update

Due to popular request (by which I mean two people have mentioned it) I've posted black bottle chapters 8 and 9 here. I update insanejournal (hermit9) more frequently than my blog with story updates and other stuff, though I haven't updated black bottle in a long long time in either place. I AM working on it though. I swear. I took a few months off since it was going nowhere but I'm back to it again. Hopefully I'll have the new chapter soon. It's a big one, so that's one of the reasons. Not big as in important, just rather long.

ST:DS9 G/B Black Bottle Chapter 9: Aftercare

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.

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.”

“That's 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.

“Kira to the Infirmary.”

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. “Louis here, Colonel. How can I help you?”

“Good morning, Ensign. ...Is Doctor Bashir there?”

Julian swallows. “Yes. I'm here.”

“Doctor, if...if you're not too busy this morning, we could use some help in ops.” 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 will 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 him 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. "Please," 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."

"Dax 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 can 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 Julian if he knew. There is no one I can talk to."

"What about 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 know that. But you are making an enormous mistake by leaving." And you are possibly the most stubborn woman I have ever met.

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 you, 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 shapeshifter 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 him.

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." For what?!?! 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.

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.

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 is 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, 'Thank you Julian, for everything. I'll never forget you.' 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.

~*~

And then she was gone.

There was a moment when it seemed like it simply wouldn't happen. Disbelief like a fog in his head, his mind balked and in that instant, not long enough, but for a brief second, he may have had the power to change reality with a thought. This isn't happening. But as is the problem with limited, corporeal, linear beings such as humans, a disbelief in ones self easily replaces that power and lands one firmly, with a shattering crash, back on solid ground. But for an instant, he may have lived up to his true potential. Because events aren't inevitable are they? If you break up the time between now and what is guaranteed to occur, you delay it forever because it's just like any other line, you can quantify it infinitely. But then it goes out the window. Time flies, it does.

"What happened?"

"A moment before the wormhole collapsed there were two energy discharges registered in the Bajoran temple. Security found her like this."

"Two cc's Leporazine. Now."

The familiar smell of burned tissue and fabric and Jadzia is unconscious, not breathing, her heart is stopped. They get a pulse the moment the drug hits her system and he sedates her to prevent her from waking while she is oxygen deprived and wounded.

Julian knew the moment he saw her, though.

Awake and alert, she already knew, too, he didn't have to tell her, and he wasn't sure he could have anyway. Marcia was there in his peripheral the whole time, but she hardly said a word. She prepared her for surgery while Julian stared at her monitor. A hand, trembling with weakness, but fingers strong with intention circled his wrist and captured his eyes finally. Her voice was hoarse, difficult to hear. "Thank you, Julian," she said. He felt his frown deepen and stretch. "For everything," she added with a squeeze. She meant it, he was sure. For everything. She glanced down at herself, what she could see, and at Marcia removing the drape from her mid section. Her eyes came back to Julian's and gave to him the last words of Jadzia Dax. "I'll never forget you."

The time he spent futilely looking for a way to save her though he knew none existed, the time he had alone with her then, until Worf arrived - she wanted him to hold her hand though he couldn't during the procedure. Marcia did. The symbiont, wounded but stable, away in stasis, she looked on it for the last time, horror in her eyes. Then he held her hand.

There were hours then. They must have been hours. Marcia waited in the wings and Julian stood by her bed after the simple act, his surgical scrubs loose around his neck. "Just when it was getting interesting. I had to come in and mess everything up again," she said with a smiling, faltering grim. He remembers sitting down by her side then and shaking his head. He said nothing. He couldn't think of a thing that would be permissible. All he could think was that this wasn't his. This didn't belong to him. She made it hard to remember that though. "Julian. Stay with me."

She cried, but bravely. All he could do was look at her, keep giving her painkillers until she was woozy with it. She was brave almost to the end. A cough shook her and painful tears rimmed her eyes. "Julian I don't want to die," she cried and a sob wracked her body.

Julian went numb and his ears rung dangerously from that moment on. He isn't sure if she said anything after that or not. He remembers putting his hand to her face, fingertips over her brown hair and then down past her temples to her neck. The spots. They're not raised at all. Perfectly smooth. If he closed his eyes he wouldn't have any idea they were there. Wouldn't have any idea who she was beyond cool skin beneath his hands. And almost immediately, he left the room. He stayed outside because it didn't belong to him. Never did.

"Julian?" she called after him weakly. He could hear her but couldn't move. Marcia came to her side and he could feel her regard on him in the doorway. "Julian..." Jadzia cried in anguish, confusion, but he didn't have an answer for her, and Marcia called him by his title but he didn't recognise it at all. There was a bleating, begging cry all around him but he could not acknowledge it. That fragile wall in his mind between sanity and lunacy was threatened by what he had seen, the things he saw in his own hands. The casual way he separated them. The only thing to do was to remove himself from this danger. And like so many times before, he hid himself shamefully away for the preservation of himself, and not for the good of everyone else, the good of the people he claimed were the whole reason he existed and the reason he had to hide.

