understand me?" He doesn't respond. "I didn't want to do it this way. But I'm not letting her or you or Dukat or the captain or anyone ruin this. I told you I would take care of you."

Julian is breathing hard still, confusion plain on his face. The words don't match the actions in his mind right now, and Garak knows he needs to remind him. Garak lets go and spins him so he faces the wall and slams his weight into Julian, knocking his face and hips against the window casing and the breath from his lungs. He takes his hands behind his back and twists them up. Julian grunts pain and tries to push himself up on his toes to release the pressure on his joints, but Garak just pushes harder until Julian is yelping with his mouth leaving fog on the cold metal frame.

Garak is breathing as fast as Julian now. He can see his own reflection in the blackness outside the window, sees the wildness in his eyes. "You told me I could trust you, my love. Is that no longer true?"

Julian trembles and pants. His mind is whirling. He sees flashes behind his eyes of his time in the Dominion prison camp, when they would hold him like this and search him and his bed for contraband. He squeezes his eyes to try to make those scenes go away and to wish away the pain in his twisted arms. He might be able to get free if he tried, but he can't try. He is just frozen to the wall, and the window casing crushing his cock and sternum and jaw breaks the continuity of what he sees in his head; tears streaking down her temple and across those delicate spots into her hair, Garak's face, disbelieving, as Tain lie dead before him, what he hears in his ears, <i>'Thank you Julian, for everything. I'll never forget you.'</i> Finally, Julian replies in a whisper, "I don't know," unsure if he actually spoke.

Garak holds him there another moment and then lets him go abruptly, backs away with his fingers curling into his palms. Julian releases his arms and brings them in front of himself to hug his own elbows and relax the pain from his shoulders. He watches Garak warily with his back against the wall. His eyes dart around the room though he makes no move to try to escape. Garak rubs his own face in frustration and browses the destruction around them both real and tropal. There is nothing he can do here. It's too bright it's too bare, too cold. It's too full of the debris of six years of their lives spent playing other characters. "We're going to my quarters," he says finally, and takes Julian unresisting by the arm and leads him to the door.

Julian goes on automatic feet down the hall, into the lift with Garak close behind him, and to his quarters, but he barely remembers it. Like walking around drunk, all he sees is the ground moving beneath his clumsy feet until they are there behind Garak's door. Garak ushers him forcefully into the bedroom without the use of his hands or arms, simply the unblinking stare of his eyes. Julian backs into the half-lit room.

"Shoes and socks," Garak says plainly, and Julian removes them standing, with his hands, unthinking. He glances up over and over to see Garak unbuttoning his top and slipping quickly out of it. "Pants." Julian's hands are slow and awkward as they find his button. It comes undone but he can't move any further. Garak's chest is bare and broad, his scales are a dull grid across his skin and Julian can see subtle translucency at his shoulders and elbows where some of them are peeling and curling shaggy bits waiting to be shed. Time seems to smear across Julian's mind as he stands there dumbly. In a flash, Garak has taken Julian's top and pulled it over his head and down to bend him forward and over. Julian is muddled by the sudden darkness and immobilization. His arms come up of their own free will and release his shirt and before he can think of righting himself, Garak's arm, a single arm, is over his back, his skin against Elim's, and he lifts him off his feet. Julian's chest and middle harden instinctively with so much uncomfortable pressure on his insides, and his blood rushes to his head. He snatches at Elim's waist and feels the Cardassian's other hand take down his pants for him from the back. He is on the bed an instant later and Garak pulls his pants inside-out and off and tosses them to the floor.

Julian feels sort of sick but powerless to do anything, numb, as so often the past few days, as if he really doesn't care what is happening to him. He is somehow mentally drugged, restrained. He wonders if this is real. Wonders if he isn't in a hospital somewhere, strapped to a bed, tube fed pain killers and sedatives to protect him from himself, from his own nightmares. It could be. Maybe that world is better, if he could just wake up and see. But surely, he wouldn't throw himself into this place if the world he left was so grand. Would he?

