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When Garak looked up next, it wasn’t Commander Sisko, coming to haul him off the station to his certain death. Or Odo, having changed his mind. It was Bashir, picking through the remaining rubble and wincing performatively.
“How’s the progress?” Bashir asked, and scanned the room. Garak had swept up a respectable amount, he thought, given he was currently wishing for the wire more than he had in months. A third of the floor was bare. The walls would need painting once the debris was gone, but Commander Sisko had promised him help that he was too cowed to refuse.
He’d gone to reiterate his desire for the rental space shortly after Odo left. Sisko had agreed more readily than Garak had expected, with the caveat that if it exploded again Quark would get the space, no questions asked. He suggested very strongly that Garak save them both from that eventuality.
Garak hummed a little in response to Bashir, and pointedly kept sweeping.
Bashir stepped closer anyway and leaned against a surviving pillar. “Next time you’ll have to make it a more minor explosion.” He wore a smile that suggested he thought he’d scored a point in their little game. But Garak didn’t feel much like playing. Didn’t feel much like anything, right now.
“Honestly, doctor,” he said, “I wasn’t expecting to be the one cleaning it up.”
“No. I suppose you weren’t.” Bashir stepped even closer and touched his arm; Garak startled a little. Bashir’s eyebrows drew together. “Garak, are you alright?”
Garak laughed. “I’m right back where I started, doctor, but worse off. How do you think I am?”
“Hmm,” Bashir said, and got a grip on his arm. “I was going to offer to help you clean, but this will still be here tomorrow. Have you eaten?”
“Oh, certainly,” Garak said. He couldn’t remember eating anything after the drinks with Tain.
“Uh-huh.” Bashir raised his eyebrows at him, smiling a little. “Then you can watch me eat; I’ve been at the infirmary all day and I’m starving.” He started tugging on Garak’s sleeve to get him to follow. Garak obeyed mostly out of surprise.
“Not the replimat,” Garak said suddenly. The station residents’ eyes on him, an annoyance most days, would be unbearable today.
“No one but senior staff and Odo know you blew up your own shop, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Bashir told him, eyes scanning his face. “Odo was quite insistent on that, before you left.”
“Oh, yes,” Garak said, the words bitter in his mouth, “a rogue Cardassian causing explosions. Can’t have rumors about that.”
Bashir looked at him again. “Yes,” he said, a little terse, “but you know Odo is the model of professionalism, for every case. What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m sorry, doctor,” Garak said, deflating. “I don’t think I’ll be very good company tonight.”
“Nevertheless.” Bashir started tugging him out the door again. “You can’t be worse than Miles was at lunch. I love the man, but he simply didn’t understand the appeal of a rousing debate. Can you believe it?”
Garak snorted.
Bashir gave him a warning look, despite being the one to start things. “My quarters, then?”
Garak sighed. “Very well, doctor. Lead the way.”
They made it to Bashir’s quarters with little incident. As Garak predicted, the residents that passed them did seem curious, but Bashir’s pace was fast enough that they were easily brushed aside.
Bashir waited until after they’d eaten, though he was bad at disguising his curiosity: he kept jiggling his leg and glancing unsubtly at Garak. No wonder Garak’s past intrigued him. His skill for subterfuge was nonexistent. He moved them to the small living area for drinks, and perched on the edge of a chair. Then he started with his earnest nonsense.
“Garak,” he started, and leaned forwards, hands braced on his legs. “You know you could have come to me.”
Garak finished his glass and got up from the couch to replicate another.
“I could’ve? Well, that simply didn’t occur to me, doctor.”
Bashir raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m sure it did.” He watched as Garak took another long swallow of kanar.
It had, but only in passing. Confide in the doctor? How embarrassing. An asset like him, you saved until you needed him. And Garak had taken care of the matter nicely. Going straight to Odo? A move for a man who was rightfully taken off of the board. No, Garak had to solve this for himself, or he wasn’t worthy of his past infamy.