"It's alright darlin'." Marcia cooed to her. Julian could not avoid a glance to them from the corner of his eye, and he saw Marcia's hand tight around Jadzia's, her fingers threading through her hair. He couldn't look again. It didn't belong to him and it never would and and never did. He ruined it, and he couldn't stand the reminder for another second. Julian slipped, slinked into his office around the corner and locked the door.

Hours later still. Three more hours she lay dying, and held on until the Defiant came home.

That yell. The station vibrated with it and fell silent as it had the last time a Klingon heart broke within those walls. Wasn't so long ago. Julian tossed his scrubs to the table after that moment and walked home.

~*~

Julian is finally asleep. He cried so long, there can't be another tear left in the human race. Garak doesn't dare leave him for long, but he gets up to do what he needs to.

Garak's sits at his computer and opens a channel. There is someone waiting for him, and Garak hopes he has some small amount of good fortune to share.

"A taller order than expected," the brown-scaled Corvallen says solemnly. Gytro is an old friend of Garak's from his time spent on Romulus. While not a handsome man, he is faithful to his friends to a fault, and Garak repays his loyalty as much as he can. Garak isn't sure he can repay him this time, but if the opportunity arises, he shall. This was a hefty request, difficult to fulfill even for a mercenary of Gytro's size and skill.

"Yes, I know," Garak says.

"You look well."

Garak smiles a little, "Thank you." He doesn't elaborate on why. Such things aren't discussed over illicit channels, but he will perhaps let him know the next time he sees him, which will probably not be for another fifteen years.

"And you took your damn time getting back to me, Lizard," he says with a gauze of affection in his voice that you couldn't hear without knowing the man half your life.

"He left quite a mess I'm afraid."

"Well, I got you a transmission code. It'll be valid at three fifteen station time, which is...right about now, and it'll start to degrade in less than ten minutes. I hope you can get what you need in that time."

"I hope so too."

"Transmitting now."

Gytro signs off. Shame they couldn't catch up a little. Garak would be lying if he said he didn't miss Gytro, and some of the other people who have helped him along the way, some of those he's aided himself. Just no time for that now, no place for it. That talk is meant for a table or a bar, for a happy reunion when there is nothing else to do because nothing else needs to be done.

Garak frowns at his console, breathes deeply to calm his nerves, and then opens a new encrypted subspace channel. He plugs in the code Gytro gave him with a secret superstitious thumb squeezed between his knuckles. A moment later a Cardassian appears on his screen looking sleepy and confused, vulnerable and naked in his bed. Slowly, understanding, and then finally open-eyed amusement creeps into his face as he stares at Garak in his own screen.

"Garak! What a pleasant surprise. I was expecting to hear from someone from the station in the near future, but I didn't think you would be the first."

Garak looks at him stoically, and says nothing.

Dukat's smile widens slightly in the silence. "What can I do for you?" he finally says when Garak doesn't volunteer.

"I'm sure you can guess."

Dukat chuckles. "Yes. I'm sure I can. But I think you're going to have to keep waiting, and failing to bring it about yourself. You and your cronies have certainly mastered that over the years."

"It's a pity you can't die more than once," Garak says thoughtfully.

Dukat laughs, good and long.

"After Commander Worf and Captain Sisko have finished with you, I'd like to kill you myself."

"Don't tell me you were smitten with her too."

"I think you know me better than that."

"Indeed. I do. But then Jadzia was a woman any man could love, even a dubious facsimile of a man such as yourself." Dukat sighs heavily, as if it actually weighted his heart at all. "That beautiful skin, silky hair, and that enchanting smile. It certainly is a pity. I know it doesn't make a difference but I never intended to harm her. It wasn't even me if you want to split hairs. It was the pah wraith."

“No, that is definitely not a worthwhile distinction.”

"So why did you wake me up then Garak?"

"Just to see your smiling face."

"Of course. You wouldn't be trying to triangulate my location would you? I can assure you that will be quite impossible. Surely you don't think I'm that stupid."

"You've driven some very long nails in your coffin recently, Dukat. So. Yes, but no that isn't the reason. I was merely curious of your intent. I fail to see how closing the wormhole benefits you or the Dominion."

"Yes. You do fail don't you," Dukat says cheerfully. "Think what you will, Garak. I certainly don't care. The Dominion is of little concern to me. I will have my Cardassia back the way I want it and I don't need them or the prophets to make that happen. So if you're finished trying to ogle me, I'd like to go back to bed."