Garak just stands there at the bed side with Julian half-lying before him. There is something in his eyes Julian has never seen before. If it wasn't new he'd call it malice, but he has seen Garak murderous before. He has seen him angry, lost, confused, everything but this. It scares him more than any of the other faces he has seen on him. He knows it is because of him. He did something to put that look there. He knows he should know what it was that he did, but his mind edges around it like a cat around a puddle.

"Julian," Garak says softly. "I'll do this. For you. Only for you. Because this is what needs to be done. I will do what needs to be done, for everyone concerned. For myself, for you. But this is the last time. I can't do it anymore." Julian doesn't say a word. Garak has to believe right now that it means he is down and not simply gone from his body. Garak approaches Julian and strokes a hand up his thigh then back down. Julian just watches, watches everything he does.


Though if he admits it, Garak really isn't sure he knows what he is doing right now. That's not a common thing when he puts on this hat. So much of this has been unplanned and unpredictable. He wants to believe that his gut is leading him where they need to go, but he isn't sure. Julian is under, he thinks, but he isn't going to stay that way for long. It seems fast. Very fast, but at the same time, if Julian comes back to the surface and flounders again, then Garak will have missed his only opportunity. On the other hand, if he takes that chance, and he is wrong, Julian will feel cheated and used.

"Turn over," Garak orders him and Julian does it. There is hesitation there that Garak doesn't miss, but he does it. "Knees and elbows under you." Again Julian glances back at him but does as he is told. "Down. Quickly. Quickly quickly," he breathes. There is no time to lose right now. Garak has a thin cane slipped under the mattress, and with Julian's head down now in his hands, he removes it from it's hiding place and examines it. It is not much thicker than his little switch, but it is stiffer. At the point of impact, it will wrap around the body to deliver a longer stroke than a larger cane because it is somewhat flexible, but it is stiff enough to be afflictive. The crop is toy comparatively, made for playing. While the cane is hardly an implement of torture, brave men cower before it. The damage is so minimal, but the pain compounds and destroys so easily. A quiet thrill shocks through him at the sight of it, but it is canceled out by the fear, the risk he sees curled up and tense on his bed, waiting with his lips parted and eyes dilated.

Julian is a curled little knot of human and with so little room for the expansion of his chest, his smooth back rises and falls in time with his heavy but quiet breathing. Such beautiful skin. He wishes he could pretend this was Julian's idea. Garak swallows. "Spread your knees a little, Love," he tells him softly. His back is too sloped. He doesn't want to touch his spine. Garak crawls onto the very foot of the bed on his knees and studies him another moment. "Shoulders up a little." He runs the backs of his fingers down Julian's spine and his muscles tense all along the way in response.

Julian doesn't move this time, just lays there breathing, and by and by that breathing slows until it is near calm. Garak fears he is wasting time here, but wants to give him this opportunity. One more moment. Julian is teetering on a precipice between lost and found, Garak knows. To Julian they look the same, the choices on each side. He can stop this or he can let it go on, and while it might be simpler to just do it and await the consequences, Garak is compelled to open this door for him. He wants him to come through it on his own. He'll push him if necessary, he's already made that decision, he is going to. He'd rather lose him trying to hang on to him than lose him because he didn't try. But he'd also prefer if it was a concerted effort. He wants Julian to trust enough to let it happen, that's all, and Garak's leaden heart is squeezing and trembling in the wait.

"Elim..." comes the small voice from the mattress. When Garak does and says not a thing, Julian pushes himself up on his knees and twists, turns to face him. "Elim...I--" Julian sees the cane in Garak's hand for the first time. It is draped in shadow and close to Garak's body, following the line of his straddling thigh. Julian's eyes meet Garak's and he doesn't say anything more.

"Hush," Elim whispers. There is a void where some reaction or thought or restrained speech should have been. There should have been something, but instead there was nothing there. There is always something there, Julian's mind always works forward, pushes into the mist to perceive what will be, seconds, minutes, years ahead, but right now with his eye slight on Elim's hand and the rod, it is quiet inside. He had wanted to be with him. Over and over during the night he wakes wanting him but he didn't go. Now he is here. He had cried desperately for emptiness, wanted quiet and solitary rest, to be without the ghosts haunting his skull, and now they are gone save an echo or two. He can't really believe it. Elim's free hand goes to Julian's cool, bare shoulder, and barely brushes him back down to the bed.