“Maybe I didn’t think they’d believe you, hmm? Or that you’d think it was a game of mine.”
Bashir reddened. “If it was your life at stake, of course I’d believe you. And Commander Sisko would believe me.” He seemed to be trying to convince himself of it.
“About medical matters, maybe. Not assassins.”
“Believe whatever you want about me,” Bashir said, “but Commander Sisko would help. You can’t seriously believe blowing up your own shop was the easiest solution.”
“I don’t think anything was conclusively proved about the origins of the bomb.”
“You’re still going to play games with me? About this?” Bashir’s earnest face was entirely gone. In its place was a dark blush and indignation.
Garak finished his second glass and waved it in the air. “Of course I am, doctor, because games are all I’m good at, you see. Besides tailoring.” He laughed, then tried to walk past Bashir to the replicator. Bashir stood and stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Garak, I think you’ve had quite enough.”
“I have not, my dear doctor, because Tain is dead.”
Bashir let him go, and Garak gave him a showy bow of appreciation before replicating another glass of swill. The replicators did kanar poorly at the best of times, but the cloying sweetness made Garak’s head pound tonight. He took a sip simply to have the horrible taste on his tongue and held it there for a moment before swallowing.
“He didn’t forgive me.” That was as bitter as the kanar was sweet.
“What?”
“Tain. He said he didn’t forgive me for what I did. But he said he could forget it.”
“If you did what he asked.” Bashir grimaced. He took Garak’s arm again and gently lowered Garak back down to the couch. Then he let go and sat back down in his own chair.
“Yes.” Garak stared at his glass for a moment. The kanar was not enough. He wanted to hurt. “I tortured Odo.” Despite everything, it came out very evenly. It had none of the manic glee with which he programmed the bomb in his shop.
Bashir’s face was blank, the face he used with patients. Garak hated him for a violent split second. He wanted Bashir’s disgust, his rage.
“Did you. That wasn’t in either of your reports.” He didn’t even blink. Garak fixed his gaze on the arm of Bashir’s chair.
“I forced him to stay in his humanoid shape past his time limit.” Garak grimaced. “It was. Unpleasant.”
“How did you?” That was the doctor part of him, fascinated despite himself. But Garak shook his head. “If Odo did not tell you, it was for the sake of his people. I won’t either.”
Garak owed him this much and more. It was humiliating, the extent to which Garak had failed by allowing emotion to cloud his judgement. Odo stood strong and proud, in defense of his people, who had welcomed him back with none of the conditional alliance Tain offered. He had said no. And even seeing how pathetic Garak was, he reached out his hand.
“You don’t trust the Federation not to take advantage.” Bashir’s voice was still even.
“Of course I don’t,” Garak snapped, then subsided. “Apologies.” He set his glass on the table next to him and Bashir took the hint. He took it to the reclaimator, back turned to Garak. When he spoke, it was casual.
“Odo’s report said you helped him escape and tried to save Tain’s life, almost at the cost of your own.”
Garak nodded, once. “Generously put.”
Bashir turned, suddenly. Garak jumped a little.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Garak. Don’t torture my friends again? Obviously I don’t think you should have tortured Odo. But he seems to have already forgiven you, whether you deserve it or not. And it’s his judgement I’ll defer to there. Though not everyone would be so forgiving,” Bashir mused, and sighed. “You did save his life.”
“And he saved mine,” Garak muttered. He wished for something to hold in his hands to feel less awkward; he wished for more kanar. “You forgave me, not knowing anything I did. And Odo forgave me, having lived it. Why—”
“Garak?”
Tears pricked at his eyes. “Why must you people insist on being kind to me?”
Bashir sat back down. “I don’t know,” he said, with some humor. “You’re a person.”
“I don’t know if your Major Kira would agree.”