"Sleep well."

"I shall," he says bright-eyed and grinning before the connection closes.

~*~

Julian wakes to the sensation of fingertips brushing his hair from his forehead. He opens his eyes and tries to move to rub the blur from them but regrets it. He winces sharply as every single muscle in his torso and beyond protests. Even the act of that sudden intake of breath shoots pain across his back where swollen patches tighten around painful bruises.

"Shh," Elim whispers and strokes a bare, unmarred shoulder.

There is misery, and there is this. He regrets not only moving but every single thing. He would cry as he did last night but he doesn't have the strength. He lays there instead with cracked eyes, dry lips, and resignation. "What time is it," he asks hoarsely after so many long minutes in pointless silence.

"A little after five." Julian blinks slowly and Garak can see in his eyes that he is actually trying to figure out how he is going to get himself into shape to go to work today. "Come on," Garak says then and gets up. He comes around to the other side of the bed to gently urge Julian up. Julian hisses and makes a little noise as he comes to sit facing Elim, but doesn't protest. "Come along. Let's get you into a hot bath."

Julian walks under his own power to the bathroom but Elim helps him sit on the edge of the tub just in case. Elim draws the bath and removes the pants he never took off last night. Julian hasn't seen him naked in a few days, and before that it was essentially the first time. He feels strange looking at him so casually after the past few days - feels like years - of absence. He looks at the floor instead and holds his forearms across his own bare lap. Elim steps into the tub when it is full enough and urges Julian to do the same. "How hot is it?" he asks, watching faint trails of steam against the dark tile.

"Positively frigid. You'll be fine." Elim takes Julian's hand and Julian swings one leg then the other into the water. It's hot, but tolerable. Elim sits with his back against the slanted tub wall, and with braced arms, gives Julian the support he needs to sit down safely as well. He isn't sure why this feels awkward, but it does. He feels like he doesn't belong here, doesn't deserve this, or that Elim somehow doesn't know who he is dealing with, who he is bestowing such kindness to. "Come," he says again, though, and Julian turns and lays back against him.

The heat is slightly sharp on a few spots, but fine in time, and they lay there in silence for quite a while with the echoes pinging off the walls, drenching Julian like a lullaby. He may have been dozing here and there, but wakens completely again when Elim pulls a dark blue cloth from the water and squeezes it out over Julian's chest. Garak shifts him a bit then, pulls Julian's weightless body over his left shoulder more, tilting his head back. Elim sponges down his neck and chest over and over, and eventually scoops his hair back from his forehead with a damp hand and wets his head. Julian closes his eyes again and allows his attention to fixate on the warmth trickling down his scalp. It occurs to him finally, a mere moment before Elim stops, that he can't recall a time since he was a young child that anyone cared for him like this. Maybe he never needed it before, or maybe there was no one there when he needed it. He is glad now though, that Elim is here, and that he knew what to do, because Julian never would have figured this one out on his own.

Elim sighs and rumbles behind and beneath Julian. "Remember how we were going to take this slow?"

Julian nods a little.

"We didn't quite succeed did we."

Garak squeezes out the cloth one last time and places it over the edge of the tub neatly to be picked up later. When he turns back, Julian's head is turned and he is watching him. He can't quite read his face, but he looks much more alert and relaxed than he did when he woke up.

It hurts to twist himself like this but he has to. Julian turns and takes a dripping arm out of the tepid water to hold Elim's head where it is. He twists the rest of him some more, wincing as he does, and brings his lips to Elim's. Their lips brush twice before Elim helps him, brings his hand to Julian's face to turn it up and back, and allow that twist and stretch to go more through his chest than his sore and abused back. Julian sighs and opens his mouth to him which Elim takes with deliberation.

Julian is hard within a moment, but Elim does no more than smile gently at him before helping him up and into a towel. He winces when he raises his arms to dry his hair, so Elim pats his head down for him and then his back too, dabbing away the water around the red and purple. He is mostly dry otherwise and calmed to an appropriate level, and Elim tells him to go lie on the bed. Julian leaves Elim in the bathroom and does as he wishes. On the bed stand is the jar of ointment that Elim used on him last night. He picks it up curiously and realizes that the label is quite familiar. The faint smell too, like vanilla and chamomile. He hasn't seen it in years, but his mother used to use it for minor cuts and scrapes rather than using the regenerator. He didn't appreciate it at the time, but as an adult, as a doctor, he would come to agree with her that immediately healing every little thing is as bad for you as letting large wounds go untreated. There are millions of people who cannot handle even the smallest discomfort now because as children, their parents sheltered them from pain with every available technology and medication. A little cream to keep the skin supple and avoid scars is really all that is needed.