Garak closes his eyes, which is a first, and strikes him over his left hip. All there is is a nasal gasp from Julian, and when he looks down, the mark is subtle and pink, striping nearly from buttock to rib at an outward angle. Julian's back muscles have tensed fully again and he lays still. Garak wonders if in a few more strikes he will fall over one of those edges he is balanced upon; if he will fall into Garak's arms or lurch up off the bed yelling and angry. He wonders how many strikes it will take. He wonders if he will fall at all, or if it will be Garak that falls, falters, fails. Understanding the mind was always just as important as understanding the body in Garak's work, but Julian's is not ordinary by any means, not predictable. He has already decided to go forth, but the uncertainty gnaws at him. The fact that the best thing that ever happened to him hangs in the balance here is not lost on him at all.

Garak holds his breath and begins fanning Julian's back with long slow strikes. One. Two. Three. Four. Julian barely moves. His back rises and falls steadily, his muscles all pull taught and solid, but that is the limit of his preparation and defense. He flinches slightly with the first few, though that dissipates as Garak establishes a rhythm, and in no time at all, Julian has ten long stripes like the fronds of a palmetto arching across his back and nearly meeting at the top of his hips. They develop one by one like photographs of streaking meteorites. Each one comes out just a hair brighter than the one laid before it.

Is he a brick wall? Is he truly out of his mind right now and will Garak be cuffed and brought to the lockup in a few hours for beating a lunatic? Garak wants to touch him, hold him. He wants him to come back from wherever it is he has gone.

Garak crawls off the bed on the left side, slides to the floor. Julian could see him now if he wanted, but he does not look. He stares forward into the bedclothes beneath him breathing deeply through an open mouth. Garak swallows and aims. He cracks him across the shoulders and that one makes Julian wince. This new mark cuts across some of the previous and is broken in the middle where his spine hangs between protective columns of muscle. It's where the stripes cross that it gets more difficult to simply bear, yes. One might think that the stung skin would be more numb after the first strike but somehow it doesn't work that way. The next strike is lower, parallel to the first, and Julian jumps a little. Garak watches him tense and relax, hold his breath and then let it out sharply. He chants in his head pleas for Julian to just let go, to just let it out, pull out the knife, don't leave, don't give up. Another, and another stiff crack across the middle of his back and Julian begins to growl, clenching his teeth against what likely feels like licks of fire. Just a few more and the distorted grid across Julian's back is complete. Julian has wads of blanket and sheet twisted in his fists and is sweating all over.

Elim leaves his side to walk around the bed and Julian begins gasping for air in the pause. "Julian," Garak says softly as he rounds on him and comes to the other side. "Please." One weary brown eye is looking at him, and the beginnings of painful tears are at it's corner, but he doesn't say a thing, makes no move to sit or stand, flee or fall. Garak can only watch him with anxiety and need distorting his face, his shallow breathing keeping time with his heart. Garak looks up to the ceiling, somewhere, searching for strength, and then brings the cane down again on Julian's back. Careful and precise and practiced, this angled, short mark crosses the established grid at the intersections where his skin is already puffy and reddened. Julian wails. Garak doesn't stop, nor hesitate. His strokes are slow but steady, and in another breath he has brought it down again to cross the axes of two more stripes. Julian cries out again and pulls at the covers with shaking hands. Garak's grid is warped and uneven so he uses many shorter strokes to cross two or three of the junctions at a time, and the end of the cane bites him as well leaving new, double lines at their tops. Another two and Julian is climbing out of his skin. He cannot restrain himself and is beginning to crawl up the headboard. His hands find the cold metal bar there and hold on tight.

Elim hits him again and after yelping with his face mashed against the headboard he sobs once. Elim's heart races, but he hits him again. The same thing happens, Julian roars pain and inarticulate misery and then breaks down into a sob that wracks him for as long as the air remains in his lungs, then he inhales and stands ready again. As long as he is ready, Garak knows he must go on, and he hits him again, crossing more of the little bleeding x's everywhere which must feel like bullet holes by now. He yells, sobs hard, and then gasps for air. Just before Elim's arm whips across again, a tiny voice, strained and weak cries, "Elim."