Bashir’s face got serious again. “She would. Because monsters aren’t accountable for their actions. But you are, Garak. You’re feeling guilty. You regret what you did. You’re protecting Odo’s secrets.”
Garak was silent, staring moodily at his empty glass on the side table. He didn’t wish he had died with Tain; he wasn’t nearly that maudlin. But the idea of waking up tomorrow and sweeping up his shop, talking to the concerned people and annoyed customers and having to paste on a subservient smile— that made him want to cease to exist.
“I don’t understand it,” Bashir said, and crossed his legs. “I’ve never wanted to go home.”
“To Earth?”
Bashir shrugged. “I suppose that’s where it’d be.”
Garak couldn’t understand this, either. Cardassia was a place where things made sense, where he was respected, where he was—by at least a few—loved. From the time he was a child he’d cherished the feel of her sun on his face and her humidity on his scales. Her sparse, beautiful plants that had to be coaxed into fullness; her moderation in water, reminding them to use just enough.
“Why not?”
Bashir played with his sleeve. “Sometimes it’s not the place, but the people. I suppose here is the closest I’ve had to a home...ever.”
“Your parents?”
Bashir grimaced. “Difficult.”
Garak laughed at that. Bashir looked up, ready to take offense, but his face softened at what he saw on Garak’s face. Difficult, for him, was an understatement.
Mila’s face on the video call…he ached. He had tried. He hoped she knew he tried. He would have to make sure Tain was really dead, or else get word to his contacts to keep an eye on her. In his most private, shameful fantasies, he saw her again, and she was proud to see him restored at Tain’s right hand. That would not happen now, but maybe she’d stroke his cheek, one last time.
“Doctor,” Garak said, suddenly. “I think you’re right that I’ve had too much to drink. Would you mind terribly if I stayed on your couch tonight?”
Bashir considered him. “If you really were an Obsidian Order operative, wouldn’t that give you an easy way to kill me?”
“If I was a spy,” Garak said, “I could kill you easily at lunch.”
“Ah,” said Bashir, “with poison.”
“Or a timed bomb, or a neurotoxin—really any number of things.”
Bashir held his gaze for a moment. “So, are you planning to?”
“Of course not, doctor. I’m a simple tailor.” He said it very flatly. Tonight, more than ever before, it was true. Bashir smiled at him and stood up. “In fact,” Garak said. “Odo expressed a desire to eat breakfast with me.”
Bashir was halfway to the replicator, but turned his head back. “Odo doesn’t eat!”
“I raised the same argument. Nevertheless.”
Garak knew the offer of breakfast was a strategic move, an unsubtle attempt to keep an eye on him. But it was also an act borne of pity. Garak could not refuse it, as his place on the station was more precarious than ever, but the sadder truth he barely wanted to admit was he was not sure he would have anyway, as humiliating as it was.
Bashir returned with a pillow and a ridiculous, fluffy blanket. He set them on the couch next to Garak.
“I have an early shift, but you’re welcome to stay. I expect to see you at breakfast with Odo sometime soon,” Bashir said, giving Garak what seemed to pass for a stern look from his young, unserious face. Then he smiled, small. “And I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Garak said. Bashir seemed to expect more, but Garak was silent, so he turned and started preparing for bed.
Bashir was right: Garak felt guilty, a strange curdling in his gut that had been suppressed for many long years by the effects of the wire and Tain’s approval. It served nothing. Bashir’s Federaji conviction that guilt would spur Garak to more moral action, in his eyes, was a farce. He would interrogate Odo again if it was truly in the best interest of Cardassia, no matter his feelings. But the regard of the doctor, while not the sharp, bright satisfaction that Tain’s appraisal gave him, was something. A warmer, softer, smaller feeling that nonetheless he was starting to crave. Something else he would have to ignore if it became inconvenient for his duty.
Garak ran his hand over the blanket and wondered at the small, simple things that could bring him comfort, whether he deserved them or not. He supposed it didn’t matter much what he deserved. He would take them all anyway.