Elim emerges from the bathroom finally with a towel around his waist. "Where did you get this?" Julian asks him softly, still unsure of his voice.

He smiles. "It's quite common on Cardassia. I had this shipped from Earth, I understand it's made there."

"It is. I haven't seen it in years though."

"Every Cardassian household has a jar of this. It is the best product in the galaxy to treat the itchiness caused by peeling scales." Julian almost smirks at that. "Lay down. Let's look at you." Julian stretches out on the bed face down and carefully lifts his hands up above his head. Elim sits beside him and turns the reading light on above Julian, flooding the pillow at his face with soft light. Elim's fingers smooth gently down his back and it does sting here and there. He doesn't touch the little cuts, but tests the bruises gingerly. "We can use the regenerator on this if you want. You're going to be pretty uncomfortable for the next few days. Mine isn't suitable for large areas, but it will take the edge off."

The thought hadn't occurred to him actually. He just assumed he'd wear the bruises until they faded. He considers it a moment, and shakes his head. He has survived worse than this, he knows. Odd how everything reminds him of childhood right now. He feels like a child, weak, punished. When Elim kisses his back lightly, once, and then opens the jar lid and releasing that scent it comes back to him quite fully. Tears well in his eyes and he lets them fall though he keeps his breathing steady and slow. "I've never lost anyone before," he says facing away from him.

Elim pauses in his gentle aid as if halted by that remark, but then begins again. "No one?"

"No one close to me. An acquaintance or two. I've been....lucky."

Garak smooths another sticky-soft dab of the ointment over his skin with a delicate touch and Julian hears the lid meet the open jar again. "I should say so, my dear. We're in the middle of a war. Not many people live through even a small war without being separated from someone they love."

Garak begins to walk away and a shudder comes over Julian, urging him up to his feet. Julian tosses his towel to the bed and begins pulling his clothes on. When Garak returns from the bathroom he stands in silence and watches Julian throw himself together with urgency slowed by pain and awkwardness. "Where are you going?"

"I have to talk to Marcia. I have to try to fix some of this."

Julian gets his shoes on with a heavy wince, and then stands. Elim is there before him, a solid steady rock that captures Julian's impetus and pauses it with his mere presence. Elim puts a hand to his neck. "Do what you need to do. Then come back to me."

Julian returns his gaze for half a moment, a resisting mixture of fear and sorrow and gratitude swirling through him. "Thank you," he whispers and fights the tears back again. He kisses him once, quick as a hummingbird, and leaves.

~*~

Marcia doesn't react when he shows up at her door except to take in the hang of his face and the way that tall frame is bent and shivering under its own weight. "Can we talk?" he asks finally, and she steps away from the door to let him by with an impassive face. Inside, her belongings are mostly packed into a couple of trunks and she leans back against them with her arms across her middle looking as haggard as he feels. He wants to cry again already but knows that would be a bad idea.

"Have you ever done something so grotesquely stupid and horrible, that, when you realized what you had done, you felt that the only option was to give up and resign yourself to the fact that you were a coward and a charlatan, and in doing so made it worse?" he blurts and then covers his face. "No I don't imagine you have...."

"Is that what happened?" she asks quietly, stoically. "Is that why you won't talk to me?"

"No. That is why it happened. The other night...that was the compounding of the evil, not the evil itself. They wanted to have a baby."

"I know."

With his face hidden, he can't hold the tears back. "I told her I found a way for them to have a baby. I told her I had the solution but I didn't," he croaks. "I just wanted to give her some hope. I wanted them all to come back alive. So she went....she went to thank the prophets." His voice is weakening, his whole body, again like last night, and he squats, feeling the pain of his bruised muscles pulling and feeling he deserves so much more.

"Julian...this wasn't your fault. It doesn't matter why she went there when she did. There was no way for you or anyone else to know what Dukat was planning. He did this to her, not you. And the lie. It doesn't matter now either. You don't know. Maybe the hope you gave them was what brought them all home alive." He knows she's just trying to help but fatalistic scenarios just depress him. He shakes his head in rejection and thinks he hears the acknowledgement in her voice. "You didn't kill her Julian."

"Yes. I did. I cut her in two."

"You did what you had to do and a part of her is still alive because you had the strength to do it." He knows that but it doesn't matter.

"But I took that life away from her, and then she died of that loss."

"There was nothing you could have done that would have saved her. You must know that."

"Did I tell you I was in love with her from the day I met her?" Julian stands again and goes to Marcia's counter to lean against it, away from her eyes.

"What?"

"Remember the 'one that got away?' She hasn't been here long enough to have absorbed their history, but she might remember that conversation.

Marcia is quiet for some time and Julian tries to recover in that gap, breathing slowly and staring at the counter top. Marcia mumbles in melancholy then, crumbling the silence, "For some reason I always thought it was Colonel Kira...I don't know why."