Julian cries and writhes at the head of the bed and says his name again, plaintive this time, and hope, bright and beautiful starts to sparkle inside Garak, and he bites his lip hard to keep it down, and to keep his own pain swallowed and controlled. It takes only one more. Julian mewls through his teeth, then opens his mouth and cries out as the burn sets into his skin. "Elim, please." he says, but it's almost incomprehensible. He is reaching for the corner of the bed, to drag himself away when Garak, panting, tosses the cane to the floor and takes Julian by his naked hip.

Julian doesn't want to come suddenly. Animal instinct, the need to flee has him a moment longer and he holds tight the corner of the mattress. Apart from the swelling and scattered red lines he has across his back, he has a dozen or so four and six pointed stars where the strokes meet, where they combined and were enough to bring dots of blood to the surface.

"Love," Garak whispers to him and curls his fingers a little harder around that hip bone, away from any of his licks. Red-rimmed eyes turn and look at him finally. His brow crinkles, his frown breaks again and he joins him there. Garak is on the bed and wrapping his arms around him instantly, and Julian collapses into heavy sobs against him. He cries out every last breath of air and then gasps for more only to expel it again against Garak's bare chest in a rumble Garak can feel in his bones. His tears drip down Garak's flank and everywhere.

He can't believe it at first, and sits there with him, holding him, wide eyed, but in less than a moment is gathering him up, behind his head and under his bottom, avoiding the sensitive scores. He breathes into Julian's damp hair and coos to him softly, nonsense words and sounds, rocking him left and right, kissing any available part of him. He cries so long, so long. As he cries, Garak finds himself breathing thank-you's into his hair, over and over. Who exactly he is thanking he isn't sure, but somewhere, someone deserves them. Julian shakes as he grips Garak tightly around any part of him he can. His body is drained, though, and the limbs get weaker as his weeping goes on, and like the strength in his body, as it goes on, the strength of his cries depletes as well, and in time, Garak is rocking him in a quiet room. The only sound he makes after a while is an occasional stutter to his breath, an occasional sniffle or cough.

The silence stretches on into the night, and Garak begins feeling the weariness too. He shifts, finally, his joints stiff, and lays Julian down on his front. He urges him, and Julian lifts his body somewhat to help, to get the covers out from under him, awkwardly. Julian is shaky as he lowers himself back to the bed. Garak covers him to the waist.

Garak goes to his bathroom feeling dizzy and expelled. He finds a jar of ointment in his closet and comes back to Julian. He sits beside him and dabs his little star-shaped cuts and watches Julian's face.

Julian doesn't make a sound, nor move a muscle, just stares toward Garak's dark closet with his eyes unreadable but alive. Garak puts the ointment on the nightstand and climbs under the covers with Julian. He is rewarded with Julian's immediate acceptance there, and Garak smiles to himself just a little as Julian makes room for him on the bed and then drapes his tired body on top of Garak's. Garak covers him lightly with the sheet - he doesn't care if it gets stained from the ointment or a few tiny blood spots - and smooths his cool hand over his back which Garak guesses would feel a little pleasant.

As they lay there, and Garak drifts, he thinks about what is to come. Julian still needs to deal with this. Now, at least, he has begun. There won't be any turning back, he doesn't think, but this could be a long process. Julian begins to cry again, softly, as they lay there, and Garak strokes his hair.

"Shh. It's ok," he whispers, but Julian's tears continue to fall for some time.

"Julian," Garak says after a while, softly, but voiced. "I know you don't want to tell me what happened. I know you're not supposed to tell me, but I think you need to." Garak feels Julian's wet eyelashes grind against his chest as he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to stop the tears. Garak smooths the hair away from his face and curls his neck to bring his mouth to Julian's forehead. "I love you," he whispers. "I'm your friend. I'm your lover. You know damn well I can keep a secret, and whatever happened in that operating room, whatever you did that has made you turn on yourself, I can forgive you. I'll die before I betray you, and there is nothing you could have done in there that I could not forgive or that could make me stop loving you." Julian's shoulders shake as he cries, hard again, but after a moment or so, he begins to collect his breath back in his chest, and Garak feels the rub against his chest and shoulder as he nods.