There isn't much more to say about that really. Maybe now that she knows who Jadzia was to him, she'll understand, though he doesn't hope for it. He doesn't dare hope for nor deserve that. "She didn't belong to me, but I loved her as if she did, Marcia. I couldn't. I couldn't stand there and watch her die. I lied to her. I ripped her apart. I couldn't save her. Three times I killed her. Even if I had been smart enough to prevent two of them I still would have killed her. And it was only for my own selfishness."

"Oh Julian," she whispers like a prayer. Marcia doesn't fully understand all of this, but the realization that there is more than simple cowardice under this is very forcefully creeping in and shaking her resolve. She was afraid of this the second she saw him.

"I couldn't watch. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I'm not the one who can forgive you, Sweetie."

Julian trembles and crumples against the counter and sobs. "There is no one else for me to beg."

Marcia approaches him, and feels overwhelmingly sorry suddenly. She suspects that she did not help this at all. Marcia puts a hand to his back, then moves around to take him by the arm and lead him to her couch. She sits, and while she expected him to sit with her, instead he kneels at her feet and puts his head and arms down on her lap. That pretty much breaks her, and while she strokes through his hair as he cries quietly, she has to wipe her own eyes for the hundredth time this week. She idly strokes his hair and back until he calms down again, until they both do. "Is it too late to withdraw my resignation or have you already found my replacement?"

Julian rises finally to look at her with red-rimmed wet eyes. "Don't stay just because I'm a mess. I don't want you to stay where you're not happy."

Marcia sighs heavily. "No, Julian. I was leaving because you were a mess." Then she huffs a little exhausted exasperated laugh. "But you're not a mess. Well. You are. But I think this is a curable mess."

Julian just shakes his head. "I don't know where to go from here. I don't know what I'm doing. Why didn't I have the strength to see it through to the end? Why do I never have the strength to do that? Am I going to quit on Elim too when it matters?" His face is already red but it gets redder when he realizes he is speaking about it openly with her. It shouldn't embarrass him and he feels foolish for that too.

"You can't be on duty like this, Julian."

"I'm ....so tired."

"You need some time off. Some time to think."

He rejects it and it shows on his face he knows. "More time, always more time. More time doing nothing, more time to waste being useless."

"Julian...sometimes, there's nothing you can do." He shakes his head. "Yes. Sometimes. There is nothing you can do. And nothing...is something, Julian." He looks at her weirdly. "Ensign Louis to Colonel Kira."

"Kira here."

"Colonel, I'm Marcia Louis, I work in the infirmary," she says in case Kira doesn't remember her by name.

"Yes Ensign, what can I do for you?"

"I wanted to let you know, I"m taking Julian--Doctor Bashir off active duty for a while."

"You--" Julian tries to interject.

"Is he alright?"

"He'll be fine. He just needs some time."

"Understood. Tell Julian to take as much time as he needs. If need be we can get Doctor Ledo from Bajor to fill in."

"Thank you Colonel."

Julian just looks a little bewildered. "You know, technically, you don't have the authority to take me off duty. Only Sisko or Doctor Girani do."

"Well the Colonel didn't seem to have a problem with it." Marcia sighs shortly and then glances at the clock. "Oh, peaches. I have to get to the infirmary." She gets up and starts trying to straighten her hair and fix her face. "And I have to talk my way out of my transfer. That's going to be an uncomfortable conversation."

"I can talk to them..."

"No you can't. You're on leave. Go home."

Garak has been mooching around the corridor waiting for Julian to come out of Marcia's quarters. When he finally does, Marcia is with him, ready to start her shift, and Julian leans over in the doorway to put his arms around her. Garak watches his face, heavy with pain that Marcia can obviously detect as well. Some of that is physical pain, but the result is the same. At least she can see it now. At least that veil is lifted.

~*~

Julian comes through the door nearly dragging his feet. He appears so burdened still, barely holding himself up. Garak is in his bedroom doorway, dressed and waiting.

"Aren't you supposed to be at the shop?" he asks him.

"I don't think anyone will notice if I'm not there today." Julian looks like he is about to melt, but is holding himself up for etiquette's sake. You don't enter a friend's home and then fall on the floor and cry.

"Marcia is staying," he tells him then, that was the reason he left after all. "And she relieved me of duty."

"Can she do that?"

"No. But she did."

Elim goes to him, can see how close he is to coming apart again. This is the worst of it he thinks. Marcia is going to stay, so he made some kind of progress on that front, but there is so much more that needs doing. Right now, Julian needs support. Actual physical support, and Garak holds onto him and lets Julian slump into him as he walks him to the bedroom. Julian feels hot all over but blotchy, different temperatures all over him, not with that smooth transition Elim can feel over his skin most of the time, just erratically varying shades of hot, his eyes and lips and neck the hottest. He takes him to bed, dresses him down again, marveling at that beautiful body that lays before him so willingly now, and covers him with a light blanket.

"I know...intellectually, that I didn't kill her. I did what I thought was best," Julian says from way down low in his chest. Elim looks on him with a sadness in his face. "It just feels like her life was so much a part of mine, I can't figure out how I missed the potential for it, why I didn't see a danger in what I was doing."

"What does all of this mean to you, Julian?"

"I'm a coward, and a liar."

"But I know that you are neither of those things."

Julian doesn't say anything.

"If that isn't it, what is?"

"I love her," he whispers, pain in his heart for even uttering those words in front of this man who loves him despite all of this. He feels flashes inside of him of what it must be like to be Elim right now and is ashamed of himself.

"I know," Elim says without a flinch.

"I don't want to love her anymore," Julian whimpers and buries his head under Garak's neck to cry.

"I know."

The lights from the living room cast a box of light on the bedroom wall just to Julian's left. The glow diffuses gently across the room and the two forms on the bed. Julian, despite his grief, looks more reposed now that he is lying down again and relieved of inhibitions. Garak brings his hands to Julian's face and chest to soothe him back toward sleep. When he wakes that afternoon, perhaps they'll talk about it some. Perhaps Julian will begin to expel some of that guilt he is holding on to. Garak knows he needs it right now, to punish himself for what he did, but it can't stay forever.

Garak has some of his own that he will sleep with tonight. So many on the station do right now. Julian is so tormented, he probably can't see that yet.

There were so many failures. It would seem she was doomed from the beginning if he were inclined to consider such things. There were so many opportunities for any of them to have stopped it, but they all made mistakes. The captain, Julian, Kira, Worf, Garak. They are all complicit if they can be blamed for each adding an ingredient that happened to form poison when mixed. Dukat is the killer, but the people she loved failed her. Makes one wonder if it wasn't fate. Makes one doubt. A woman as strong as her - it took half the station to kill her. It took failures on the part of so many to orchestrate her demise. If it doesn't point to fate or the force of a malevolent god he doesn't know what does. Horrifying thought really. His own guilt seems minor, and opposite of the irrationality that could in part be blamed for her death. He chose rationality, and maybe, in some small way that might have contributed to it. If he had warned Julian, or anyone, maybe it wouldn't have happened. He felt an event on the horizon just a few days ago. His premonitions, while accurate, are baseless, so he said nothing and assumed instead that what he felt was due solely to the tide changing within him because of the man in his bed. But he was also warned. Omar told him he might be planning something. But even the two things together didn't point to anything. There is no way he could have predicted what would happen, but maybe Julian could have. And Julian is the one in the most pain right now. He can't help but sour his thoughts right now as he looks at him and wish that he had told him, had said something, anything, but he knows that is a hopeless train of thought, that it could have been worse.

The Bajoran Vedek at the door of the temple is not only not used to being approached by Cardassians, but clearly reluctant to let one into his temple. However, now that at least half of the Bajoran population of the station has left, the slip of latinum Garak places in the collection tin sways the priest and garners him a few moments at least. Inside, the amber hues of the temple are muddied by the flickering shadows cast by hundreds of tiny candles lit, most likely, for Jadzia as well as others recently lost to the war. The orb sits in its chamber looking oddly inert, more like a trinket than the powerful artifact it once was. Garak finds a place at the front of the empty room and an unlit candle. He lights it from another and places it upon the shrine, not knowing exactly what he is meant to do with it, only going through the motions for the Vedek peeking at him from around the corner. Garak kneels there, eyes closed, feeling the weight of the day on his shoulders and knees, the weight of guilt and anger, sorrow for the pain Julian is going through, and tries to clear his mind of it for now. He breathes slow and deep, and then opens his eyes to look at the little flame in a white paper shell before him.

Garak can only shake his head once and then whisper what he needs to say to that little flame.

"Jadzia, I am a logical being, as much as any Vulcan, as any scientist though I am neither. I know you cannot hear me. I know you no longer are a part of this world except in as much as you are a stagnant entity who's potential has been removed, your energy released back freely into the universe. I know you don't need to hear this. I speak to you now because it is my need to do so. I also know that it didn't have to be you. I am not so dull to think that someone picked you out to die; that some aliens or gods sent a madman to kill you to punish the emissary or that God was unhappy with you, that you defied him by marrying a Klingon, I'm not so stupid to think that you or I are fated to anything. It didn't have to be you that was in that temple. It didn't have to be anyone. If you had been somewhere else, maybe no one had to die there, maybe that monster could have done what he came to do and then left, I don't know. Those predictions are as pointless as the other. The fact is that it was you, and because of that, I thank you. Not some prophets, or aliens, or fickle fate or even the universe. I thank you because you were the one that paid the price. Because it could have been him.... It could just as easily have been him. I know it was not what you intended, and it is certainly not what I ever wanted or hoped for, but what you have done, has changed my life, Jadzia. The two of us never had much in the way of interaction, but that was because Julian lie between us I think, torn between us. Leaving us, Jadzia, no one wanted you to leave us. I did not. Not even if Julian remained torn, not even if Julian were to leave me to be with you. All I can say my dear, is thank you. For today, and for every day after this that we might be given."

~*~

A blossoming romance is supposed to be fiery in the beginning. The blush of new love is supposed to overtake the lovers and be expressed in their passion for each other, their time spent together is supposed to be vivid and exciting, their lovemaking more intense with each passing night. It is different for Elim and Julian, though. Theirs is a romance interrupted. Certainly this is not the only way in which theirs is an uncommon relationship, the ways are countless really, and perhaps this early tragedy is not even the most difficult hurdle because as the days and then weeks pass after its manifestation, they are recovering lost ground with gentle steps that would seem to be unattainable for most people.

Those first few nights spent wound around each other for fear of finding the other missing in the morning are quiet and solemn. Garak runs fingers through his hair as they drift off and accepts the kisses Julian leaves on his jaw. Julian asks him, because it is still too foggy and near to understand fully, like the pages of a book too close to your face, what has happened, why he is the way he is. It is hard to believe. Julian had been in danger of sabotaging his whole life, and while Garak's rescue was risky, his relief in these days is complete. The young women who played parts in this are not destroyed, changed but not gone. Julian has not been eaten from the inside by his guilt, his misstep. He was, despite his intellect, unable to fool Garak into letting him rot away or breaking the promise. His answers to Julian's questions about himself are simple because the more words he gives him the more complex he will make it and the more likely he will try to turn it in upon himself again. Why did I do it? You did it for love. Then why did it go wrong? Love is not a guarantee, love is a risk.

Even after a few days when Julian begins to kiss him more forcefully, hungrily as they lie in bed, Elim tries to cool him because they need to go back a few steps. You can't just pick up where you left off when one person quits, even for a minute. Catching up is long work, and Garak wants something before he is willing to take him back into his bed for anything other than companionable sleep. He wants him to laugh. Julian perhaps doesn't realize it, but he hasn't laughed in a week. Hasn't smiled except bitterly. Garak has been watching and listening for a week now. He spends his leave reading, walking, sleeping, staring into the stars in a way that Garak understands quite completely; a wordless, thoughtless pining for home. But he doesn't laugh, doesn't even approach it.

He knows too, that Garak hesitates. He knows there is something off. He lays on him this evening, trying to make his intent clear, hips between Garak's, head on his chest, silent and thinking and then finally asks. "Is this...is this over?"

"What do you mean?" Julian lifts his head to look him in the eye even though it's mostly too dark to see.

"You and me. Is this the beginning of the end?" Julian feels slightly brave asking, but somehow bravery is easier on the downhill side of grief.

"Why would you think that?"

"You don't want to make love," he says almost to quietly to hear.

Elim holds his face. "No. I'm just waiting until you are ready."

The relief in Julian is palpable but not complete. "I'm ready," he says with the tiniest smirk and Elim smiles back, huffs a little laugh through his nose.

"No. Not yet."

"How do you know?"

"I can tell."

"Are you sure you aren't projecting your own unreadiness onto me?"

Elim smiles quite warmly at that. "I'm sure."

Julian sighs and places his hard chin back on Elim's chest. "What do I have to do to convince you I am 'ready?'"

"Oh I think you're well on your way, Love. Don't worry."

It finally happens twelve nights after she died. Elim wakes to find his bed curiously empty. Still the middle of the night, he gets up and pads into the dark living room. Julian doesn't say anything, just reaches up to touch him when he draws near. His face is lit only by the pale white text on the screen and he has tears streaming down his cheeks but is smiling harshly, pain and laughter there in his cheeks. He laughs, chuckles a little, two, three times, each time exactly the same quiet sound as the last time.

"What are you reading?"

"Text conversation that I had with Jadzia a few months ago while she was bored in ops. That woman....she was completely insane, do you know that?" It comes out choked on a half-sob, half laugh and his breath quivers. Elim crouches next to his seat to read a few of the lines on the screen.

L.C. Dax J.: I saw Captain Boday last night.

C.M.O. Bashir J.: Do tell.

L.C. Dax J.:We just went to Quark's but it was a lot of fun.

C.M.O. Bashir J.:Worf come with you?

L.C. Dax J.:God no. He didn't know I went. I asked Kira to cover for me.

C.M.O. Bashir J.:Um.

L.C. Dax J.:Oh stop it Julian. Don't be so pedestrian. A woman, who has been a man, I might add several times before, is not simply a woman any more. I like the company of men for the same reason I like to watch acrobats. I used to be one. Worf doesn't understand. So I spare him.

C.M.O. Bashir J.:But you won't spare me.

L.C. Dax J.:You love it. And besides, I didn't tell you the really fun part yet.

C.M.O. Bashir J.:I can't wait.

L.C. Dax J.:Boday thought he was getting somewhere with me apparently, and started buying me drinks and holding my hand. Quark got so mad, he came by with a tray full of black holes and "accidentally" tipped it over his head.

C.M.O. Bashir J.:His head?

L.C. Dax J.:Yes! I can't stop laughing! Ben is looking at me funny.

L.C. Dax J.:His head is purple.

C.M.O. Bashir J.:The captain's?

L.C. Dax J.:No! Don't be obtuse. Boday's. It was still purple when I saw him leave on his ship this morning. It looks like he got his skull tinted. And I couldn't resist. I asked him if it would be safer now for him to go to a desert planet like Yadozi.

C.M.O. Bashir J.:Oh my god. What did he say?

L.C. Dax J.: He said he'd wear a hat. I don't know if he meant because his skull was purple or if he didn't get it and he meant that he'd wear a hat to Yadozi regardless. Either way, I'll be entertained by that for weeks.

C.M.O. Bashir J.:Has anyone ever called you evil before?

L.C. Dax J.:Only everyone who knows me.

"God. I miss her already. I miss her so much, like I've been missing her for years and I can't stop." He cries in earnest for a moment. "I really thought I could hang on to her forever, somehow. That if I could make her happy I could be this favorite of hers for the rest of my life."

Garak sits beside him and watches him a while longer. He wipes the tears away from his face as they come, and reading on through the logs, he laughs again and again until he is looking haggard and sleepy. Garak pats him on the shoulder finally and stands. Julian looks and is drawn up with him, clicking off the computer screen and following him to bed.

This will be the first time in twenty years Garak has simply made love with someone without asking or being asked to hurt his lover. He feels no small amount of pride in that number. It means to him that he hasn't hidden his desires from his partners, he hasn't substituted something else for what he really needed nor allowed someone else to use him to fulfill their desires without returning the gesture, but he is also more than happy to break his record for Julian. Julian is already in pain, and it's not something that can be built off of in a positive way. And this isn't casual sex, this never was just a passing fling to be enjoyed and released. They are going to explore every facet of this over time, even the commonplace ones Garak has been avoiding with everyone else.

And commonplace is good. Ordinary things are the stabilizers of life that take the wayward swinging pendulum and counter it. Julian understands this too, and brings the ordinary back into his life one day at a time. The day comes soon enough that he brings the infirmary back to Ordinary with the presence of himself. He lays in bed that morning looking at Garak from across the pillow, and, half asleep and comfortable with his bed-warmer in place on his hip, Garak may have selfishly suggested that Julian could do with another day of rest.

"No," Julian coos and kisses Elim's head. "I don't want to be gone too long. It'll just get harder to go back from here on, I think. Time to get back on the horse."

Garak scowls sleepily. "I have an inkling of what that means, but just in case I'm wrong, I don't want to know."

Julian sets foot inside his demesne and is greeted with a warm smile from a mere five feet off the floor. He returns it easily, happily.

"How ya feelin', Sugar?"

Julian tosses his head a little. "About eighty-five percent I guess," he says privately. As far as anyone else is concerned, Julian was over-worked and simply needed a break, so only she needs to know the answer to that question. She smiles again and reaches for him. He hugs her and grumbles a little, melting in her strong embrace. "Make that ninety."

Garak peeks in the infirmary some time that morning before going to his shop, sees Julian at his workstation with that slack-jawed squinty expression he always gets when he looks at his prion work for more than an hour at a time. Garak leaves the infirmary satisfied and takes a stroll before opening up. All around the station even, the hugs are lighter and graced with smiles, and people have a fragile freshness about them, as if they had all just left the infirmary themselves. They walk gingerly as they re-add their own ordinary things, one balancing weight at a time; not too much so as to avoid overcompensation, and careful not to reopen the wound with crass mistakes and words, careful not to try to heal too quickly. Things are different, yes, but the magic isn't gone, just...on a break of its own, Garak thinks. Garak stops in the middle of the quiet promenade and takes a lingering look around him. The old vedek is opening the temple. O'Brien crouches beneath a replicator. A lift opens. Garak clasps his hands behind his back, and walks on.